A new political party: what would it take?

[g5000]

The G5000 Party!

1. In our first 100 days in office, we will enact a law that bans all tax expenditures. Tax returns will be able to be filled out on the proverbial post card regardless of how many tax brackets there are. Sanity will be restored as people earning identical incomes will be paying identical taxes.

2. The Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages will be raised to 70, and indexed to 9 percent of the population going forward.

3. With the multi-trillion dollar surplus resulting from the first two efforts, some will be used to pay down the debt, while the rest is used to lower tax rates for everyone across the board. Once the debt is paid off, tax rates will be lowered even further.

4. Buying Credit Default Swaps that do not have an insurable interest will be banned. Capital reserve requirements will be tightened up. Derivatives will be regulated and watched very closely..

5. "End user" in commodities contracts will be defined as the entity which actually consumes a commodity, period. No more fucking around.

6. A slow but steady movement away from taxes on production and toward taxes on consumption will take place.

7. A slow but steady movement to get the government out of our marriages and out of our lives as much as possible will take place, while ensuring the safety of the populace against assholes. Regulations which only serve to prevent competition from breaking into the marketplace will be repealed.

8. The SEC will have their teeth sharpened. Fining a financial firm for fraud or other criminal activity will stop. People will start going to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. No expense will be spared putting these assholes behind bars, and we will go all the way to the top of the organized criminal enterprise and behead it.

9. Marijuana will be decriminalized on the federal level.

10. The Department of Homeland Security will be disbanded.

 

[williepete]

For a new political party to emerge, it would have to replace one of the two current parties IMHO. If you look back to the demise of the Whig party, the new Republican party siphoned off Whig membership to the extent that they deflated it out of existence. (The Democrats also lured away the "cotton Whigs"). Looking further into the demise of the Whigs, there would need to be a significant political and demographic backdrop for an event like this. A new party would have to seize on such a momentous issue that it would drain the vast majority of another party's membership in order to supplant it.

So the op's question, "What would it take?"

Looking to history, some sort of crisis.

In the 1960's, George Wallace said there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the major parties. Truer today than ever.

 

[there4eyeM]

I would have hoped that mere fatigue caused by the repetitive scandals and lack of effective action by the presently dominant parties might be enough. They are the best argument to either and alternative or an end to them.

 

[Agit8r]

The present parties have basically rigged the system (especially the debates) in order to duopolize political power. Despite this, major-party affiliation accounts for only 55% of the population. It seems like there should be room for another major party, but it is unlikely to happen, as most people lean more toward what they see as the lesser of two evils.

Party Affiliation Gallup Historical Trends