Nader is in…is Paul next?

Calling for a “Jeffersonian revolution,” Ralph Nader announced today that he will be running for president as an independent.  This will be the third consecutive time Nader seeks the presidency (he ran in 2000 for the Green party and in 2004 as an independent).  I think this is a very good thing as it reminds us that the United States is really just a one-party state with two competing factions representing divergent views of the same opulent minority.

I hope that after the Texas primary, Ron Paul will likewise run third-party or independently.  While Nader and Paul would certainly do no better statistically than to pull fringe votes from the Republican and Democratic candidates, politically and socially their candidacies are the sort of challenges we Americans need in a political matrix that is, for the most part, monolithic.