Monday, January 29, 2018

Are Republicans Ready to Join a Third Party?

WASHINGTON — Want to know what a lot of Republicans have been thinking about in the days leading up to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address to a Republican-controlled Congress?

A new party.

At think-tank conference tables, over coffee at the Senate Chef and at the incessant book parties on the Washington social circuit, disaffected Republicans are wondering whether, if they came up with a truly great candidate, they could jump-start a new party, just as the original Republicans did in the 1850s.

And if surveys have any truth to them, plenty of Americans are ready to join them. A September Gallup poll found 61 percent of American voters support the idea of a third major political party, the highest level of support Gallup had ever recorded. Young voters seem especially eager to junk the two-party system; NBC reported in November that 71 percent of millennials want another choice.

In a world in which Alabama voters elected a Democratic senator, all kinds of previously unimaginable possibilities make a new kind of sense. A third-party presidency in 2020 is no less likely today than the prospect of Donald Trump’s election appeared to be two years ago.

A viable third-party candidate — say, someone with credibility inside one of the parties who bolts from it — would have appeal to voters across the spectrum. There are many Republicans wary of a second term for Mr. Trump, and yet right now they are entirely reliant on the Democrats to deliver a winning centrist candidate out of a primary process that almost made Bernie Sanders their 2016 nominee. A contest between Mr. Trump and a liberal Democratic candidate like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would leave the middle up for grabs. And a big contingent of politically orphaned political strategists, academics and donors would be ready to lend support.

Read the rest here.

4 comments:

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Huh. Guess they're tired of winning.

August said...

Trump is the third party. It came about this way because the two parties collaborated to keep any real third party effort off the field.

Now even with him there, it's still tough. Are you anti-war, but right wing? Guess what? You are 'alternative' right, because the mainstream right is pro-war. And yet, regardless of how you may feel about race, you are also a terrible racist nazi because you've been successfully branded as such. Incidentally, this may actually be why people like Richard Spencer get funding.

Now, it would probably be helpful to our country if Tulsi Gabbard becomes the next Democrat candidate- but they seem to have trouble even mentioning her. I think she's probably as looney as most Democrats on a lot of issues, but she doesn't like these wars and the meddling in Syria. So, especially since Trump dropped those bombs, it makes demographic sense to promote her if you want the Democrats to win, and you'd think a few Democrats might want to win.

Of course, what is most likely is that she'd lose, because Trump is instinctively anti-war, though not ideological, and if she began campaigning he'd start curtailing the war party- especially if he manages to get the domestic criminals under control between now and then.

I was hoping the elites would shoot themselves in the foot, and change legislation enough for a third party to get in, but I haven't seen that happen yet. So, Trump's path is the path until those laws are changed. But they can't take Trump's path because they aren't willing to give us anything except the same old bad governance that they've been giving us for the past 50 years.

Patrick Kelly said...

Exactly, Trump is a third party candidate who beat the Republicans black and blue with their own club, beat them at their own game, schooled them on how to win.

lannes said...

Tulsi Gabbard is Bernie Sanders in a grass skirt.