...is not between Democrat or Republican. The new divide is now between the politicians and the people. Peggy Noonan hits the nail right on the head:

The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people--between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there.

On the ground in America, people worry terribly--really, there are people who actually worry about it every day--about endless, weird, gushing government spending. But in Washington, those in power--Republicans and Democrats--stand arm in arm as they spend and spend. (Part of the reason is that they think they can buy off your unhappiness one way or another. After all, it's worked in the past. A hunch: It's not going to work forever or much longer. They've really run that trick into the ground.)

RTWT.

However salient the above paragraphs are, I'm not quite sure that I can agree with Peggy on a third party's viability. There's far too much political inertia (among the people and the government) for anything that drastic to actually happen.

I'm finally starting to see solid examples of why Vox Day insists that Republicans and Democrats are merely flip sides of the same rotten denarii.

With a few all-too-rare exceptions, the only interest group our Washington politicians seem to care about are themselves. Illegal immigration has brought about a rare majority consensus among both the Democrat and the Republican, yet they do not listen to us. We've definintely been talking about it.

The situation is maddening - it's too late for us to enact meaningful change, yet too soon to start hanging them.