Now Is Not the Time

 

Now is not the time to form a third party with which to run a presidential candidate.  Such a move, spawned in the emotional heat of the moment, will only guarantee Democratic Party control of the White House and the Senate. The latter would be the more disastrous, because that would expand the left-wing bloc on the Supreme Court — the bloc that insists that the text of the Constitution means what a judge says it means for the convenience of her narrative — to a decisive majority, and the subsequent destruction of the Court and of our individual liberties and responsibilities.

However, that does not mean a conservative third party should not be formed.  In fact, the time to form such a third party is now, so we can field and sustain a presidential candidate with a serious chance of winning the White House in a few years.  A rough overview of the idea follows.

To field such a candidate, a conservative party must be a complete party. It must field candidates at all levels of government — for every possible seat at the city and county or parish level, for every seat in state legislatures and governors’ mansions, and later, for every seat in Congress.  It needs to be done in this order, too, to build the grassroots necessary to underpin the new party and create the groundswell that will give the new party valuable early momentum.  Without this support, momentum, and positioning, the new party will not be viable in national elections. Even elections to the federal Congress — run at the national, state, and district levels — need prior credibility and momentum for success.

Building from the bottom up will openly emphasize voters more and special interests less. It will provide the new party with political experience, including the experience of learning which compromises are worth making: Some kinds of compromise allow parties to accomplish things, even if the achievements are limited at first; some compromises are neutral in cost and benefit; and some should be refused, even at the cost of achieving nothing at all.

Finally, building from the bottom will give the new party increasing influence and control over local city councils and over state legislatures (as the Republican Party has already done in a majority of State Houses and Governorships). This will yield a greater reach toward voters for national elections.

The new party must have a coherent political and social philosophy and be able to articulate it clearly and concisely. This is not the same as having cute sound bites, although that’s a useful skill, too, when dealing with much of the modern communications media.

I’m not offering a party name here, although the party would be a conservative one. The name must appeal to a broad range of Americans. In particular, I wouldn’t call it the Conservative Party; that smacks too much of the British Conservative Party, and that party is in many ways not conservative. The party needs to decide — early — what it stands for and what policies it will push.

For the sake of this exposition, I posit (without definition beyond the implications of the names and in no particular order) five primary forms of conservatism:

  1. Small, limited government conservatism;
  2. Fiscal conservatism;
  3. Social conservatism;
  4. (Strong) military and foreign policy conservatism; and
  5. Constitutional conservatism.

These are not mutually exclusive, but they aggregate a broad swath.

The new party will need to clearly and concretely define what it means by any of these five forms that it chooses to push. (I suspect that carefully defining the other four will add up to the first, a small, limited government, but that’s for the new party to determine.)

If the new party wants to push all of these, or more than a couple of them, it will need to choose its priorities, or it will dilute its efforts to the detriment of all of them, as we’ve seen happen in the last two Congresses and in the Republican Party itself.

As the new party makes inroads at local levels and gains credibility in the city councils and state legislatures, it needs to supplant the current Republican Party in a continuation of our present two-party system.  Becoming one of three major parties can only dilute the new party’s efforts, even were there a basic ability to work with a less conservative (even rump) Republican Party.  The Democratic Party, despite its progressive/socialist split, will remain monolithic; the split is, at bottom, superficial, and so the Democratic Party will remain a single, unified foe of conservatism.

The next step, which should follow, with overlap, is to run candidates for Congress and get them elected. They will benefit from their experience and enable a properly conservative Congress to begin to pass quality conservative laws, including the one I hold most important: rescinding the delegation of rule-making authority to agencies and cabinet departments. They can rescind a large number of existing laws as wrong or no longer necessary, rescind an even larger number of federal rules and regulations, defund unnecessary agencies and cabinet departments and then eliminate them altogether, reduce funding for others that remain useful but are too large, and pressure the president to sign these — or see none of his agenda enacted.

Then put forward presidential candidates.

