Posted on 08/06/2014 9:39:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On Tuesday conservative activist and commentator Steve Baldwin penned an article for the right-leaning website Barbwire calling for the emergence of a third political party in the US, one made up of religious and fiscal conservatives that could supplant the Republican Party. Baldwin even proposed a leader for this new political coalition – Sarah Palin, erstwhile governor of Alaska and, memorably, the vice-presidential Republican nominee in 2008.
According to the activist, the thrust of this new political force would be to eliminate “all federal abortion funding, reversing Roe vs. Wade [the Supreme Court decision to legalise abortion], and prohibiting the Federal government from granting special rights to people based upon sexual behavior (laws that almost always infringe on our religious, property, and freedom of association rights).”
Of course, the notion of Palin leading an alliance of the faithful and the frugal all the way to the White House is fanciful. However the US does have a history of intermittent dalliances with third parties, while the current dysfunction in Washington, a deadlock that peaked with the government shutdown late last year – a period in which Gallup revealed 60% of Americans thought it was time for a third party to emerge – has led to rumblings once again.
Palin herself floated the idea of a third party in a recent interview with Fox News, asking, “If Republicans are gonna act like Democrats, then what’s the use in getting all gung ho about getting more Republicans in there?”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.co.uk ...
while the current dysfunction in Washington, a deadlock that peaked with the government shutdown late last year
You call it dysfunction, I call it hold the line which is working exactly how it was intended to work even with that A.H. Reid killing part of the the filibuster. O Dork had both houses for two of his five years and what did that get us?
Build it and they will come.
The Huffington Post trying to stir up trouble in the Republican party. I’m shocked. Besides we already have the Tea Party. It’s just an official one. Maybe better that way.
Just like Ross Perot?
I would join a true Conservatives Party with a Conservative platform running only conservative candidates, and vote for them in every election.
It is a shame nobody is able to start a conservative party and keep it truly conservative.
Keeper's Of Odd Knowledge say the same thing.
Your GOPe is DEAD. Face the music,
The third party movement won’t start until after 2014 elections. We’re they’ll use it to try and leverage out some of the Rinos.
Jeb bush for GOPe the nomination would set off a good possibility of third party victory.
“Of course, the notion of Palin leading an alliance of the faithful and the frugal all the way to the White House is fanciful.”
It will never happen.
Until it happens.
both the Dems and Repubs are decrepit shells.
“third party candidate who is serious, would have a very good chance of winning. “
It would force the Dem and RINO to compete from the center to the left. I’m not sure it is impossible anymore.
Sarah Palin needs to fulfill her destiny and RUN FOR PRESIDENT.
Reference bump ...
Reference bump ...
Oh, C.N.S. what you are missing is what Perot tapped into.
Perot had the Tea Party behind him before it had a name and IMHO I argue it was the first time a Common Sense Americans put their force behind "another" party. Now you can argue Goldwater or Reagan tapped into this unique American zeitgeist, but put that aside for a moment.
Mr. Perot is a lot of things, Businessman ( ask someone who worked with EDS or for EDS and you will get some interesting stories as to if it was a functional culture ), Patriot, and as Rush would say "A live hand-grenade with a bad haircut".
The point is, Perot was not the proper front man of a new political party on the scene. I'd argue we don't need a front man or women, that is too cult-a-personality. Let someone like Sarah get it up and running, it will do well on it's own...
Y'know, I find it kind of funny how people will bring up Perot as an example. They forget a few things.
For instance, did you know that before he dropped out of the race (and well before subsequently getting back in it), Perot was pretty much neck-and-neck with Clinton and Bush in all the polling? Indeed, in some polls in late June, he was hitting the 40% mark and was beating the others fairly soundly.
If Perot had not dropped out, there is a very good chance he could have been President. Of course, dropping out and blaming it on the Republicans trying to crach his daughter's wedding made him look unstable, untrustworthy, and frankly a little wacko. So did publicly accusing his campaign advisers of being CIA plants and demanding that his campaign staff sign loyalty oaths.
Yet, it's still amazing that he managed to pull 19% after all that. Keep in mind, also, that that 19% came after he had dropped to around 7% in the polling in September 1992 after all his shenanigans.
What's also interesting is that Perot actually did best in states that were more evenly divided, or even leaned somewhat Democrat at the time (1992). His poorest showing was actually in the South, where he didn't seem to be taking much away from Bush. His best showing was in the Midwest, the Mountain West, and the Northeast, where he appears to have taken away from both of the other candidates fairly evenly.
I ran some numbers off of the 1992 election, trying to predict what would have happened had Perot not had his weird implosion, but retained the decent polling numbers he was seeing in the early summer of 1992 and pulled his support evenly from both sides.
If he had polled at his low end(~30%) on election day, he would have gotten 52 EVs, to Clinton's 347 and Bush's 139.
If he had polled the midpoint of his range (~35%), Perot would have nabbed 226 EVs to Clinton's 249 and Bush's 63. Nobody would have gotten an outright majority and it would have gone to the House, which the Dems controlled pretty strongly and thus would have elected Clinton that way.
If Perot had polled at his high end (~40%) on election day, he would have won with a projected 343 EVs.
Even as it was, he still managed to beat one of the other major candidates in a couple of states (Bush in Maine, Clinton in Utah), and came close in (within 2%) in a few others.
All in all, not bad AT ALL for a guy who did everything he could to jack up his own campaign, and who started out the election season with zero campaign organisation and was relying almost entirely at the start on volunteer ballot position drives.
So no, I really don't understand why people point to Perot as an example of third-party failure. It looks to me like if he'd stayed the course and not whacked out in July and August of 1992, he would had a very decent shot of winning the whole shebang in the three-way race.
I think Gov. Palin would run rings around the “moderators” and the RINOs.
And EVERONE who watched the “debates” would learn something.
BTW, is anyone at the GOPe proposing a “debate” format where each candidate, in turn, would:
(1) list the three greatest problems that she or he would start work on immediately
(2) explain why those problems have the highest priority, and
(3) explain how her or his solution would solve those three problems, with easily understood “details”?
Bill
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