COLUMN: Political machinery now broken

I’ve been a fan for as long as I can remember. While other teens longed for the day they reached legal age to drink or buy a pack of smokes, I actually counted down the years, days even, until I could go into the voting booth and take part in this most American of processes.

Of course, the way things are these days, perhaps I need to stop off for a drink or a cartoon of Camels. It’s enough to drive a person to that point.

We’ve reached the ultimate stalemate in our country politically. Democrats hate the Republicans. On the other hand, Republicans despise anyone associated with the word Democrat. Any notion of working together for the common man and woman has long since evaporated.

The few of us who do not belong to one extreme political fringe or the other can only shake our heads in disbelief over what we have come to. Republicans refuse to give an inch on anything associated with President Obama, so mad that he was even elected to the highest office in the land in the first place.

Democrats refuse to realize not everyone is going to believe everything they do. The two “major” political camps have drifted so far to the outer limits of the spectrum (outer limits of reality I say) that those who use common sense have been left in the dust.

So long have I waited for a third party to rise up from this mess. Of course, it has been made almost impossible since Republicans and Democrats alike don’t want anyone else joining the party. As a Libertarian, I have seen unjust laws created at keeping my party’s candidates off the ballot, in Georgia and elsewhere.

The new Tea Party is gaining some level of momentum but will be hard pressed to become a true national player because the right-wingers in the Republican Party fear a division in their ranks.

So we’re left with same old two cars, which long ago should have been towed away to the junkyard. Republicans say they are the answer. They are elected and prove not to be. Democrats say they are the answer and end up doing as little as their Republican counterparts.

Yet, so many, like blind sheep, continue to be led to the slaughter by not being willing to break out of the two-party political box that, in reality, only buries them more and more with each passing year, with each passing election. When will Americans learn that if something is broken, then you replace it with something new, something better?

How long of this “The sky is blue, no the sky is green” are we going to take before we realize what we have is not working. It’s not even funny anymore.

Currently, a candidate trying to obtain ballot access as an independent for Georgia’s 11th Congressional District must obtain more than 21,000 signatures simply because he does not want to declare himself a part of the two-headed political monster. To even give voters a choice, this candidate has to go far and beyond what a Democrat or Republican would have to do to get on the ballot.

And we wonder why things are broken. Going from Democrat to Republican to Democrat back to Republican, is not working. It has not worked, it will not work. Open your eyes and do something before this train wreck becomes even worse.

When will people learn? Will this chaos ever end? Until voters realize there can be other choices, we will continue with this foolishness we have now. Right or left is not the answer. Common sense and the middle ground are.

Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal. You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.com