The indispensable Michael Barone has weighed in on the by-election for California's 50th Congressional District, and, as usual, he has affirmed the Seldom-Wrongness of this blogger's opinions and prognostications.
The awful news for Ds was that they couldn't do better in this district than they have in the past two presidential elections, despite having a major scandal and an unpopular war to run against, and lots of dough to run with.
But Barone adds this: the Rs should watch out, as two right-wing, third-party candidates siphoned their votes. Barone rightly notes that such candidates will have a greater handicap in the general election. But they can pose problems nevertheless.
Some conservatives--angry about immigration, spending, and even the flaccid prosecution of the war--are ready to vote their "principles." To do so in significant numbers will merely assure that their principles have no place in the real political process.
So we say to all conservatives who contemplate third-party moves, look to history. Since the formation of political parties in our republic, third parties have gone nowhere. It took the utter dissolution of the Whigs to make way for the anti-slavery, pro-land-reform Republicans to rise like the noble Phoenix from their ashes. Since then, the best way to marginalize one's influence has been to run under an independent banner.
The best a third-party candidate has done is to throw the election to the mainstream candidate least like himself. Bull Moose candidate TR got Wilson elected over his former protege Taft in 1912. He didn't even influence his party away from pro-business conservatism and back toward his own progressivism, as it proceeded to nominate and elect Harding, Coolidge (blessed be his name!) and Hoover after the Wilson era.
Politics is about coalitions and compromise. Those who want ideological purity should try blogging.
Instead of looking for a third-party conservative, conservatives should do everything they can to encourage Cindy Sheehan or Ralph Nader or Al Gore or Jack Murtha or Bobby Kennedy, Jr. or a yellow dog to run as the third-party antiwar candidate on the left of Hillary. Saddle the enemy with the third-party problem. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Please, please, please remember this: a vote for a splinter conservative in 2008 is a vote for Hillary. How would that square with conservative principles?
3 comments:
Yes, politics is about coalitions and compromise, but, unfortunately, it is also about corruption and bribery (as the CA 50th District scandal testifies). It seems to me that most people that vote for third-party candidates are not so concerned about ideological purity as they are about having their interests--not the interests of those who can, in effect, buy a representative's vote--set the political agenda. Think of Ross Perot. He siphoned off many of the Republican votes back in '92 not because those Republicans who voted for him demanded ideological purity (he was pro-choice, after all), but because they felt that none of the other candidates were even listening to them. The real danger, it seems to me, is not that voters are becomming rigid in their expectations, but that they are becoming increasingly alienated from a political process that often pays little more than lip service to their concerns.
Oh yes, JB. What a dilema!
>are ready to vote their "principles." To do so in significant numbers will merely assure that their principles have no place in the real political process.
NOT SO! If I vote R in this next election, for instance, I will be construed as holding that big spending is not particularly offensive, or that I'm OK with an uncontrolled border. But if I vote for a real conservative who shares my values, ESPECIALLY when he has no chance of winning, maybe the Hildabeast gets a crack at installing some Supremes. But if I vote for the real conservative, perhaps in the NEXT election, the Republicans will put some grit on the ticket.
Don't get me wrong. I like Bush overall. He may be one of the top ten, because I give a LOT of credit for the GWOT, our new UN rep., and because I believe he really is interested in serving Christ. He's a truth teller. I'd give him a 3rd term if possible.
Quandarus, can you name a situation in which votes for a third-party candidate in presidential election year X prompted the nomination by a major party of a candidate of similar ideology to said third-party candidate in election year X+4, followed by that candidate's actual election?
In our republic's long history, I know of no such example.
But I know of several that resulted in the dreaded Hillary outcome that you name.
Hence, I judge a third-party vote to be a miserable way to influence the body politic towards one's principles but an excellent way to elect someone more opposed to one's principles than the other major candidate.
In 2008 I'm voting in the 2008 election for the 2009 president, not in the 2012 election for the 2013 president.
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