Posted on 10/31/2009 4:46:45 AM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
I've had it with progressive media outlets out there talking up third parties as the route for conservatives.
Please tell me that all of you see through this. We here on FR have to be largely immune to these attempts at misdirection by the media.
Here is one example: The Doug Hoffman Effect Strikes in Two Key Races for GOP
With Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman running neck and neck with the Democrat in Tuesday’s special election in New York, some other disaffected Republicans are seeing the third-party route as more viable.
Here is the clinton news network doing it, here is some NYDN "third party" propaganda, and here is AP Obama as well.
I can't be the only one here who sees this. This is a scam by the media that's aimed directly at republicans and conservatives. DOUG HOFFMAN IS A REPUBLICAN. The only reason all this is happening is because there wasn't a primary. Had there been a primary fight, Hoffman would have likely defeated Scozzafava and we wouldn't even be talking about this. And next time around, there aren't many doubts that Hoffman will run on the republican ticket. Here:
The state's cross-endorsement policy means that the Conservatives (and its left-of-center mirror images) generally function as pressure groups, supporting major party candidates they like or undermining those they don't. But sometimes the major party picks a candidate so egregious that the minor party must and can go all out.
-
I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over. Rather than a third party, we can have a new first party made up of people who share our principles. I have said before that if a formal change in name proves desirable, then so be it. But tonight, for purpose of discussion, I'm going to refer to it simply as the New Republican Party.
- RONALD REAGAN 1977: "THE NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY"
Third parties lose.(with a handful of exceptions) If Roosevelt couldn't do it, then it isn't a winning formula. And that's exactly why the progressive media is now pushing third parties toward conservatives.
He ran as a 3rd party candidate period.
Third parties lose out when three conditions apply.
First, when they are running beyond their means. This usually means that they run an egotistical presidential candidate first, without having any lower seats to back them up. If they stick to local politics first, they get legs.
Second, they insist on their rigidly holding onto their entire platform, instead of running on the most popular parts of their platform, where they and the public agree. Ironically, this is not “selling out”, as they are not dropping what they believe in, just emphasizing what both they and the voters like.
An axiom to this second rule is to keep it simple. The Contract With America was simple, clear, and popular. Voters love clarity, core values, and straight talk, even if they are not wholly behind the ideas.
Third, is that in many States and at the federal level, laws have been passed to exclude or minimize third party success. So third parties have to get in and litigate long before the election, just to have a fair playing field.
We need a second one.
Sorry, but this is an example of a third party, and in NY-23, as of today, that party’s name is “Republican.”
The new reigning “first” party is Independent, Principled, Conservatism.
I guess if the GOP wants to survive and compete in its current form it is going to have to learn how to beat out the other major liberal party.
Otherwise, it’s going to have to rethink and redo everything, or die.
:)
However, the establishment GOP has largely been adamant about shoving Scuzzy down the throats of the base. They could have realized it was mistake to pick her, but failed (she isn't just hyper-liberal, she's corrupt as well).
True to form, the GOP-uber-alles types blame everyone but the GOP establishment for the desire of conservatives to have a third party. Do you think the vast majority of conservatives expressing such an opinion see such as anything but a last resort?
Republicans arent showng me much these days.
I am not a political expert, but I can say this. I am voting for Copnservatives from now on. If the republican party leaders dont pick Conservative candidates I will not vote for them.
I would not vote for Scuzzyflavor if she did win a Republican primary. She does not represent what I want. I will not vote for Romney or Hucakabee.
Nothing has really changed. The GOP threw their own candidate under the bus and went with a 3rd party candidate who is winning. It was a weasel move that could have been avoided altogether by going with a conservative candidate in the first place.
In the end, nothing has changed. GOP leadership is still a disaster and I’m not hearing any calls for changes.
The folks running the Pubbie Party appear to have forgotten their party’s own history...
You are not going to get many who agree with you here.
Most would rather burn down the barn to save the farm.
Look for a rash of third party candidates in 2010 to steal just enough votes to get the D elected.
I make my fight in the Primaries.
Senator Burr (R-NC) is at under 40% right now and I’ll be supporting and R that runs against him - if one does.
Everyone talks about how NC is “BLUE” now. Obama won NC with less than 25,000 votes. Over 25,000 voted for Barr in NC. Barr had no chance of winning but over 25,000 voted for him so they could feel good come Wednesday morning.
Save the party. Vote for its candidate.
==
That says the party is more important than what it stands for.
We saw that in 2008, with renegade McCain who stood for little and was defeated by 2-to-1 in electoral votes.
The Republican leadership like the status quo.
Look how surprised they are whenever the ‘natives’ get restless. See the strained, shocked look on Boehner’s face when the Tea Party hundreds of thousands showed up in Washington. See the strained, shocked look on Gingrich’s face when his NY-23 endorsement is now running in 3rd place.
