One Nation Divided

Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

After tallying the votes for the 2012 presidential election, the results clearly show that America is a country divided.

American presidential races are comprised of a Republican and a Democratic candidate. Campaign platforms range from fiscal to social issues, and are debated by each side, both taking an opposite stance to tow their party line.

Not every voter will agree with their party’s chosen candidate on every issue. Third-party candidates have been around since the beginning of America’s democracy, but fail to gain any serious traction among voters. This could mean that our country is destined to be stuck in its two-party ways, resulting in a race to the finish between the lesser of two evils each election cycle.

The biggest concern voters face is identifying with a candidate who shares our same ideology and will have our best interest at heart once in office. But how as an American public are we to find that candidate when our chosen party’s are falling apart at the seams and recruiting candidates so far removed from the general population, they need a compass to find their way back to reality.

The candidates who share our ideology are often lost in the shuffle.

When we don’t support candidates who are most in tuned with the American public for fear of straying from the norm, how can we ever expect a change in the system? If we anticipate the chosen few on Capitol Hill to change, the American public must first take a leap of faith in favor of the country as a whole.