October 27, 2015: Our speaker was Dr. Jim Rex, founder and co-chairman of the American Party. Dr. Rex is a former teacher, coach, college dean and vice president of several South Carolina universities. He was also the South Carolina Superintendent of Education from 2007 to 2011. He has been awarded the Order of Palmetto, South Carolina’s premier award for outstanding service to the state.
The goal of the American Party is to help voters make more informed and independent choices as to electing officials to state and national governance. Recent polls have shown that the largest single block of voters today call themselves “Independents”. This “third Party” movement demonstrates that the citizens of America are dissatisfied with both of the two major parties. This feeling was emphasized in 2014 by the lowest voter turn-out in 74 years. People are tired of gridlock and the inability of government to solve problems. He noted that a bad system can prevail if its spokespersons are motivated to win. He feels that both parties are filled with professional politicians whose main goal is to win re-election and who will say anything, i.e. whatever they think an audience wants to hear, in order to get re-elected. Instead we need “citizen legislators”, persons who takes a break from their careers to serve the public for a limited number of years. He feels that a total term limit of 12 years would enable the system to work. Thus the American Party has been established to promote the election of citizen legislators, particularly at the state and national levels, who put service ahead of self.
He believes that holders of public office must be subject to transparency of their annual income so the public can see how much and from what sources the person has received payment beyond his public salary. If any person holding office has been convicted of an infraction of the law, they should be barred from public service thereafter. This transparency would provide a warranty to the public for service performed, not unlike the warranty one receives when purchasing a product.
The majority of the populace, members of a major political party or not, see themselves as a “moderate”. It has become difficult for the public to truly select people of merit because the lawmakers have “gerrymandered” safe voting districts which guarantee that only persons of which ever party prevails get elected.
He noted that voters should be wary of candidates who have gone through some screening process over a single issue item such as abortion or gay rights. There are far too many areas of great need of legislation for a candidate to “bet all” on getting supported because of their position on one single issue.
Forefront of the goal of the American Party is to enable America to increase its presence in the world economy. Unless we prevail along these lines we will fail our citizens by seeing a loss of the middle class, loss of health care and in maintaining a strong military. The American Party thinks it can be done and that South Carolina, long noted for standing up against the majority, is a great place to start.
–Fred Sales, Keyway Committee