Gotta love The Specials!!

¡Y son todos cubanos!

Bill Greener seems to be getting a lot of grief from the mass of letter-writers, but let's just compare him to the anonymous "Wingnut."

1) Greener signs his posts

2) He acknowledges that the Republicans played a role in their dwindling numbers, along with the demographics. He doesn't simply blame an unfair media.

3) Unlike the Wingnut, who almost always ignores the questions asked (turning a question about "science" into a defense of the SDI, for instance) Greener seems genuinely introspective.

Conclusion: Give Greener the Wingnut column.

Others have commented sufficiently on the various hypocrisies of the piece. I'll merely add that the author's underlying thesis is also suspect. Plenty of middle-aged white guys voted for Obama. And this one will do so again if the President chooses to prosecute the war criminals from the previous administration.

The founding fathers - more old white guys - were severe critics of party politics (click my signature). There certainly is nothing about a "two party system" in the Constitution. It is a fiction, like our country being a single faith nation. Rather, we are free to pursue any political party and any religion.

The parties in power have colluded through the years like Coke and Pepsi to attempt to ensure that no third party can rise to challenge their dominance. And yet - third party attempts keep happening even against the odds. As long as both the GOP and the Dems remain healthy, there is precious little chance for a third party, whether to the right or left, to succeed.

What will happen if the GOP truly withers? What would have happened if Karl Rove's anti-American ambition of a permanent GOP majority had succeeded? In that case there will be a slim - but not zero - opportunity for a third party to rise to prominence. Unlike recent third quasi-centrist parties, in a power vacuum this party will almost certainly be further to one or the other flank. Libertarian on the right or Green on the left. To remain in the center, it would have to incorporate both fundamentalist market economics with fundamentalist environmentalism - this seems a hard sell.

If one flank rises, the other flank will benefit from great community pressure to rise in response. For example, the Democrats would have a difficult time dealing with a successful Libertarian uprising breathing fresh life into fundy conservative (economic) principles. A new more left minded party will be needed. (Considering the current Democrats are somewhere to the right of the Eisenhower era Republicans, some would regard this as long overdue.)

A smart Democratic party would encourage some third party measures as a proactive defense. Start with instant run-off elections, such that voters can choose a Nader or a Kucinich as their first choice with a Gore or Kerry as a second choice. The alternative is to eventually see new political parties evolve to repopulate the ecological niches currently filled by the Democrats as well as the necrotizing GOP.

I was living in California in 1994 when the GOP chose to demagogue immigration. Before then, I knew conservative Latinos, and even my own mother--a Chilean immigrant--voted for Reagan's re-election. Since 1994, I don't know any Latino Republicans. What was being attacked was not just illegal immigration, but the presence of Latinos in the state. White people were calling us a threat to their way of life. Were we supposed to reward the GOP with electoral victory after that? California has become a reliably "blue" state. We learned what black voters already knew: that when Republicans choose to demagogue race, white voters react like a lynch mob. It's not pretty, and we don't need to encourage it. I'm even disappointed that only 60% of Latinos or so vote Democratic. I'd like to see a 90% supermajority like in the black community. The point is, this party has done a lot of damage to racial and group relationships and it needs to pay or keep paying for it. Obama represents the future, McCain the past.

Race and age are not the biggest issues hindering the GOP. Their problem is that they marginalize and conduct character assassinations of moderates or those not in lock-step with their platform. There's no room for anyone who disagrees with even one of their issues, yet one by one, the leaders of the party have proven to be hypocrites and traitors to their own cause.

The GOP traditionally prides itself as the party of "law and order," yet they cry foul and are attempting to stop some of the worst criminal and illegal actions of the Bush-Cheney administration: subversion of the Constitution, torture, illegal detention, warrantless surveillance, profiteering by no-bid contractors, assassination squads, withholding information from Congress, signing statements, etc.

The GOP celebrates their family "values," yet each day more and more are exposed as adulterers, philanderers, perverts, or worse (those who voted to impeach Clinton for his tryst are the worst "sinners" and culprits).

We saw Sen. Sessions grill and chide Sonia Sotomayor about her racist tendencies, while he was denied confirmation for his own racism. We heard candidates decry Barack Obama as not being "one of us," and winking while crowds were shouting threats. We saw those claiming moral superiority, advocating abstainance-only sex education as Palin's pregnant un-wed daughter was paraded around as a saint. We've seen and heard all too many GOP lawmakers vote for Bush tax cuts ($1.6 trillion), full funding for the war in Iraq ($1.3 trillion), and the TARP bail-out ($1.3 trillion) without a care as to deficits or the soaring national debt, yet now clammor for fiscal restraint, responsibility and conservativism.

The more they listen to Rush (Chicken-Hawk, reactionary, traitor calling for our president "to fail," and racist), the more they'll lose the vast majority and marginalize themselves into oblivion. The demographics of this nation have changed, but the vast majority of Americans are moderates and centrists, not radicals to the left or right. When the GOP begins to see this, they may gain some of their lost ground. I hope so, as we need a viable, strong 2+ party system if we're to remain a democracy.