The rest of the pack......

[poltr1]

As a public service to the LJ community, here is a brief summary of four of the so-called "third parties" that are fielding presidential candidates this year (or have fielded candidates in 2000). I'm sure there are others, but I don't know who they are yet.

Yeah,. they have a snowball's chance in hell of winning any state, but they're running anyway, either on their party ticket or as independents. Here they are.

Libertarian Party (www.lp.org)
mission/platform: personal civil liberties, small federal goverment, free-market economies
candidate: Michael Badnarik (www.badnarik.org)

Natural Law Party (www.natural-law.org)
candidate: none (John Hagelin is not running this year -- Dr. Hagelin's website: www.hagelin.org)
mission/platform: bring the light of science into politics; use field-tested solutions to world's problems
Note: National party operations suspended as of 4/30/04; replaced by US Peace Government (www.uspeacegovernment.org).

Green Party USA (aka The Greens) (www.greenpartyus.org)
other related sites: www.greenparty.org (obsolete US); www.greens.org (International site); www.gp.org (mirrors greenpartyus.org).
mission/platform: Environmental, non-violence, social justice, diversity
candidate: David Cobb (www.votecobb.org)

Constitution Party (formerly known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party) (www.constitutionparty.com)
mission/platform: Return government to Constitutional functions and American jurisprdence to Biblical common-law foundations.
candidate: Michael Peroutka (www.peroutka2004.com)

Comments

[stormlight811.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thanks.

::sigh:: My new bumper sticker, unfortunately, perfectly sums up my views on this election: "I'd vote for a hamster if I thought it would get Bush out of office. Kerry is my hamster." It's kind of sad to me that I feel it's more important to get the current regime out of office than elect someone I want to see president, but that's how it looks this time around.

[poltr1]

Aye. This year, more so than ever, it's not a vote for a particular candidate, it's a vote against a particular candidate.

Even if the Kerry/Edwards ticket wins in November, the pendulum swings back to the other side...the Donkeys win, undo the changes made in the past 4 years, while the Elephants scheme to try to take everything back in '06 and '08. There's no real long-term progress made. It's a duopoly. If the two poltical parties were competing businesses, they would probably get sued for anti-trust and anti-competitive business practices. (Where's Judge Greene when we need him?)

Don't forget to see my entry on 7/10 regarding these third parties.