I knew NOTHING about the CPD nor did I ever realize the League of Women voters did basically the same thing before the CPD took over. This is 85% my own fault for not being interested for so many years and finally plunging into politics this past year and not before. I'll chalk the other 15% to those who don't want us to know this information and won't put it out there, and that includes the popular media.

Ralph Nader is a fine man and one I've watched on and off for many years. He truly is a ferret and has brought us so much valuable information through the years...until he got into politics. Ron Paul was and still is, in many ways, an unknown entity to me. During the primaries I simply continued to wonder where he was and why wasn't he putting his visions forth to our country.

Why on earth do we need this type of Commission? If Ron Paul is right in his calculations that 60% of the voting public does not wish to vote for either Obama or McCain, there is something very wrong with this picture. Is it time for a viable three party system so that it doesn't come down to voting for the lesser of two evils? In order to begin this type of party everything in Washington would have to change...and perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

The Excerpt above is from Nader's book "Crashing the Party" that I first learned how the Democratic and Republican parties control the presidential debates through a corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates. The established parties created the CPD in 1987 to wrest control of the debates away from the League of Women Voters, which the parties deemed insufficiently compliant with their demands.

watch this Ron Paul Press Conference video clip (link below). About a minute and forty seconds into the clip, it speaks to the very thing mentioned in the quote above. After that, RP says something about Carol Quigley which I found very interesting.

OK, here's your link: http://www.breakthematrix.com/content/Uniting-the-third-party-movement

How'd that little dude from Texas get into the debates? Ross Perot in '92 I think it was.

I don't doubt it's harder to get in if you're not from one of the major parties. I think that if there is a legitimate chance for a 3rd party candidate to make an impact they could get in on it though. Nader I don't think could even take enough votes from one side or the other to change the outcome, much less win. No offense, I happen to like the guy.

Your list of sponsors is interesting. Look up who these sponsors give more money to (hint; it's the republican party) now I know why they always sneak in a couple asshole questions for the good guys.

In 1988, the League of Women Voters withdrew its sponsorship of the presidential debates after the George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns secretly agreed to a "memorandum of understanding" that would decide which candidates could participate in the debates, which individuals would be panelists (and therefore able to ask questions), and the height of the podiums. The League rejected the demands and released a statement saying that they were withdrawing support for the debates because "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."[3]

At a press conference announcing the commission's creation, Fahrenkopf said that the commission was not likely to include third-party candidates in debates, and Kirk said he personally believed they should be excluded from the debates.[4]

During the 2000 election, the CPD stipulated that candidates would only be invited to debate if they had a 15 percent support level across five national polls. Ralph Nader, a presidential candidate who was not allowed to debate because of this rule, believed that the regulation was created to stifle the views of third party candidates by keeping them off the televised debates. Nader brought a lawsuit against them in a federal court, on the basis that corporate contributions violate the Federal Election Campaign Act.

In 2004, citing the CPD's 32 page debate contract, Connie Rice on NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show called the CPD debates "news conferences," and "a reckless endangerment of democracy."[5]