The seeds for a conservative party that supplants the Republican Party already exist. Major Tea Party factions have infiltrated the Republican Party to good effect, drawing the party as a whole further right than it’s been for some years. That good effect has not been good enough means many of the constituents for a viable new conservative party already exist in the Conservative Caucus of the Republican Party. As the new conservative party demonstrates its ability and grows, members of the Conservative Caucus should be encouraged, and eager, to join.

None of this can be accomplished in a few short months. However, within two or three presidential election cycles, this new party can be a strong state-level and congressional party that’s ready to put up viable presidential candidates, too.

 

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  1. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    At the risk of over simplifying your well written article it sounds like you are advocating extending the reach of the various Tea Parties to a more cohesive national party.

    • #1
  2. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Great post, but I disagree with its premise.

    Now is the best time to start a new party.

    Trump’s meteoric rise in politics was due to his being able to take advantage of the existing fissures in the Republican Party.

    There have been many attempts to start third parties, but they always fall flat because people are exhausted emotionally and financially from the presidential races. It takes them a couple of years to recover. By that time, the next race is well under way, and it is already too late to field a candidate.

    This timing problem is the only thing that has kept this party together for the last sixteen years.

    The Republican Party needs to split up. I don’t want to be in a political party in which half of its members do everything they can to undermine my work to support the party’s agreed-upon goals and objectives.

    The only way it’s going to work is to do it right now.

    Besides that, some intelligent person needs to argue every day with Trump. He argues with himself, changing his own positions every other week. Well, there will be times when he needs to see the other side and address it sooner than when it will occur to him. And that person arguing with Trump needs political support to do so; otherwise Trump will dismiss him or her as a “loser.”

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  3. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    MarciN:Great post, but I disagree with its premise.

    Now is the best time to start a new party.

    Which is kind of what I said: However, that does not mean a third party of Conservatism should not be formed. In fact, the time to form such a third party is now….

    BrentB67:At the risk of over simplifying your well written article it sounds like you are advocating extending the reach of the various Tea Parties to a more cohesive national party.

    Or Conservatism generally, of which the various Tea Party factions could play an important role.

    Eric Hines

    • #3
  4. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    It doesn’t matter when you form a third party. It will always split the vote and guarantee wins for the Democrats. #TakeBackOurParty #NeverThirdPartyGIveItUpPeople

    • #4
  5. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    RightAngles:It doesn’t matter when you form a third party. It will always split the vote and guarantee wins for the Democrats. #TakeBackOurParty #NeverThirdPartyGIveItUpPeople

    It will only be a third party a short time. The Republican party will not exist in four years.

    • #5
  6. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    I agree with RightAngles: there is never a good time for a third party.

    Even if you don’t intend it to take on Trump this year, at some point you presumably want it to run some slate of candidates. But as experience shows, third parties nearly always split the vote and result in the other party winning. No matter when you try to launch it, it will fall flat for that reason.

    The only chance I see for a third party would be for state legislators and/or House seats in a small number of already very conservative districts.

    • #6
  7. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    BrentB67:At the risk of over simplifying your well written article it sounds like you are advocating extending the reach of the various Tea Parties to a more cohesive national party.

    I agree that the most effective way of re-introducing conservatism to elections is through a movement within the Republican party, not outside of it (where it is destined to wither on the vine).

    But your example of the Tea Party is telling. The Tea Party claimed to speak with one voice in 2010. But today, one major fraction of the Tea Party sees Trump as the exact opposite of their goals, while another major fraction of the same movement sees him as the best example to date of the candidate they’re looking for.

    In other words, the “conservative” movement within the Republican party is cleaved down the middle about what conservatism means. And I expect any rebirth of a conservative wave within or without the Republican party will face the same challenge – lots of people who claim to be for small government, but have incredibly different definitions of what that means.

