What is your ready-made excuse if your favored candidate loses the presidential election? For Democrats, the answer seems to be racism. A few months back, Slate bluntly titled a bluntly argued piece, "Racism Is the Only Reason Obama Might Lose." The ObamaNation sings from this sheet of music. For Republicans, ACORN's voter-registration fraud provides a generic excuse that absolves the GOP of any complicity in its demise. The danger in blaming internal problems on external boogeymen is that it robs the loser of defeat's gift: a lesson. Losing provides the loser a reverse roadmap to victory. For sore losers, who never lose but are always unfairly cheated out of victory, defeat is doubly so; for apart from victory denied, (sore) losing supplies no template for a future win. Should McCain lose, the Republican Party's abandonment of the small-government principles that defined it for the past 44 years would be the natural position to be rethought. Should Obama lose, the Democratic Party's insistence on nominating candidates who thrill the party's left-wing base but alienate the more conservative nation that surrounds would, if rationality prevails, cause the Democracy's chieftans to redirect course. But introspection isn't the strength of stalwarts. Should your candidate lose, don't count on years in the wilderness resulting in a new and improved party.

An interesting question raised, I think, is whether a party *should* change its principles, if those principles prove to be unpopular in elections.

What do you guys think?

Ben, the simple answer is no. I ask myself, should I change my principles because they make me unpopular? My teenager is not always fond of the rules I put down, which leads to discord. Should I give in so that she likes me better?

Parties that lose their followers fade away. But those that abandon their values fade even faster.

Be well,

Sponge

I have to agree with SpongeDaddy. But then how would the people's opinions be reflected through our two party system? The problem is in the progressive conception of the two-party system that has made the major parties quasi-governmental entities by giving them special privileges on the ballot and, more outrageously, by giving their candidates financial advantages. Parties should die when they no longer best represent the views of a significant portion of the population. The Federalist Party and the Whig Party died. The bodies of our parties are kept alive like zombies even when the spirit that animated them is gone.

Doc, I agree with you. Those parties have, in fact taken over our system.

The only options I see are a Constitutional Convention, so that we can get back to basics.

Or a viable third party. There is one rising up now that shows some promise.

The modern whig party has the slogan "A party for the rest of us" and they are made up mostly of current and former soldiers. Most of their positions seem to come from common sense, rather than rhetoric.

Those who say a third party cannot be done need to look at Ross Perot. He managed to go farther than any third party candidate in recent memory.

I, myself, favor the convention. I just think we need to scrap all of the crap and get back to the basics of the founding documents...start over.

Wahsington warned against political parties becoming a fire that can consume...he was right.

Be well,

Sponge

Ben,

The Democratic and Republican parties don't have any principles. The parties with principles are usually third parties, like the Libertarian party, and we see how they fare.

Democrats and Republicans each try to market a particular brand to the American people and part of branding your party involves ideology, but this ideology is only for marketing purposes, not governing.

A strong third,fourth or even fifth party candidate would be a disaster under any circumstances. If we think things are too fractured now imgagine the chaos if we threw more parties into the mix.

The odds are republicans would learn more from their mistakes than democrats. We're already bemoaning the fact that those we've elected have lost their way. So we're already there, the democrats are not.

On the other hand if there are legitimate grievences about voter fraud, focusing mainly on why we failed beyond the fraud,would be pointless until that's resolved.

Libbiequeers dont lose, they are always cheated. I am shocked that you didnt know that Dan.

"Ben,

The Democratic and Republican parties don't have any principles. The parties with principles are usually third parties, like the Libertarian party, and we see how they fare.

Democrats and Republicans each try to market a particular brand to the American people and part of branding your party involves ideology, but this ideology is only for marketing purposes, not governing."

I agree, but I didn't mean the question specifically pertaining to the Democrats or the Republicans, or to any party at all, really.