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Please Save Us, Third Party Candidate
Is there anyone who could step in now and save us from these hideous space reptiles?
Published in General
I was really, really hoping that the Ben Sasse types would have an announcement ready to go out yesterday morning about what to do. I am disappointed.
There has never and will never be a better time for a third party to form. I pray someone with the guts and the stature tries. Apart from Sasse, who do you think might have a chance?
You really don’t get it. For a large number of people, that was why Trump got into the race. They don’t care that he may also have issues.
I realize this post is meant to be funny, and I love funny!, but please. Ben Sasse is not our savior. Perhaps if we realize that the universe does not revolve about American presidential politics, some perspective can allow us to realize that there is no savior.
#NeverClue.
Chance? For the upcoming election, impossible. For keeping conservatism alive, crucial.
Toss the Republican history out in an empty gesture? Not very conservative. Conservatives have a little leverage now and should use it to get a strong Scotus appointment and maybe an adult or two in the cabinet. Conservatives are just getting going. We failed because there were so many good conservatives and the two regular Republicans destroyed Rubio, Fox helped destroy the other, and promote Trump. Let’s not forget we haven’t nominated a conservative since Reagan and that was a different time, when the cold war was the issue . We’ve not done anything to roll back the administrative state which is now the key issue and requires solid court appointments.
I agree. A rotten tree can not produce good fruits. We need a new party. It should be based on the ideas in Hayek’s “The Constitution of Liberty,” and call itself the Liberal Party, both to properly define itself and to rightfully take back the proud word “liberal” from the collectivists who have misappropriated it.
This will pretty much guarantee Hillary as president.
And so embitter the large segment of the GOP who voted for Trump and won by the rules, they will never return. Be very careful what you wish for.
Remember when people complained of having McCain and Romney ” forced on them by the Establishment”.
Remember how a certain founder of Ricochet dismissed that fantasy.
” We have these things called primaries and the voters selected the nominee, not any Establishment”.
I was not suggesting Sasse as a candidate, necessarily, only as a public figure who has been calling for a third party candidate. I think someone needs to start a movement ASAP. Based on this and on everything else I have read, I suspect that Bill Kristol will be a prime figure in getting something started, but, as I said, I had hoped that things were more organized behind the scenes.
The American system won’t have it. The two parties have long ago devolved into a single entity and politics is played as an intramural sport.
We talk of the Electoral College in the abstract but it is very much a real thing. We don’t vote for president but for electors. That, at this late date, a third party candidate could file enough slates of electors and meet all deadlines is impossible. The best that could happen is that one could deny either Trump or Hillary the 270. That would throw the election to the House where there are no truly independent votes. Whatever party controls the House would claim the White House as well.
I’d favor Rick Perry, Mitch Daniels, Tom Coburn or Condaleeza Rice. These are all a bit on in years, but certainly young enough to serve, though not likely to run for something else in the future. All have some level of name recognition and they are all solid conservatives. I would happily donate and campaign for them.
Who knows what will happen this crazy year, but I don’t think a win by third party candidate is impossible, especially if Bernie jumps in as an independent as many of his supporters hope he will. Then the vote is split 4 ways, with the two main candidates having deep, deep negatives and Bernie as a kind of joke. The one sensible person in the pack might just pull it off.
It is also important to have a third party conservative so that down ballot conservatives have someone to get behind in order to avoid being tarred by the deep pile of manure that surrounds the apprentice. It looks very likely that Mr. Gaffeville, while not penalized for his diarrhea of the mouth by his die hard supporters, is nevertheless despised by pretty much everyone else for the unhinged things he says, and those will damage not only the Republican brand but anyone associated with it, unless they can distance themselves by supporting an actual conservative. If this saves the House and/or the Senate for us, it will be well worth it. Otherwise, it looks very likely that the apprentice will lose us not only he presidency but everything else.
If we make it clear that he is not the standard bearer for a majority of the party, we might pull out of this. Otherwise we die because he is every negative thing the left has been saying about us for years and he screams these things out for all the world to hear and play endlessly on the airwaves. Her Royal Clinton has so much material to bring him down, she won’t even be able to play it all in the time she has, and she won’t even have to lie about anything. All while the news is full of the case against this man for his fraudulent “university”. The same is true for her, of course, but she at least denies her negatives. He revels in them.
It doesn’t matter. Hillary wins, with or without a third-party candidate. There needs to be one for other reasons.
It is faintly possible that a third-party candidate could keep Hillary below the necessary number of electors, but that is a long shot and is not why we should do it.
But that wasn’t the question proposed.
