The nation's fastest-growing political party is "none of the above," which could be bad news for Democrats and Republicans.A few years ago I joined the none-of-the-abovers when I refused to identify myself Republican and did not vote in a presidential primary election. Like many former Republicans I became disillusioned with GOP leaders who took the economy down the tubes by cutting taxes and not cutting spending.
As the 2010 midterm elections and the anti-tax "Tea Party" movement take shape, more Americans are registering "unaffiliated" rather than signing up with one of the two major parties.
The number of independent voters has grown faster in the past two years than Democrats and Republicans in at least 14 of the 28 states and the District of Columbia that register voters by party, according to a USA TODAY review.
I did find it interesting that the Federal deficit came in fourth in the polling of "top concerns". I guess that it makes sense that the economy and unemployment would trump the deficit but the concern about healthcare seemed a bit odd for me. I think that the economy is a catch-all category that people are concerned about but really cannot articulate why they are concerned. Unemployment on the other hand is often in our faces.. many of us know folks that are out of work.
I think that the financial concerns would have probably been top of the list a few years ago but the healthcare concern was probably manufactured last year by a lot of the negative rhetoric around the congressional reform debates. Sad that the net affect is that people are now concerned about something that they may not have been a few years ago. Heck, even I am concerned - the company that I retired from announced a few years ago that they will be reconsidering my benefits because of the new healthcare legislation.
I guess I am rambling a bit.. I get that way sometimes.. especially when I think about these weighty matters. I want to go back to the ideology of my former years.. those years when I believed that my GOP leaders were conservatives that knew how to at least balance a budget. Those years are gone.. just color me none-of-the-above.
I remember the classic Richard Pryor movie, Brewster's Millions. In that movie, he had to spend 30 million in 30 days and have no assets to show for it at the end of that 30 days in order to inherit many times more than that amount. One way he found to throw his money away was to run a campaign called "none of the above". That campaign ended up winning and neither of the party guys won. too bad life couldn't imitate art.
ReplyDeleteBob, come back Bob! You have to be registered with a party. It is the only way you can even have a modicum of impact in the primaries. It is in these primaries that the battles btween conservatives and RINO's are fought. See Fla. race between Rubio and Crist.
ReplyDelete@jrchaard - Maybe I need to get a None-of-the-Above PAC going on FB?
ReplyDelete@Anon - Rubio may take the GOP primary but the is a good chance that he will lose to Independent Crist in November.. not that I would vote for him. Of course they could both split the GOP vote and the Dem will win like what happened recently in New York.
Some days I'm with you Bob.
ReplyDeletemaybe your PAC will work better than my group I formed yesterday on FB called "unfriend me if you still support Obama"
ReplyDelete@Scott - Some day I am with you Scott :)
ReplyDelete@jrchaard - I must have unfriended you before you created the group - not! I would never unfriend a raving Tarantino fan :)