    • #7
  8. Johnny Dubya Inactive
    Johnny Dubya
    @JohnnyDubya

    Among a portion of the populace, the word “conservative” has a negative connotation, in the same way that “liberal” developed one.  (It’s amusing that liberals now are using “progressive”, given that that term has an even more checkered history!)

    I would propose “Constitution Party” as the name for a new conservative party.  It demonstrates reverence for our nation’s charter and it highlights that many of the left’s efforts and successes are in the extra-Constitutional realm.

    I would actually like to see four main presidential candidates:  Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and a conservative candidate such as Ben Sasse or Ted Cruz or Mitch Daniels.  Let’s hash it out.  Democrat-establishment progressivism versus far-left socialism versus centrist populism-nationalism versus conservatism.

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  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    A third party now would be a good counterweight to Trump’s authority. And the third party will grow in the process of formulating its identity. Eventually it might win an election.

    • #9
  10. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    Johnny Dubya: I would actually like to see four main presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and a conservative candidate such as Ben Sasse or Ted Cruz or Mitch Daniels. Let’s hash it out. Democrat-establishment progressivism versus far-left socialism versus centrist populism-nationalism versus conservatism.

    The problem is that presidential elections are usually at least as much about personality as policy. It’s rarely the policy/political philosophy slugfest we on Ricochet so desire.

    In fact, I think the problem with the whole premise here is that we’re focusing too much on the presidency. In many ways, the president is antithetical to small government, constitutional conservatism. If a nascent conservative movement wants to take anything back, it should start at the same place the Tea Party did: the local level. Don’t even think about the presidency.

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  11. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Mendel: I agree with RightAngles: there is never a good time for a third party.

    Sort of like investing–there’s never a good time to start.  But the very worst time to start, in both environments, is tomorrow.

    Mendel: The only chance I see for a third party would be for state legislators and/or House seats in a small number of already very conservative districts.

    Hence the need to start from the ground up and build over a (very) few Presidential election cycles.

    Mendel: The Tea Party claimed to speak with one voice in 2010.

    I only saw that in the very early stages when they had just one policy: small, limited government.  It wasn’t until the various factions added specific fiscal, and especially social, conservative policies that they started to diverge.  Neither does broad Conservatism agree on what constitutes strong military and foreign policy, much less how to achieve it.  Which is why any new Conservatism party (or any new party at all) must, very early on, come to agreement on what its version of Conservatism means, how narrowly they want to define it, how broad they’re willing to go in order to win elections so they actually can enact Conservative policies.

    If the new party does poorly at any of this, it will fail.  If it does well, it will succeed.

    Eric Hines

    • #11
  12. Derek Simmons Member
    Derek Simmons
    @

    “Conservatism” whether your taste runs to Burke or Kirk, to Buckley or Reagan will NOT save this country. There will always be too few ‘true believers’ in any or all of their ideas. Too many partisans of one as against the other. But Americans still may have a spark of their belief in Our Republican Constitution. The Tea Party Movement suggests that. If enough Americans have that spark then it can be fanned into flame and made to burn bright through education. It’s a long shot and will take a long time, but we have no other path. Only an electorate widely steeped in what our Constitution actually says–and not the nonsense spread for a century by SCOTUS telling us what they say it says–could possibly light and carry a torches of Liberty and spread that old light anew across our yet renewably great land.

    None of the 2016 candidates as candidates were equipped to even try that; the task takes more than mere Constitutional literacy. That is necessary but not sufficient. The structures our Founders designed are ramshackle, remodeled by SCOTUS and POTUS and CONGRESS. It will take a candidate with the desire and ability point that out and to demonstrate to a wary disbelieving electorate that if the Founder’s design is dusted off and followed it will result again in a land of the free; a home to the brave.

    • #12
  13. MJBubba Member
    MJBubba
    @

    I do not think a third party makes sense.  It would take two cycles at least to gain traction.  In the meantime it would pull down the GOP and provide a string of Democrat victories.

    I fear the damage that the Dems could do while our side is struggling to get our act together again.

