on public radio in LA: Do we need a centrist third party challenger in 2012 race?

[yurbud]

The premise of the whole discussion was that both parties are intransigent extremists, and suggested moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats who could mount such a challenge.

It seemed like a continuation of this ''post-partisan'' bullshit that Bloomberg sold to New York City and Arnold mouthed out here in California. The real agenda seems to be all the corporate toadying of the GOP without the religious (and other nuts).

I guess they missed the times when Obama made half of his stimulus Republican ideas or did market-based health care reform and so on.

What is annoying about these guys and the pols within parties who mouth this shit is that they pretend they are about doing whatever works best, when in reality, like the worst of both parties, they are about whatever works best for the rich--or more precisely, whatever the rich tell them to do.

Do we really need THREE flavors of neoliberal economic crap?

[villager]

1. It's all horsehit, since today's "centrism" is yesterday's "right wing."

Everything's been skewed right.

Anyone from the old actual "center" would be termed a flaming leftist, "professional liberal," etc.

And the Republicans would have even worse terms!

[yurbud]

6. Richard Nixon is a socialist compared to either party today.

[coalition_unwilling]

7. These days, Nixon looks like a raving Commie - n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Actually that will happen

But not for the reasons the media is proposing. Left wing R s and right wing dems will go and do it. Something like that happened in the 1850s and I think they are trying to control it.

[yurbud]

9. Some variation of that is inevitable when the current version of the GOP finishes dying

with the last of those who fondly remember Jim Crow. There will always be racists and cranks like that, but not enough to form the base of a major political party. They are too repellant to everybody else.

The real question is whether a less strident business party starts from scratch, picks up the survivors of the GOP, and corporate Democrats, or whether the Democrats split into two parties, one business and one progressive, or whether the Dems become what the PRI used to be for Mexico--the de facto only party, corrupt to the bone.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. La corrupción somos todos...we are all part of the corruption

Somehow I doubt they will run on that one. The pri did.

[yurbud]

15. wow--that's pretty cynical on their part (or just plain lazy)

[kenny blankenship]

3. We're a vibrant pluralist democracy here

You can vote for the Reagan Party, the National Party of Reagan, the People's Party for Reagan, and New Reagan.

[redqueen]

4. "Public" radio, dutifully catapulting that propaganda.

So they think our choices should be lunatic-fringe right (GOP), hard right (whatever nonsense they're spewing about), and right (Obama).

:puke:

[JDPriestly]

5. Ignore Public Radio. It's awful. Listen to KTLK in the morning and

early afternoon and then Pacifica in the early evening and on your drive home.

Ian Masters is great on Pacifica. Thom Hartmann is great on KTLK.

I stopped listening to Public Radio years ago. The Muzak voices and milk-toast news stories just bored me to tears. Besides I wasn't getting the full story about things.

[coalition_unwilling]

8. NPR lost a lot of credibility with me (and I stopped donating) b/c of

their coverage leading up to Operation Shocking and Awful. 30 mintues of research was all it would have taken them to know conclusively that both rationales for war (WMD and Iraqi ties to Al Quaida) were 100% horseshit. Instead, NPR chose to play the role of court stenographer. I donate to Pacifica now. And until OWS has changed the electoral landscape indelibly, NPR will never see another cent from me.

[yurbud]

17. I switch around during the commercials on Thom Hartmann and during the news on KTLK, which is

generic not progressive.

[kentuck]

10. Why would anyone want to challenge the present two-Party system?

Wouldn't that just mess everything up?? :sarcasm:

[dtexdem]

11. Well, if it were truly centrist, it would be to the left of both major parties.

;-)

But we know that it wouldn't be -- it would be Republican-not-as-light-as-the-Dems.

The truth is that what we need is a center/left party, well to the left of the Dems.

[tularetom]

12. We have one - his name is Barack Obama

Who could possibly be more of a centrist than this president?

[zbdent]

14. I have a question ...

if the "TEA Party" truly, as they claim, represents the majority of "the people" ...

why don't they break away from the Republican party and run their own candidate? I mean, Fox pretty much made Sarah Palin a 2012 candidate ...

[mmonk]

16. No such thing. One is a corporatist or one is not.