The 1%'s-3rd Party: This isn't a political movement-It's a collection of walking dress codes
The 1 Percent's Front Behind a 3rd-Party Candidate
By Charles P. Pierce
Here's a holiday tip for you all in case the subject comes up over the Christmas goose. Sooner or later, one of the cousins is going to suggest the need for a third (or fourth, or 290th) political party in this country. If you are very lucky, the rest of the people at the table will have drunk deeply of the wassail and be so completely Boehnered that they can no longer speak.
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Americans Elect is a front for a bunch of Wall Street types and hedge-fund cowboys, many of whom to be completely fair about it, may well still have a tiny, vestigial conscience tingling deep in what passes for their hearts. Nevertheless, the group's entire raison d'etre is to defuse the anger that has arisen generally in the country over the fact that many of their regular dinner partners tried to steal the entire world, only to drop it and smash it to smithereens, in 2008. People have been saying unkind things about them ever since. Americans Elect finds this disconcerting. It would like some warm milk, a cookie, and some centrism, please, preferably knitted, with feet.
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But what makes the whole thing so much more noxious is the fact that these people not only people believe the primary issue in American politics is how Americans speak to each other. (It's not. What is? All together now: Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.) They believe it so firmly that they have given themselves a hall pass from the hurly-burly, and they expect the rest of us to honor it, because we're so hungry for the principled, moderate leadership of the likes of Evan Bayh — who swore he'd never become a lobbyist when he left the Senate, and then promptly became one — or, worse, Michael Bloomberg, the pinstriped Pinochet of Zuccotti Park. They simply will not have any of this ruffianism. This isn't a political movement. It's a collection of walking dress codes. Sack up or take a walk, boys.
Attacked and insulted? In American politics? Tell you what. Ask Lani Guinier what that really means. I'm sure Vaclav Havel, who died this past week, would have told you that, while he was dodging the secret police for 20 goddamn years, what really concerned him was that he might be "mischaracterized in the press," perhaps even "frequently."
Oh, my stars. Time to bring out the old girl again.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/americans-elect-third-party-candidate-2012-6623083#ixzz1hStk5olJ
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