    A better model is the current structure of caucuses and factions within the GOP.   Libertarians, FisCons, SoCons, Small-government, Small Bidness, Big Chamber; all have interests.  We all have a common interest in defeating the Progressives.

    Our current problem is Trump.   He may be awful, but it would be a mistake to disadvantage the entire team for years in order to ditch Trump.   Much better to make the best of our bad situation.   Elect Trump, then oppose or support as appropriate, and make the best deals we can with him to get what is best for America.   Trump likes deals, and he likes America.   We can at least start from there.

    Much better than trying to fight as we retreat from Team Hillary.

    • #13
  14. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    That’s part of the advantage (besides gaining experience before going to national elections) of starting from the bottom up.  It would also give the various factions time to figure out how to work together, something they’ve not yet done.

    And not starting a third party candidate for President this fall.

    Eric Hines

    • #14
  15. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    Derek Simmons:“Conservatism” whether your taste runs to Burke or Kirk, to Buckley or Reagan will NOT save this country. There will always be too few ‘true believers’ in any or all of their ideas. Too many partisans of one as against the other. But Americans still may have a spark of their belief in Our Republican Constitution. The Tea Party Movement suggests that. If enough Americans have that spark then it can be fanned into flame and made to burn bright through education. It’s a long shot and will take a long time, but we have no other path.

    I’m confused.

    We can’t do this thing called “conservatism” because it won’t work, it’s too partisan. But we can do this other thing that many people would cite as the central conservative premise in the United States, and that will work because the single most partisan political movement in America today believes in it.

    Is there something subtle that I’m missing?

    • #15
  16. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    If conservatives are numerous enough and vigorous enough to form a meaningful third party they ought to be able to take over the Republican party.   This conservative/libertarian thrust is new.  Even Trump is a projection of the energy and distaste for post war Republican liberalism.   We see him as a fraud and a charlatan, but his supporters see him as part of this new anti Washington movement.  The immediate goal in a new party or as just conservative wing of the Republican party should be to try uniformly and loudly voice concerns about the Supreme Court nominee and cabinet appointments not policy, (repeat not policy)so Trump sees a reason to pre announce the kind of appointments that will enable him to win.  And for us to show that he needs us to win and then govern.  The never Trump and the hell with the GOP stances at this point work against these strategic and tactical decisions.  That he do so and that Hillary lose is vital.

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  17. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    No third party. A fourth, fifth, tenth, hundredth party! Regional parties. Religious parties. Single issue parties. Parties built around charismatic figures or resonant symbols or philosophical positions or moral stances. Parties that come and go. Spread the power wide and thin so it can’t be traded back and forth between members of a self-perpetuating ‘elite’ bound together by the relentless drive to increase their own influence and keep the rubes down. Will it be messy? Will it be frustrating? I hope so.

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  18. Derek Simmons Member
    Derek Simmons
    @

    Joe P: Is there something subtle that I’m missing?

    Ricochet subtle? No, Joe, you’re not really missing anything. If Ricochet reflects anything about “conservatism”, it is the dancing glints of a fractured looking glass. Each Ricochetti seems absolutely sure that her/his “take” is correct, and all deviations from that “take” are heretical, drumbeats in a different march.

    The only common “glint” is the light most still see in Our Republican Constitution. But it is mere glint and not a kleiglight. American conservatism has no lodestone but Our Republican Constitution. We have allowed it to be buried, indeed not a few of the burial shovels have been manned by those claiming ‘conservative’ credentials because–well it has worked in the short run. But it has unintentionally joined the Progressive’s intentions to create a Constitution that “lives” and looks like whatever moves their needle toward their vision of the future. Every Republican President that conservatives cheered for exercising power toward a goal conservatives championed, did so in the main in conservative-supported disregard for the Founder’s Design. We have today three candidates–none of them conservative–who each aspire to exercise “the power of the Presidency” in ways the Founder’s thought of in nightmares if at all.

