The Rachel Party

I've been thinking politics lately. This is unavoidable because I like to read the newspaper and listen to NPR and even though it's still a year away the presidential elections seem to be the #1 topic. This makes me want to only read the entertainment section. Hearing about Britney Spears getting her lips done after losing visitation rights with her kids is much less exasperating to me then hearing about how many millions of dollars candidates are spending to "connect with the people". The same people who can't afford health insurance for their kids.

It's not that I don't care. If anything I care maybe too much. I can get pretty riled up about things and suddenly my congresspeople's e-mail in-boxes are flooded with irate letters from me. Gosh, I love writing to my elected officials. It makes me feel very patriotic and upstanding-citizen-y. But politics is frustrating to me because it seems as if nothing ever gets done. Lately it seems as if all any politician does is talk endlessly about problems without doing anything more than blame the other party for them.

This is why I dumped them all. Years ago, in an act of public protest, I renounced the party system. I am no party. (This is true both politically and socially. Sometimes I can be very dull and people may wonder why I was invited in the first place, even if I do make good snacks.) I realize that this makes me sound like a nut-job. Or a Libertarian. Some would argue there is no difference. It's not that I think the party system is inherently bad, but I think we can all agree that the inability of the parties to play nice and be friends has made our government very inefficient. I think a lot of time and money is wasted when politicians have the party through and through attitude. It's just bad governing when you choose a political ideology over the best interest of the people. I also don't like how belonging to a particular party increasingly means you have to be a certain type of person. That even though most Americans move towards the middle, the party description tries to pull them apart. I don't fit the mold of either of the major parties and I didn't like being identified with them. So I dumped them and official became the sole member of the Rachel Party.

The Rachel Party is for more cooperation and less deal making. More common sense and less whining. More red licorice and less black. (Really? 56% of you? I'm shocked and disappointed. Now I'm going to have to rethink our friendship.)

I do realize that I'm the only one affected by my public protest. No one really cares that I don't belong to a party. And really, it doesn't matter to me which party a person belongs to as long as they can stand by their convictions and vote their beliefs. But this has been great for me because I find that it's made me define my positions more clearly. I don't get mailers from political parties anymore which means that I have to look elsewhere for information and I get a really broad spectrum of opinions when I do that. Oh, and I have way more room in my mailbox for amazon packages. Win-win.

I'm telling you all of this because I'm kind of leaning towards both Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee for president. And what I would really love is if one of them got their respective party's nomination and then took on the other as a running mate. Mostly because they have two of the silliest names in politics and I think a bumper sticker that says "Huckabee Obama '08" would be hilarious.

Although, if Stephen Colbert decides to run I'm totally jumping on that bandwagon.