No! Let's call it the...
Posted on 11/08/2012 5:38:40 AM PST by Hojczyk
Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is calling for the creation of a third political party — saying it is clear to him that neither major political party is willing to address the nation’s economic problems.
“We need a third party to save this country,” Cain told American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer. “This country is in trouble and it is clear that neither party — is going to fix the problems we face.”
Cain agreed with Fischer’s assessment that conservatives are growing tired of being ignored by Republican party leadership — and that many believe the GOP no longer speaks for them.
Cain said it was troubling that Mitt Romney received fewer votes than John McCain did in 2008 — suggesting that many conservatives did not vote on Tuesday.
“I don’t believe the Republican Party has the ability to rebrand itself against the mainstream media machine that blatantly works to support this president and other liberals as well as the Democrats,” Cain told the radio host.
Cain said it would take money, leadership and at least 50 coalitions to create a viable third political party.
“You need one for every state because of the whacky rules state by state that they have that make it difficult for a third party to emerge,” he said. He said the new party could be made up of not only disenfranchised Republicans — but also Democrats.
“There are just as many disgruntled Democrats would probably be a part of this movement as there are Republicans — who are sick of the political class,” Cain told American Family Radio. “Realistically, it is more viable today than it has ever been.”
(Excerpt) Read more at radio.foxnews.com ...
Yo Herman, tell me more.
The 9-9-9 Party?
He’s right. The Dims are communists and the GOP is a broken relic.
Splitting the vote won’t help.
Love and apparently West lost. Dems won’t cross party lines.
This was winnable. Obama had ten million fewer votes. Our voters were scared off by the negative ads. The divide and conquer attack game worked.
Cain needs to stick to pizza.
Third party = ballot garbage can.
No gonna matter....we won’t make it 4 years...Once Obama installs all the lifer liberals and infects the system, we will never win again.
When Sarah quit the governorship a couple of friends called and asked me what I thought. My gut told me she is going her own way, going around them and perhaps form another party...
It maybe time, will she be the person that builds anew as the GOP goes the way of the Wigs? Darned if I know, but personally I don't think our energies should be in changing the political but focus on survival...
did 3rd party votes hand victory to Obama? We need more than a third party.
And I hope people do not start spreading the usual nonsense about the GOP being a third party. It never was.
What needs to happen is for conservatives to beat the GOPe internally. They had two bites at the apple in a row. It is our turn now.
A third party effort may be too late to do any good.
No! Let's call it the...
Heck, I’d be satisfied if we could manage to get a second party.
If people like him and Sarah are the faces of it, I am there. If we can siphon off people like Allen West, it could be really dynamic.
And my opinion of Cain continues to plummet. Taking the ball and going home isn’t going to fix anything. Conservatives have to fix the GOP from the inside if they want any chance of stopping liberalism — a third party merely entrenches the libs.
We need to crash this pig into the ground.
The left is actively doing this anyway.
Let’s get out of their way, and alleviate the consequences for ourselves as best we can, and let them experience the consequences of their ideology.
Voted Constitution Party for POTUS this election. First time I have ever voted 3rd party in over 40 years of voting.
I don’t see the GOP fixing things. The day after the election the speaker of the house is talking about “compromise” and TV talking heads are saying we need to be more “inclusive” whatever the heck that means but it does not sound conservative to me...sounds like we want to be more like the Democrats
Freegards
LEX
We’re on the verge of switching our enrollment from R to I just to lessen the GOP number on the record. The GOP needs to retire and be replaced by a new 2nd party.
Stand up Palin.
Now.
I vaguely remember someone saying that we don't want educated people because you can't control them. Maybe 2 centuries ago...but look at any 3rd world country.
They’ll be identifiable by their hats and walking canes.
Hey ... maybe we could get Boo-Hoo Bonner to join us too ... then we'd really have something ! /S
We keep thinking the GOP will change...never happen...there is only a third party..maybe that will scare the GOP enough to change..hell there already caving....Maybe it will all collapse under OBAMA
He is right, but by the time we get it established (a couple of more election cycles) there won’t be anything left to save.
I think he’s right about the ability to rebrand Republican at this point. The Left has changed their name many times. They were Progressives, then Liberals, then Progressives. A viable third party does not need to win, it just needs enough power that both sides have to appeal to it in order to win, a super caucus as it were. The Independent Party. Let them try to make fun of and demonize that name.
I am kind of in agreement regarding a third party. Before Tuesday, I thought that they were a drain on the GOP in elections and caused loses for our side. But now I’m thinking that since the Tea Party hasn’t been able to turn the party back to it’s a Conservative roots, that it’s time to look at another strategy.
