Break up the parties

To the editor: The Republicans have done a fairly convincing job of disqualifying themselves from holding the reins of power for a generation at least - but we have no assurance that the supposedly lone alternative, the Democrats, will fare much better when they regain hegemony next year. Indeed, I fully expect them to revert to the kind of behavior that gave Newt Gingrich the opening he needed for the “revolution” of 1994. As the primary campaigns are making increasingly obvious, the so-called “mainstream” parties are in fact unnatural, Frankenstinian coalitions that should be broken apart for the good of American democracy. On the Republican side, conservative Christians should wake up to the fact that the economic interests that control the party (I call them the “Mammonist” wing) have been manipulating them for years, taking advantage of their zeal, their dedication, and their fears. They should follow through on their threat to bolt when Giuliani gets the nomination. On the Democratic side, the DLC centrists and right-of-centrists like the Clintons, Sen. Lieberman, etc. should leave the party to the “Wellstone wing” of social liberals and form a new, centrist, technocratic party with disaffected moderate Republicans. Take the four parties so created, add the Greens and the Libertarians (along with the various smaller parties on the left and the right), and create mechanisms whereby they can all participate in electoral and legislative politics in meaningful ways - and I believe you will have a political landscape in which more American voters will feel they have a voice that can be heard, and be encouraged to participate. It will not be pretty, I know - multiparty democracies create their own sets of problems, as anyone from Europe will tell you - but the present situation is no longer acceptable. Skip Mendler Honesdale