Trying to start a bipartisan party

WASHINGTON - Somewhere in America, there are 35,000 people who are looking at the preliminaries to the 2008 presidential race from a different perspective than millions of their fellow citizens.

They are the people who have signed up so far to participate in Unity08, the effort to launch a bipartisan third-party campaign with the first Internet nominating convention in history. I wrote about this unusual venture when it was launched last year by Hamilton Jordan and Jerry Rafshoon, both formerly of Jimmy Carter's White House; Angus King, the former independent governor of Maine; and Douglas Bailey, a veteran Republican consultant and political adviser.

I contacted Bailey recently to ask what had happened to this bold gamble, and he was the source of that 35,000 figure for the number of people who have lent their support to the scheme. They obviously have a long way to go before they can claim to be a viable political force, but they are making slow progress.

When I called Bailey, it had been just a week since the group announced that anyone who was interested could sign up at www.unity08.com as a voting delegate to a national convention planned for June, 2008. "The need is as great as it's ever been," Bailey said. "The partisan bickering in Washington continues nonstop, and the contest for the nominations in both parties is likely to make it worse."

He pointed to two problems that many of us have decried. "The leading candidates in both parties have suggested they will decline federal matching funds, and plan to spend unlimited sums," he said. "They expect the bundlers - the people collecting for them - to raise a million dollars each, and what do they (the bundlers) expect in return?"

Second, Bailey said, "the likelihood is that the nominees of both parties will be determined by the first three or four primaries, which means that 99 percent of the people who will vote in November will have absolutely no say in the names that are on the ballot. It's not surprising that they may be looking for an alternative."

None of that is implausible. But where does the alternative come from? Bailey and his partners have an answer, but the process they have in mind still strikes me - as it did when it was first outlined - as being extremely cumbersome.

In a few weeks, they will outline provisional rules for their own nomination, determining how candidates will qualify and how the voting will be conducted. The goal is to pick either a political independent for president or to form a ticket with both a Democrat and a Republican. Feedback will be welcomed before the rules are made final.

Then comes the hard part. Thirty-nine states allow a new party to petition onto the presidential ballot, without having a named candidate, but the deadlines and numbers of signers vary widely. The first test will be whether Unity08 attracts enough volunteers and money for that effort. Then comes the challenge of recruiting a candidate or candidates for Unity08 to back. If they had a compelling person already lined up, their task would be much easier, but they do not.

I suggested to Bailey that the underlying premise of this campaign - the need to cure the partisanship of Washington - might be undercut if the Republicans and Democrats nominated people who are not closely associated with those partisan battles. "To the degree that the nominees of the two parties recognize that bipartisan leadership is essential, then it shows the political process has made a self-adjustment, and that is good," he said. "But the usual game is to target the base of your party, rile it up with wedge issues, and ignore the middle."

More like trying to start a liberal bipartisan party. Just click the unity08 buttons and get the the part where they have determined the issues:

Unity08 divides issues facing the country into two categories: Crucial Issues – on which America’s future safety and welfare depend; and Important Issues – which, while vital to some, will not, in our judgment, determine the fate or future of the United States.

In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.

By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.

In our opinion – since the disintegration of the Soviet Union – our political system seems to have focused more attention on the “important issues” than the “crucial issues.” One result: The political parties have been built to address the interests of their “base” but have failed to address the realities that impact most Americans.

Yep, straight down the middle. Sign me up~~~

Rush Limbaugh spoke about this very type of issue on his show recently, using comments by Arnold Schwarzenegger as context.

Arnold said that good government is compromise, and what is good for the electorate is compromise.

Rush said that it does not take leadership to compromise. It takes leadership to do what is right and to take a stand, which is often confrontational. On this, I agree with him.

Compromising to avoid confrontation is what the middle voters want. But middle voters are in the middle because they are either too disconnected from issues to take a stand on them, too unintelligent to take a stand, or too unassertive or afraid to take a stand.

The issues we face today ARE complicated in many cases and DO require one to examine their own moral and personal stances. But because that is a difficult thing to do does not make compromising those stances an admirable thing to do.

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