Surprise Party

I saw this article, Surprise Party, in The Atlantic.

"Over dinner, some of the best political minds of the 1970s, Republican and Democratic, reached bipartisan consensus: none could any longer recognize the political parties in which they had once been major players. The cynical focus on divisive ‘wedge’ issues and the ferocious negativity of recent campaigns, which fed in to an inability to govern once elected, dismayed everyone at the table."

"And then came the leap. The three decided on the spot that they would create a third party to represent the center in the 2008 presidential election. To guarantee that it would, they decided that the ticket itself would be bipartisan: one Democrat and one Republican."

Unity '08 has a website where you can sign up as a delegate. The plan is to have an online "convention" that (via secure online voting) nominates a bipartisan ticket and gets them on the 2008 Presidential ballot in all 50 states. Nominations are open to anyone but like Lieberman did last fall, if one of the major candidates can't win their party's nomination, they're welcome here.

It sounds pretty crazy and I hope we don't have a repeat of Nader on 2000 helping to swing the election. The interesting part is the online campaigning and how it might remove some of the money from elections. Apparently the 2004 presidential election cost $2.2 billion