A blizzard worse than Blizzard 2016—an icy storm of furious American voters—is descending upon Washington as voters prepare a revenge mutiny.
“Revenge mutiny” is my term for throwing overboard traitors who threw you overboard first. It’s happening within both the Republican and Democratic parties. We’ve knocked on doors. We spent weekends in drab phone banks making calls for candidates who promised the opposite of what they delivered. We’re done.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. America will not be destroyed in a day.
Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders’ surging energy—simultaneous with Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie’s plunging poll numbers—shows that Americans are through with the elites running the two major political parties.
Former congressman Ron Paul tried to instill reform from within the Republican Party. He refused to go third party and take votes from Mitt Romney in 2012. His hopes were idyllic. The RNC resists internal reform like a five-year-old with a cavity resists a dentist’s drill.
“We already have a third party,” Sarah Palin said in 2013. “Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul … Those are the players in the party whom I will support.” Palin apparently adds Trump to her list as evidenced by her glowing endorsement last week. Bottom line, she was right to note that grassroots candidates like Cruz and Paul have effectively been a third party for years. The only thing that has changed in 2016 is that Americans are finally ready to jump ship with an independent candidate rather than try to awaken RNC The Comatose Dragon.
Band-Aids Won’t Fix Budget Trolls
For the first time in American history, the middle class is no longer a majority. Last month, Pew Research Center reported that less than 50% of Americans make between $42,000 and $126,000 a year. Over half of Americans are “lower class,” making under $42,000 annually while a handful of already-affluent Americans grows even wealthier. It’s infuriating, because our country has historically proffered increasingly better opportunities to each successive generation of Americans.
Republicans in Congress recently elected John Boehner Junior, Paul Ryan, as their leader. Then, 150 Republicans voted for Ryan’s $1.15 trillion spending bill, which funded Planned Parenthood, Obama’s insufficiently-vetted Syrian refugee program, sanctuary cities and the release of criminal illegal immigrants into society. In their hearts, Republicans know we didn’t send them to Washington to sip Scotch and play Hopscotch. They don’t care.
Rising Up Against The Sellouts
Obama “regularly insults Americans [especially Christian Americans] by suggesting that all Americans lack the values and discipline to overcome or be cautious of how much we allow our prejudices to inform us in any given situation,” a disappointed citizen named Ben Riechers wrote into the Star Tribune last month.
Obama campaigned on inspiration, hope and change. He and his party delivered continual put-downs of the very Americans who pay for everything from his toilet paper down to his coffee filters. Think: “Slamming the door in their faces [unvetted Syrian refugees] would be a betrayal of our values” or “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that!”
“I’m going to defend President Obama," Hillary Clinton cooed during this month’s Democratic presidential debate. Obamacare, she added, is: "one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party and of our country."
NBC’s Chuck Todd quipped that Hillary effectively “wrapped her arms around” Obama. Apparently creepy analogy guru Chris Matthews had the day off.
It’s no wonder Democrats are also looking for an outsider to run their party. Anyone can see that Obama’s way failed and Hillary promises more of the same. Sanders doesn’t have the answers—but his populist message is eerily inviting in contrast to Hillary’s screeches and Obama’s sniffs.
The point is: Americans are ready to unshackle themselves from the two-party system. You and your friends can agree on this: we need far more choices in terms of whom we elect to represent us in Washington.
It’s the Era of the Rebel
Trump has been toying with a presidential run for years. He has also toyed with parties, jumping from the Reform Party in 1999; to the Democratic Party in the early 2000s; to the Republican Party in 2011. He spent $1 million doing market research to determine whether to run for president in 2012. Americans weren’t angry enough. He waited another four years. During the first Republican debate, he was the lone presidential candidate to raise his hand indicating that he was willing to go third party. The crowd cheered. And his poll numbers have been soaring ever since.
For his part, Sanders has shopped around his socialist fringe message for over 35 years. The New York Times Magazine reported in 2007 that Sanders was “an early member of Vermont’s Liberty Union party, an offshoot of the antiwar movement in Vermont. He ran as the party’s nominee for the Senate in a special election in 1971 and finished with 2 percent of the vote. The following year, he ran for governor and received 1 percent. He would run two more times for statewide office that decade as a third-party candidate and never come close.” Only now are Democrats so fed up with the Clinton dynasty that they are giving Bernie the time of day.
It’s dangerous to expect a rebel to be a savior. No human being can save us from ourselves. Only God can do that. We must urge each other to carefully research all the candidates.
That said, there’s enormous hope and encouragement in knowing that your neighbors crave real reform and are no longer afraid to break free from the restrictions of the two-party system. Share this with your friends and encourage them to lobby for more parties; more choices; and more transparency in the political process.
Just as a snowstorm persuades schools to declare a snow day and give students a respite, a blizzard of discontented voters can force Washington to give voters a break and start anew. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!