“...we resist the denigration of traditional marriage, we resist the popular attitudes on abortion...”
While I personally agree, a political party with that as part of its platform will never win a national race in this country.
We need a conservative party in deed and not just in name.
No, but that's what will happen every time the GOP runs a centrist candidate, particularly one who was chosen before the primaries ever even started. Run a candidate who stands for something, and the voters will pull together around him like soldiers rallying 'round a flag.
Having the party elite ram a preselected, over-produced Anointed One down the throats of the party rank and file is not a recipe for unification.
It's all about free travel, free food, and speaking fees.
I voted for Jill Stein in California because Romney had no chance here.
If every conservative in a solid blue state had voted for the Green Party and they had received 5% of the national vote that would have lit a fire under that party.
Then they would split the Democrat vote.
When the Green Party got to a critical mass we could then safely create a fourth truly conservative party to keep the Pubbies in line.
Time to ditch the Whig party.
Having a recognizable party “elite” is the problem...
We now have a “third” party and that is it...The “elites”....Face it, people...the democrats are not going to divide...so any real third party just divides so-called republican votes even more...
What is needed is to force the RINO’s out of the replican party...Have a Republican/Conservative party...Get rid of the liberal leaning POS that are now in the Republican party...
After what they did to Akin, and Mourdock, the war’s already on.
News flash to GOP leaders: Acting like Democrats is not the path to victory.
The GOP again needs a leader like Thatcher or Reagan. The TEA party started something in 2010 and needs to continue the work of both transforming the GOP and then America. All that is needed is a new leader to emerge that believes in America and the values of liberty and free enterprise and is not willing to compromise to just get along. Think of Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan and other conservatives as prophets of one greater to come.
I’d like to fix the GOP if at all possible. Talk of a third party will only further split what we already have. The last two elections we were handed a candidate that many just could not get behind. Why? How do we promote those whom we can really support? What can we do to influence that process? That work needs to begin NOW.
It appears to me that we have too many Conservatives in the Republican Primaries; they split the Conservative vote into several pieces, and leave the nomination to the rino. We need to have a “Conservative Only” Primary, and select one “1” Conservative to run in the Republican Primary. Doing that, we don’t water down the Conservative vote, and let the rino slip in.....
Here are their vote totals in the last six elections:
1992 – Howard Phillips and Albion Knight – 43,369 votes.
1996 – Howard Phillips and Herb Titus – 184,820 votes
2000 – Howard Phillips and Curtis Frazier – 98,022 votes
2004 – Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin – 143,630 votes
2008 – Chuck Baldwin and Darrell Castle – 199,750 votes
2012 – Virgil Goode and Jim Clymer – 98,755 votes
As for the Libertarian Party, it doubled their tally for this year's Presidential candidate and received 1.2 million votes, mostly on the coat tails of disgruntled Ron Paul supporters, yet it barely broke 1% of the total electorate.
No third party candidate has ever won a national election, unless you count Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In that case, the Whig Party had disintegrated as the second party, and Lincoln and others cobbled together a replacement second party with remnants of the Whig and Know-Nothing Parties and some disgruntled Democrats. Historically, third parties have helped the two main parties win elections, starting with Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912, which helped elect Woodrow Wilson; George Wallace's American Independent Party in 1968, which took away enough Southern Democrats to elect Richard Nixon; and Ross Perot's Reform Party, which enabled Bill Clinton to win twice in 1992 and 1996 with a plurality of the vote. In other cases, they are ineffectual even if they have significant vote totals, as with Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace in 1948, who pulled right-wing and left-wing votes from the Democrats, respectively, but who failed to defeat Truman, and John Anderson in 1980, whose RINO campaign did not deter Reagan from winning a landslide.
Good luck to Cain, Palin, and any others who look toward a third party, but historical evidence indicates it will be a near impossible task.
If not a third party then we need a conservative wing of the republican party..a party within the party....this wing will have a way of selecting one person to run in the GOP primary (How I do not know ).. were split the vote otherwise and we never get a conservative candidate.....the wing also elects a leader in the house and senate...and he either becomes the GOP leader or a second and has a say in how things are done..right now we just follow along like puppies..it sucks
In 2008, we had Fred Thompson....he got little to no support from the “party”...In 2012 we had Herman Cain...He got little to no support from the “party”...
Both were very conservative...both had extremely goos common sense...The “elites” did not want them because they were afraid it would upset the “status quo” the “elites” enjoy in Soddom-on-the-Potomac.....
