Commentator Richard J. Cross III accurately described the current chaos in the U.S. and laments that he has no political home ("GOP speechwriter may vote for Hillary Clinton," Aug. 17).
He describes himself as a renegade, but he could have gone one step further to the obvious conclusion for himself and the nation. For decades, the major political parties have been in decline, with 44 percent of voters now registered as independents. The Democrats have 30 percent, and Republicans 26 percent.
Both shrinking parties have become radicalized, which has accelerated their demise. They now mirror the political conditions of the 1850s, when slavery was abhorrent to the Northern industrialist Whigs and the tariffs were a festering point of contention for southern Whig plantation owners.
The Whig party imploded; its remnants became the Republicans and Lincoln was elected as their first president. Then we had the Civil War.
Today the Democrats have abandoned their traditional base of blue collar workers and religious family farmers for a gaggle of special interests — Hispanics, African-Americans, environmentalists, gun control, government unions, abortion rights and LGBTQ activists. Progressive politicians worship at the altar of diversity with open borders offering potential Hispanic voters, and they are determined to have a secular society with a diminution of God.
Conservatives salivate at the thought of low-cost illegal immigrant labor while at the same time throwing the U.S. middle class on the funeral pyre of America's industrial base and an obsession with free trade. The country continually runs a foreign exchange deficit approaching $500 billion.
Which brings me to the November election. I'll ignore specifics on either presidential candidate, but the Greeks have provided us with a term to describe the next four to eight years. Kakistocracy is government by the worst persons, the least qualified and most unprincipled.
Hillary should win based on the demographics, but she faces 80 million evangelicals, another 40 million Catholic and Mormon pro-life voters and millions of miners whose lives Obama's EPA has destroyed. Then there are 80 million gun owners to contend with.
As a former secretary of state, Ms. Clinton's fingerprints are all over the Middle East debacle and the rise of Russia. And finally the pay-to-play scandals of the Clinton Foundation will continue to bubble.
Donald Trump has irreversibly splintered the Republican Party and the obvious result will be the formation of a new major party made of independents and disaffected voters from both current parties. Hopefully, the election of the first president nominated by that new party won't trigger a second Civil War.
Charles Campbell, Woodstock