First off, an independent would not have the infrastructure within the states to win enough of them to get to the point where Congress chooses the president a la' 1800.

An independent would have to appeal to the center in order to get elected. I don't think there are enough centrists of the two parties put together left in Congress to pass anything in that independent's program.

Which party controls each chamber's Rules Committee? Those two committees decide how each bill that gets through the committee process will be voted on by the whole chamber. If one or both don't like what they see of the program, it will be very difficult to get floor votes to pass anything.

On this board, "independent" has come to mean "a Republican too embarrassed to admit he is one." You folks can thank Newt Gingrich for that. He's the one who moved the GOP way to the right "in order to continue Reagan's legacy". That made the Dems move further to the left in reaction to it. I honestly neither know nor care whether Gingrich was actually following Reagan or not, but that right-wing "cut taxes more!" shirt needs to stop before the whole country becomes Kansas.