The Republican leadership is their own self-interest group and, as Gingrich said about the NY-23 race, to outsiders, ‘stay out; it’s none of your business.’
Most 3rd party candidates are single-issue candidates and their ‘party’ has base of a few like-minded, single-issue supporters.
You’re absolutely right about that: The RNCC waited until it was obvious that Hoffman was an actual contender, according to the current numbers, THEN they embraced him.
That is the classic ‘weasel move’ , and that is symbolic of SO much that is wrong with the GOP.
NO ONE should forget just what their fudge-brained cop-out decision was at the beginning, with the lame endorsement of Dede Scozzafava, just as no one should forget what the Zero Administration WANTS to do , IS TRYING to do-—take them both at their word. The fact is, there is too much inbuilt and growing resistance among voters not entranced by Partisan Party politics to allow ALL of the Authoritarian Zero Agenda, to make us open wide and allow all this to be shoved down our throats, whether from the ‘GOP’ or the Zero Administration. Having said all that, there already exists on this thread some very incisive and interesting ideas on the wisdom or lack of it in trying to promulgate the idea of a Third Party, or trying to deal in pragmatic terms with the realities of the existing Republican Party, or (and this is “the rub”) recognizing that the existing GOP may just be stuck in their bad habits to such an extent that the time-frame necessary for them to pull out of those habits of accomodation is just too long and unpredictable for any of us to want to abide watching that process and ‘hoping for the best’. I would like to see a thread which tackles IN DEPTH the whole idea of what it would take to bring this major party, the GOP, to actual conservative principles , and , beyond that, how to illuminate the real issues and bring the carefully dumbed-down electorate over to our side.
This is not an impossible task, just a vexing one.
This is the beginning of a movement which has the potential to bring America back from the abyss, and that can ONLY be done by assessing th situation for what it is, and FIRST, taking as our PRIMARY goal , to resist, mock,and discredit
this demagogic Administration, which SO FAR, seems to have gotten away with SO MUCH MORE that even I, ultimate cynic from the age of 14, thought they’d EVER be able to get away with.
Third Parties have had enormous effects on American politics. *Every* 3rd party surge has been followed by one of the 2 major parties adopting its platform.
[Doesn’t matter]
Yeah it does matter and the rino left GOP should just go democrat.
Think you are a cynic now, wait until you are sixty. :D)
With AIP, we adopted the Republican platform - specifically its heart, the Reagan personhood pro-life plank - since the GOP wasn't using it anyway.
Come on you guys.You’re realist.The world is out to get us.:)
Had there been a primary fight, Hoffman would have likely defeated Scozzafava and we wouldn’t even be talking about this.
That remains to be seen. True there was no primary and the candidate was selected via the proportional vote of the 11 county GOP chairs who had input from their committees. Only three of the nine wannabes got votes:
Scozzafava .. 48%
Doheny .. 23&
Maroun .. 27%
Other 6 .. 0%
In a primary with a large field depending upon how many of the nine got in it would appear to me that Doheny and Maroun would have been the most likely to defeat Scozzafava if it would have been possible.
Maybe he used to be a Republican, but the party left him so he was forced to run under the Conservative Party.
“Maybe he used to be a Republican, but the party left him so he was forced to run under the Conservative Party.”
Huh? He ws a republican until he ran and lost. The top 3 vote getters, which didn’t include Hoffman, in that flawed process got 99% of the votes. The Conservtive Party approached both the other 2 top vote getters and they declined running on a third party ticket so Hoffman was in by default.
Hoffman may win (and that’s still to be seen) and he may conference with the repubs, but when that interim seat comes up for election in 2012 you can be sure the local GOP will pick a new candidate (probably one of the 2 that lost to Scozzfava) and put in enough money to make sure he is soundly defeated.
Political parties don’t like traitors. Hoffman may be the obvious conservative candidate compared to Scozzafava but that mistake won’t happen again and Hoffman will be crushed in 2012 and all his vocal supporters on this site will no where to be found.
It’s complicated. The Goldwater Revolution never occured in NY, home of Nelson Rockefeller. The Conservative Party was formed to push consevrative candidates and ideals. However, those Conservative candidates who win on this line always caucus as Republicans. Most famously, Senator James Buckley did this in 1970.
The difference will be whether they are true third party candidates running out of concern for the country, or if they are DNC-sponsored plants, running only to confuse the electorate and siphon off Republican votes.
I suspect that the latter will become a trend, for several reasons.
1. In 2006, we saw the Democrats nationalize a strategy to run "conservative" candidates against Republicans in traditional GOP districts. That strategy worked.
2. We've seen candidates like Michael Bloomberg run on the GOP ticket because the Democrat ticket was already full. After winning on the GOP ticket, Bloomberg became an Independent.
