The Futre of Two-Party Politics in America As We Know It.

Today, being a slow news day, I digress a bit from my focus on Leelanau County politics. Please indulge me for a bit.

Lately, I've been seeing this chart show up in a lot of blogs that tend to criticize the GOP for loosing it's base. For anyone who pays any attention to politics, the results should not be surprising. The chart shows the net favorable ratings of both major parties in the period leading up to the four most recent midterm elections.

I've seen the bloggers and pundits that use this data go on and on, bashing the GOP leadership (and very often the party standard-bearers) for letting/causing this happen. I suppose one can find as many theories and opinions as there are bloggers. However, I think their conclusions about what the chart represents take a somewhat myopic view.

What slaps me in the face immediately upon looking at it, is that the American voters are rejecting both major parties. (It's a rainy Friday as I write this and I needed a good slap today).

It further reinforces my strongly-held view that the advent of instant and wide-spread communications on the Internet and the resurgence of grass-roots organizations has and will continue to completely change the face of politics as we know it.

The continuation of one-size-fits-all party platforms may need go the way of the national party nominating process at the week-long party convention.

This most certainly must happen if the smoldering movement toward state sovereignty and a greatly diminished role of the Federal government ever takes off. Come to think of it, perhaps "Internet Political Activism" will be the vehicle that allows that movement to become viable.

This, of course, presumes that the free use of the Internet for political purposes, including dissent against whoever is in power in the government will not be abridged.

The chart, above, came from Brendan Nyhan's site You may wish to read his interpretation on that site.