You understand that this is not a 1 turn game right? So after you go down in flames in 2016 in your blaze of toddler like petulance, then what?
You understand that your ceiling is like 10-15% nationally right? Who, new, is going to vote for this candidate? I mean you need an ever living crap ton of them.
Which states do you carry? Can you name a single state where half (being generous) of the last republican vote total wins the electors?
I disagree. The question was how we can be saved from voting for space reptiles, not how we can save the White House. Frankly, I have thought all along that we lost the White House when Rubio dropped out, although I dared to hope I was wrong about that.
The last time a viable third party formed, it coalesced around a specific national issue: slavery. The GOP has fallen apart in large part because it vaguely supported Constitutional liberty but couldn’t define what that means. Religious liberty vs. individual nondiscrimination? Muscular or libertarian foreign policy? Free global markets and movement of labor vs. American national identity and self-sufficiency?
Other than a vague residual respect for the rule of law, it’s hard to see what tangible real-world issues and policies united the party. (That’s why, as recently as 2014, the party ran a “Seinfeld” campaign deliberately eschewing any national theme that might fracture the party.) Wishing for that old party and trying to replicate its outer form will not bring it back, even under a new name.
When there is an overarching single issue with real policy implications, a new party will form around it. (You might say that’s exactly what gave rise to Trump — he re-formed the GOP around the central issues of immigration and trade, which galvanized a large swath of voters.) Until there is a unifying platform, it doesn’t matter who tries to form what.
Exactly.
The Whigs were a coalition party, but they broke on the rock of slavery, so did the Democrats, but they regrouped after the Civil War and the Republicans had replaced the Whigs.
A national issue that can draw enough people to its banner, and is also pro-limited government.
But you don’t need a whole new party to field a third party candidate who is actually conservative and can give down ballot candidates someone to endorse and many of us someone to vote for. Everyone in the nation will know why such a candidate is running, and many will vote for that person, who I would expect to win a few conservative states that threw the apprentice out on his ear in the primaries.
True.
In that case, the bigger challenge may be finding donors to underwrite such an effort. Rick Perry flamed out early in the primary because he couldn’t get donor support. Walker has a donor network, but after his mismanaged attempt to transition from local candidate to national, donors will be wary. Cruz has shown that even 1-on-1 he can’t beat Trump. Jindal has thrown in his lot with the party. The only power center outside the GOP that might be able to bring in money is the Bush family, but their open support for a candidate will kill that candidate’s chances with the electorate (presuming they would go to bat for a Constitutionalist instead of a squish).
The only hope this cycle is that Trump does something so ridiculously disqualifying that the delegates rebel and select someone else at the convention.
I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything that Trump could do that would make this happen.
The other option is that Hillary unloads early and somehow convinces the delegates that Trump is a sure loser, in which case they might as well choose someone else. But I doubt this is likely, even if the polls show Trump 20 points behind by the convention.
We can’t even get the color blue back from them. Good luck.
You’re talking to Trump supporters here, right?
That’s old school. These are different times.
I’m open to bold ideas. If we’re going to lose anyway, why not?
The republican party never fought. This is one of the reasons we’re here at this place.
AW, leave them alone Guru. They are literally unhinged in their grief, and will come around or at least shut up in the coming weeks.
Amen, Amen, Amen.
Another thought on this. This is basically what we saw in CT in the 2006 Senate race. Ned Lamont, a kooky leftist, beat Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. Lieberman ran anyway as an independent, and beat both Lamont and the Republican candidate in the general election. He then caucused with the Democrats.
This was touted as a blow for centrist sanity. But it was short-lived. The state’s Democratic Party primary voters ultimately got what they wanted in Senator Chris Murphy, whose philosophy and positions are indistinguishable from Lamont.
The problem is the party, not the candidate. Even if a one-time third-party run stops Trump, it will not stop Trumpism’s takeover of the party.
True. I can’t find hinges anywhere on my person.
Note:
Heat-to-Light ratio badly off.No I am talking to the True Conservatives. You aren’t thinking clearly, and haven’t been for a long time. Ricochet and the rest of the NR safe space is warping your view of reality. Its a fun house of crazy around here.
The True Conservatives have no friends because they have alienated them all. The True Conservatives practical agenda such as one exists is unpopular and deeply misanthropic. True Conservatives use words they have no conception of, except as a kind of tribal password. [redacted]. Nobody, not already within their faction, is going to come and join your new club, because they have all met them and deeply dislike them.
Until that changes, going off to start their own moonbase without even the benefit of blackjack and hookers is the height of foolishness.
Sorry to yuck your yum, but somebody had to tell you.
Edited for clarity.