This is going to be the answer to the fiscal cliff...we agree to raise taxes or revenue now and down the road we cut spending(it never happens).. the deficit will not go down next year...but spending will automatically increase and the democrats will spend it to buy votes ..we loose every time
Think of this ruler as a political specturm.
This is where I would drop everyone on the spectrum:
0 - communism (China)
2 - current Democratic party
6 - George W Bush (yes, right in the center)
6.5 - Romney
8 - Reagan
11 - Founders like Jefferson (people underestimate how radical our founders were)
12 - Libertarians
The lesson the GOP will learn from this is election is to move to the left. In a few years the GOP platform will be around 5. We'll be country with a major liberal party (Democrats) and a major left of center party (Republicans). "Conservative" will come to mean "less liberal"; "Smaller government" will come to mean "not as big government"; and "individual freedom" will come to mean "freedom from worry" (instead of freedom to live as you wish).
That, in a nutshell, is the future of the GOP brand and the word "conservative". Both brands, imho, are beyond saving at this point. Propping up the GOP at this point just ensures more left of center government (and more crony capitalism, imho).
It may be time to chuck both the GOP and even the word conservative and refocus around some new ideas and symbols. The tea party was a good start. Maybe we should look at some of the language our founders used to describe themselves to find terms to describe ourselves and our goals.
I think Herm and I are on the same page. From a comment I made last night (although the word “hijack” is probably not necessary - as it was pointed out to me later):
“My suggestion is that we take a long-term view on the presidency - 12-16 years. The GOP is a damaged brand, as is the “Tea Party” (not the Tea Party philosophy, just the name). There is no point in pursuing either one any more. The media has successfully destroyed them.
Instead, we hijack the Constitution Party and start looking for legitimate candidates who can communicate conservatism in a rational and convincing manner - a cross between Rush Limbaugh and Tom Sellick (I can dream, can’t I?).
In the meantime, we abandon the presidency and concentrate our efforts on getting Tea Party-type people into a majority position in the House and Senate - local and state efforts, not national efforts - more under the radar. If we’re able to do that, whoever is President is immaterial. With 60 senators and a majority in the House, we can get anything passed we want to - overriding a presidential veto as required.
I don’t see any other way at this point. I said early this year that the selection of Mitt Romney as the GOP candidate would be the death of the GOP. We can’t change it from within and I believe that there is no way to convince the mentally-challenged non-conservatives and non-republicans to join us - the media won’t let it happen. It’s time we recognize this and take some positive action to save the Country.”
The only way a third party will ever succeed is fairly simple, but the rules must be followed explicitly.
1) The party must be oriented to start at the state level. That is, it becomes viable from the ground up not the top down. As such its first election is not even oriented at the state legislator level, or even leadership roles in the big cities, but at all the minor elective offices in a state.
Only when it has a track record at these offices does it move to the state legislature level of the less populous states. It has to focus its national resources to get control of a minimum of one state legislature before it can start running for federal office. This is because the two big parties will agree to exclude third parties from the national election with unfair rules at the state level.
Real power, however, comes with eventually getting a marginal role in the US house, enough leverage to support one party or the other for a majority. This means that they can then wheel and deal with both major parties for their agenda.
2) The party needs to develop a list of its top 100 core values. Then it needs to poll the public about 10 of these that the public most supports. This then becomes their platform. The other 90 are not forgotten, just put on the “back burner”. This way the party can keep its core values *and* give the public what they want, in a simple and clear way they don’t have to equivocate.
Voters love this.
This would be an exciting move for a huge segment of society and the voting public. I, for one, would welcome it. The Democrat Party has no enemy within itself. That’s why it has no ideas or solutions. It really is a plantation of filthy-mouthed, in -your -face zombies. They don’t teach their children acceptable values or work ethics.
I will stay in the GOP simply because I’m not a pioneer at my age and would be more likely to support the soumd fiscal proposals of someone like a Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. I think they were wonderful. Weighty issues appeal to me like defending our nation, taxation, education, English as the only approved language, and our roads and highways. I don’t give one single hoot about the social issues of modern day America or the feelings of one religious belief over another. I want our red state life back before we had to be called red state blue state.
A new party might be just the thing needed to identify everyone’s criteria for leadership.
I’m in, I left the GOP years ago. It would be nice to be able to vote for someone that is a constitutional conservative.
Until such a party is so powerful that it can bring the other two below 33% of the vote, all that will be created is a very effective spoiler.
Don't we already have something like 39 so-called "third parties". Stupid is as stupid does.
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