    We who believe in the design we inherited but abandoned–and who self-label ‘conservative’–need to first learn and then teach that the structure of liberty designed and crafted by the Founder’s remains worthy.

    • #18
  19. Z in MT Member
    Z in MT
    @ZinMT

    Mendel: But your example of the Tea Party is telling. The Tea Party claimed to speak with one voice in 2010. But today, one major fraction of the Tea Party sees Trump as the exact opposite of their goals, while another major fraction of the same movement sees him as the best example to date of the candidate they’re looking for.

    I agree with this. Trump has cleaved the Republican party along a new axis very different than the Tea Party – Establishment axis that has been in effect since 2010. You have people on both sides of the Tea Party – Establishment line for and against Trump.

    I think Trump has cleaved the Republican party along a conviction – attitude axis. This is why the conservative think tank apparatus is almost 100% #NeverTrump. They are conservatives because they thought themselves there – not because of their cultural attitudes.

    • #19
  20. John Hanson Coolidge
    John Hanson
    @JohnHanson

    I really don’t want to see a third party, in the sense of fielding a third party Presidential candidate for this election.  It is way too late, and the two times a third party had some validity  the results were NOT good.

    First in the 1912 elections Theodore Roosevelt decided to run as a candidate for the Bull Moose party, and actually outperformed Taft, but the result all of us got, was Wilson.  A large disaster.  We learned for a while, but then we elected the equivalent of today’s Rhino, in Herbert Hoover, who with large downstream assists from Franklin Roosevelt changed a severe Financial crash into the Great Depression, and under the general rubric of never letting a good crisis go to waste, changed the whole view of what the Federal Government could do. When the Supreme Court changed to liberal around 1936, the growth of government was off to the races, big time.  It took until the very late 1970s until the slow motion disaster, could be slowed down with the nomination and win by Ronald Reagan in 1980, and a few of us hoped we could keep it going, but then another Rhino, Herbert Walker Bush, decided he could raise taxes, and another 3rd party fantasy took hold, of conservatives and we decided to run Ross Perot as our 3rd party hopeful, and again the predictable occurred, and Bill won.  I admit I bit on this one and voted for Ross in 1988, Bill was elected with only 43% of the vote.

    So, twice tried, with the same result, a disastrous 8 years under a leftist government.  Now we have people who in the #Never Trump banner tend to think sitting on the side line or worse voting for Hillary is better, and others who want to do this 3rd party thing again.

    It will fail, Hillary will be elected, and we will wind up with a 7-2 locked in radical liberal Supreme Court, that will destroy any vestige of federalism, or ability to have a small Federal Government, and make Socialism the winner, while making even discussing another position, criminal.

    I agree, the candidate we have is not good. But the alternative is far worse, and as history has repeatedly shown, the path to conservative success is NOT through a late introduction of a third party.

    The Republican party needs to change, a lot, or be replaced, however, it is too late to do it for this cycle, and we really need to take the bad deal we have, try to elect Trump, and focus on education and some alteration to the culture, since culture precedes politics.

    If you live in a Blue state, which we never win, even with a large disaffected Democrat vote going over to Trump (possible, not likely) then maybe you can afford to sit on your hands, but not if you live in a Red, or borderline state.  Then you must vote for Trump, not just not Hillary.

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  21. Chuckles Coolidge
    Chuckles
    @Chuckles

    Johnny Dubya: I would propose “Constitution Party” as the name for a new conservative party. It demonstrates reverence for our nation’s charter and it highlights that many of the left’s efforts and successes are in the extra-Constitutional realm

    I agree!  Good idea!  (Maybe that’s why there already IS a Constitution Party!:) )

    • #21
  22. Derek Simmons Member
    Derek Simmons
    @

    Chuckles: Good idea! (Maybe that’s why there already IS a Constitution Party!

    Yeah, and how’s that workin’ for ya? Or for them?

    • #22
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