Given Barack Obama’s anemic approval ratings and the republican’s underwhelming roster of presidential hopefuls (who, thankfully, will not be seen in another gang bang until 2012), it’s somewhat surprising that there hasn’t been more talk of a third-party movement in the mainstream media. Especially since, the horse race coverage notwithstanding, Mitt Romney has already purchased his party’s nomination, which is sure to leave a large percentage of conservatives disillusioned–again.
According to a piece written by Alec MacGillis for The New Republic, however, the D.C.-based political organization, Americans Elect is set “to hold an online convention to nominate a bipartisan ticket for president and vice president” next summer. And, the author opines, those who would scoff at the idea of a viable alternative to the two-party solution–especially Obama loyalists–do so at their peril.
Americans Elect, which has already raised tens of million of dollars and has a tony list of supporters, have gathered more than half the signatures needed to make next November’s ballot in all 50 states. And while the group is quick to criticize calcified hardliners on both sides of the aisle, they are particularly critical of the sitting president.
“Democrats suspect that Americans Elect, with its self-described appeal to the ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ part of the spectrum, will pull more votes from Obama than from the GOP nominee,” MacGillis reports. “And they can hardly be reassured by the anti-Obama pedigree of some of those behind Americans Elect, including pollster Douglas Schoen, a so-called ‘Fox News Democrat,’ and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who famously dismissed Obama as an ‘elitist’ after the 2008 primaries.”
Source: The New Republic
Image byWarrenski, licensed under Creative Commons
