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Ruth: Political parties killing themselves

 
Fewer newly registered voters are aligning themselves with the two major political parties.
Fewer newly registered voters are aligning themselves with the two major political parties.
Published June 1, 2016

Let's say for the sake of argument that you are not as loopy as a loon. And for the fun of it, let's also assume you are not a Dr. Strangelove meets Karl Marx type. And yet you would very much like to affiliate with a political party.

We've pretty much ruled out the Republicans and the Democrats, haven't we?

And that has led to all sorts of consternation within both the Florida Republican and Democratic party establishments, who can't grasp that they offer all the appeal of joining the National Association of Snake Handlers.

It's their party, and they'll deny if they want to.

As the Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau's Mary Ellen Klas reported, the state's stumblebum political parties are experiencing a dramatic decline in voters who would rather walk barefoot across shards of glass than call themselves a Republican or Democrat.

Of the 2.1 million newly registered voters in Florida since 2012, only 28 percent signed up as Republicans. Democrats signed up 31 percent of new voters, while 42 percent identified as anything but one of the two increasingly less-major parties. That's hardly a recipe for robust future growth.

There are plenty of reasons for the declines in new voters aligning with the elephants and the donkeys.

For the Republicans, it is not helpful that the party has been reduced to a narrow demographic sliver of middle-aged white people who have found their savior in a giant, narcissistic Easter Peep with anger management issues.

If you are an intellectually honest right-leaning person who believes in coherent immigration reform, sensible gun control policies, the need to address the perils of scientifically proven climate change or even the rational necessity of bipartisan cooperation, you are dismissed as a disloyal, "establishment" fake conservative. And woe be unto you if you are Hispanic, or Muslim, or a woman, or like to read books. Why would you want to call yourself a Republican?

The Democrats are led by a figure who makes Lady Macbeth look like Marge Simpson. She has a credibility problem that would make a polygraph machine melt down into a pile of goo.

The Democrats are so distrustful of their own followers they created a vape-filled backroom system of super delegates to throw their presidential nomination to a gasping Hillary Clinton just in case the Tammany of party big shots didn't like the will of the people. Why would you want to call yourself a Democrat if you knew your vote was being discounted?

Little wonder that Florida Republican gray eminences like J.M. "Mac'' Stipanovich, who has been whispering into GOP ears since Abraham Lincoln was in knickers, told Klas he could envision a time when a genuine third party alternative would begin to emerge.

One way to avoid having the Republican and Democrat parties turn into "One Flew Over the Electoral College" is by transforming the primary election process into a truly representative form of governance.

If both parties want to broaden their membership, embrace the "big tent" gibberish they disingenuously espouse, the solution is self-evident. Create an "open primary" system where anyone can declare on election day whether he or she wants to vote in the Republican or Democratic primary.

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Want to dilute the crazies populating the ballot? Make it easier for moderates, who might otherwise be shunned by many of the radical elements dominating the parties, to participate in the process both as candidates and as voters.

You can make an argument that relatively very few of us are ideologically, rigidly bound to strictly one party or another. And as long as we have a closed primary system, we are going to continuously find ourselves with a meager choice between a huckstering, clueless game show host and prevaricating machine politician who couldn't give you a straight answer if you asked her the color of an orange.

Or consider, as Klas reported, that since 2012 more than 43 percent of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 34 have rejected joining any party. And both the Republicans and Democrats have offered them precious little motivation to change their minds.

The whole reason for an election is to win it. You don't win by telling millions of voters that their votes don't count and they don't matter.