Quoth Brian Holtz: > This opportunity is so unique that I'll pay that $200 bounty > for a position that ANY of these five parties could take (but hasn't > yet) where both 60% of their members and 60% of Americans support it > and it is not already staked out by any of the other four parties.I > don't think any other such position exists in American politics. You > get my $200 if you can give a counter-example.
That's a pretty loose set of definitions so I'm not really sure what to make of it. At least two parties (the LP and the Green Party) support medical marijuana, as do somewhere upwards of 60% of Americans (see http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3392 for a list of polls -- 60% is the BOTTOM of the positive response). The Green Party specifically mentions medical marijuana in its platform (http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/socjustice.html#999378), the LP does not. On the other hand, it can't really be said that the Green Party has "staked out" a position in favor of medical marijuana in the sense that one "stakes" a claim and is identified with it. I've never heard anyone include medical marijuana when asked to describe what the Green Party stands for, where the LP is highly identified with the issue, in part due to the LP affiliations of prominent medical marijuana activists like (the late) Peter McWilliams and Steve Kubby and in part because the LP has always been identified as heavily ideologically invested in drug policy. So, probably not good for $200 ... but an interesting proposition. As for abortion, you make an interesting case philosophically and naturally I think the LP should determine what the right position is and take it BECAUSE it's the right position ... but politically it's a dead end. The 60% of voters who aren't "pro-life, period" or "pro-choice, period" aren't either of those, for the most part, because they just don't care that much about the issue, and certainly not enough to abandon major parties they're otherwise happy with over it. People abandon major parties and go to third parties over a single issue because they are king-hell obsessed with that issue, and obsession is a feature of the polar opposite minority positions. Regards, Tom Knapp
