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"Bipartisan" is merely code for Conservatives rolling over and letting Dums have their way without a fight. It's tailor made for the nimrods who believe it makes them appear intellectual to say, "I look at the man and not the party when I cast my vote".

Nunn, Boren and Robb are hardly flaming liberals. They held office as conservative Southern Democrats, back when those weren't fossils found in layers of scheist.

If the rumors play out, and it's a big if, this election could get interesting. Ron Paul could pull votes from the libertarian wing of both the Democrats and Republicans, while Bloomberg could pull votes from the pragmatic and moderate "go along to get along" wing of both parties. If both enter the race, it would be like having Perot '92 and Nader '00 in the same race.

Let's not kid ourselves. Neither will take a state and neither will get a single electoral vote. The last candidate outside the major parties to have any electoral votes was George Wallace in 1968, and he didn't have many. But they could swing the close states, the way Perot did in 1992 and Nader did in 2000.

A bit of a digression: Freepers love to say that Perot gave us Clinton, but loath to say that Nader gave us W. Even if you assume that Nader brought people into the system who wouldn't otherwise have voted at all, even if you assume that he drew some votes from Bush as well as from Gore, Florida was decided by 541 votes.

If there were 542 more Nader voters who would have gone for Gore than Nader voters who would have gone for Bush, it would have been Al Gore on the steps of the capitol taking the oath in January 2001. 542. Smaller than one team's cheering section of a high school football stadium.

The wild card in this scenario is that Paul and Bloomberg would really draw from both parties. How many? That's a crapshoot. But I'd bet both of them would pull more than 542 votes in Florida. And Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, all the swing states.

The third wild-card (who's stacking this deck?) is that single-issue candidates could enter the fray. If the Republican nominee isn't sufficiently hard-line on abortion, or illegal immigration, another candidate could emerge. Imagine Giuliani vs. Clinton vs. Paul vs. Bloomberg vs. Tancredo.

There are precedents for single issue parties. The "Know-Nothings" were opposed to immigration; on any other issue, they were told to answer, "I know nothing," hence the appellation. The Free Soil party supported the abolition of slavery, and that was the only plank in its platform. There were temperance parties, suffragist parties, you name it. None elected a candidate. But they swung elections.

"If the rumors play out, and it's a big if, this election could get interesting."

I agree.

Most posters replying to this thread assume a third party candidate coming from this meeting would be Bloomberg, yet two statements from the article paint a different picture.

"It is not a gathering to urge any one person to run for president or to say there necessarily ought to be an independent option," Democratic former Sen. David Boren, now president of the University of Oklahoma, told The Washington Post, which first reported the meeting yesterday. "But if we don't see a refocusing of the campaign on a bipartisan approach, I would feel I would want to encourage an independent candidacy."

and...

"Nunn told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the meeting could very well lead to someone - like Bloomberg - jumping into the contest.

Important elements of a third party offering would be the platform and how it were received by voters. A September 2007 Gallop poll asked the question "In your view, do the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, or do they do such a poor job that a third major party is needed?" Thirty-nine percent of people polled replied the Democrats and Republicans do an adequate job. Fifty-seven percent replied a third party was needed.

A NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll taken two weeks ago addressed this same issue. It asked the question, "Which of the following statements is closest to your own view of the two-party system today, in terms of how well it defines issues and provides choices for voters? The two-party system works fairly well. The two-party system has real problems, but with some improvements it can still work well. The two-party system is seriously broken, and the country needs a third party." This poll had only twenty-nine percent of respondents opting for the third choice, "Is Seriously Broken" which would have favored a third party, but an additional forty-seven percent of respondents saying the two-party system "Has Real Problems". Only 20% of respondents felt the current two-party system "Works Fairly Well"

The most volatile element would be the unknown future events leading up to the election. Such contributing factors could include anything from the economy, terrorism, war, immigration, natural disasters, or whatever 2008 holds in store for us.