3. A willing media will label DNC-backed third party candidates as "moderates," or "conservative-friendly," in support of this strategy.
-PJ
The democrat my congressman defeated in 06 is running as a republican now.
In fact, the republican my congressman defeated in the primary was once a democrat as well. He seems to be a democrat again because he endorsed the marxist against my republican congressman last year.
Lots of democrat games being played if you ask me.
Doing some digging and found that another Republican running for nomination in my district is the nephew of the Ambassador to Ireland appointed by Obama. Hmmmmmmm
The Huffington post says that he got the ambassador position after providing critical support to the Obama campaign.
I don’t know much about these guys but I’m not liking what I’m hearing. There are 3 brothers, one already a GOP congressman in Florida, another considering congressional run in another florida district, and the 3rd brother moved into my district to run.
Here is historian Michael Medved’s description of that history.
“2. NO, THE REPUBLICANS NEVER CONSTITUED A THIRD PARTY
Whenever I take the time on the radio to discuss the obvious and inevitable futility of minor party campaigns, some smug caller will try to play “gotcha” by reminding me that my own beloved GOP began its political life as a minor party, and managed to elect an underdog nominee named Lincoln in the fateful election pf 1860. It makes for a good story, and I know it allows misled minions to feel better to believe that it’s true, but the Republicans never operated as a third party. By the time of the first Republican County Convention (in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, 1854) the Whig Party had already collapsed and shattered, hopelessly divided between its Northern anti-slavery branch and the Southern “Cotton Whigs.” Refugees (including numerous Congresmen, Senators and others) from the Whig debacle determined to fill the vacuum and, joined by a few anti-slavery Democrats and former Free Soilers, they launched their new national organization.
The first time candidates ever appeared on ballots with the designation of the new Republican Party came with the Congressional elections of 1854 and the fresh organization won stunning success from the very beginning. That very first year the Republicans won the largest share of the House of Representatives (108 seats, compared to 83 for the Democrats, along with fifteen Senate seats (including the majority of those contested in that election). In other words, the Republicans began their existence not as a third party, or even a second party, but as the instantly dominant party on the ballot. The future “Grand Old Party” showed itself a Grand Young Party not only with its Congressional candidates, but with its first-ever Presidential nominee – John C. Fremont – in 1856. Rather than making the traditional, pointless and masturbatory third party gesture and winning 2% or 10%, Fremont made a real race of it against the Democrat James Buchanan: losing the popular vote 45% to 33%, and the electoral vote, 174 to 118. The real third party candidate was former President Fillmore, whose anti-immigrant Know Nothing campaign drew a few remnants of the Whigs and took just enough votes away from Fremont in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to give Buchanan narrow victories and the electoral majority. By the time they nominated Lincoln four years later, Republicans commanded clear majorities in nearly all the northern states and fully expected to sweep more than enough of those states (especially in light of Democratic divisions) to put him in the White House.
. In the pre-Civil War election of 1860, the Republicans hardly represented an upstart third party effort: they won a clear majority of 59% of the electoral vote and a comfortable plurality (40%) of the popular vote. The real “third party” in this election involved the Southern Democrats who abandoned their national nominee, Stephen A. Douglas, and campaigned for Vice President (and future Confederate general) John C. Breckinridge, winning 18% of the popular vote and 72 electoral votes. Meanwhile, former Cotton Whigs and pro-union Democrats from border states launched a fourth party campaign, winning 13% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes for their man.”
Formed in 1854 and majority party in the Senate and Congress and President in 1860, never really a third party.
It is a third party victory, and one which says that when the Republicans run social liberals, conservatives will run against them as third party candidates.
That’s right.
>> Political parties don’t like traitors.
>> Hoffman will be crushed in 2012 and all his vocal supporters on this site will no where to be found.
This is not about Hoffman - it’s about Conservatism. Hoffman is merely carrying the flag.
You seem to be anticipating his failure.
Linda McMahon, of WWE fame, is running as a Republican against Chris Dodd.
She has a long history with Democrats, but she is running against Dodd as a "fiscal conservative" for the Republican nomination.
This can't be anything other than a Democrat ploy to split the vote away from Rob Simmons in an attempt to save Dodd.
-PJ
Competition is good.
Only people there were RTC members and GOP candidates for local office this Tuesday. In a town where 2,500 is good voter turn-out, we got 400 out for a Tea Party in May but could not get 75 to listen to Simmons.
Tom Foley, also in the race, is a Greenwich Country club Republican. Sam Caligiuri is a social conservative but is getting little attention.
That leaves Peter Schiff. He's for real, he knows the only way to win is to run on the GOP ticket. If he keeps his mouth shut on social issues, he could pull it off. But he has to get off the internet and TV now and then and go meet with the grass roots.
-PJ
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