Posted on 06/29/2013 11:44:52 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president responded to a Fox News Channel viewer’s Twitter question Saturday about the possibility of her and conservative talker Mark Levin abandoning the Republican Party and creating something called the “Freedom Party.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
LTs arent repelled by conservatives...at least not all of them. There are many on FR. They just keep their head down on topics we disagree on. The ones I know of most often are pretty hard right.
But even many of the ones not on board can be worked with. We at least share some values. The GOP has nothing in common with us anymore.
Gonna leave the RINOS? Welcome to the party sweetie.
i’ll stick with my original statement: the libertarians i’ve talked with at length equally despise the left and and the right. that makes them nothing more than a splinter for the duration. thus, i’m not in the least worried about libertarians. now, reps have to be very worried about them.
Well, whatever depowers the GOP is good for America one way or another. If they sit it out, still good for us.
Are there not enough ‘parties’ already? Is there not ONE, currently, that espouses the same beliefs (Constitution, Libertarian, etc.)?
Sorry, but until the platform is set, I’ll no more follow this group just based on name recognition. More likely, it’ll turn out to be Dem-lightest, since the 2 party cartel only gives lip service to the document that gives me their reason for being and LIMITED powers.
Sorry, I’m not one to get burned (again) without learning a lesson or two.
If Sarah leaves/leads, I’ll follow/push.
That’s all fine and well. Riddle me this. How do you go about keeping the same thing from happening to this new party?
If you can keep a new party from getting polluted, why not perform that action on the old party?
Fact is you can’t. Some jackass like Rove works his way into the Freedom National Committee, and allows another jackass like Rubio to proclaim and run under the Freedom umbrella, and voila, right back where we left off - at which point we’ll have to form another party, et al etc. and so on.
Well then we’ll just maintain control of the party and not let elites set up shop. Who makes that decision? Who would you trust other than yourself to consistently say Yes or No to a new member? How would you know that someone with no track record wasn’t another jackass like McCain?
Not expecting answers to the questions, but I’d be happy to move over if there were in fact answers.
right. they can most likely split or go left or right. but if they go left, they will hurt reps more than anyone else.
54 posted on 6/29/2013 2:10:42 PM by PapaNew: "The GOP was founded as a third party about seven years before the Civil War. How much worse does it have to get before a third party flies? They’ve tried unsuccessfully so many times."
149 posted on 6/29/2013 2:51:22 PM by 4Liberty: "The Rats are gleeful and in fact directly PROMOTING a Republican-Conservative (two weak small parties) split, as we type. That’s why they LOVE Rubio’s duplicity."
Several comments.
First, thank you Jim Robinson, for bringing this to our attention. We need to know about things like this.
Second -- and this is not to Jim Robinson but to everyone -- please count the cost. This sounds good in many ways, but Palin will get one chance as a third-party candidate. If she wins, she will become a major disruptor of the Republican's moderate wing. That would be a wonderful outcome, and for the reasons I cite below, it might just work if Palin runs for the US Senate from Alaska, or returns to the governorship.
But if she loses -- worst of all, if she loses in a way that hands a solid Republican seat over to a Democrat -- she will get viewed as a vote-splitter who is useful only to Democrats.
There's both positives and negatives in what 4Liberty said about liberals promoting this "conservative Third Party" agenda. It is not irrelevant that Politico, an internet news operation run by former Washington Post reporters, are the ones who reported this. However, that's a two-way street. Today, news like this can get communicated via the internet via both liberal and conservative operations which just a couple of decades ago would have been buried. Free Republic was a major part of derailing Bill Clinton's presidency and saving Bush's election against Dan Rather's attacks; in an earlier era, what Clinton did would have been effectively covered up and what Rather tried to do might very well have succeeded.
I know I'm going to be accused of throwing water on the fire, but the cold hard facts are that trying to create a third party is not a simple project. As PapaNew pointed out, it has been successfully done only one time in American history, and that was a century and a half ago when the Republicans replaced the dying remnants of the Whig Party.
In principle, just as ideologically committed liberal Democrats are willing to leave the Democrats if they abandon their principles, ideologically committed conservative Republicans must be willing to leave the Republicans. But let's count the cost first and not run off half-cocked.
Third, and perhaps most important, anyone who is seriously advocating a third party needs to look at what the Republicans did to replace the Whigs in the 1850s, as well as recent successful third-party campaigns.
While there are a small number of Libertarian and Constitution party elected officials at the local level, we have very few recent examples of third-party candidates running and winning statewide office, and none at the national level. Basically, those examples in recent history are limited to four:
* Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who won a write-in general election campaign to retain her Senate seat after she lost the Republican primary to a more conservative Sarah Palin supporter.
* Sen. Joe Lieberman, who won as a third-party candidate to retain his Senate seat after he lost the Democratic primary to a more liberal candidate.
* Sen. Bernie Sanders, who after multiple successful terms as mayor of Vermont's largest city leading a coalition of third-party city council members which effectively ran the city as a minority by having enough votes to prevent an override of Sanders' vetoes, ran for and won a US House seat and then a US Senate seat as an independent.
* Gov. Jesse Ventura, a former city mayor who won the Minnesota governor's race more or less out-of-the-blue as the candidate of the Reform Party, and had a seriously troubled administration since he didn't have a base of support from either political party.
An argument could be made that for a third party candidate to win, some or all of the following must be true:
* The candidate is very well-known, either due to incumbency or celebrity status.
* The candidate is in a small state where relatively low-budget one-on-one campaigns actually work.
* If the candidate doesn't have a prior record of elected office as a Republican or Democrat, he has served in a significant local office to get prior experience before running for a statewide post.
As of today, I have very serious doubts about whether a third party effort is viable. However, it's hard to dispute that Sarah Palin fits all of the criteria I've listed -- she's very well known, she is a longtime resident of a small state, she has significant prior service at the local level, and she's held multiple prior elected positions in the Republican Party.
I think there's a realistic chance that Sarah Palin could win a statewide race as a third-party candidate for the Senate, the House, or the governorship, would immediately get major national attention for doing so, and might be able to form the nucleus of a new party.
Would it work? I don't know.
What I do know is that if Palin won, the Republican Party would see its agenda forced rightward to avoid losing more races, either to members of her new third party, or to Democrats when moderate Republicans lost safe seats to Democrats after a third-party challenge handed the seat to Democrats.
I also think it's obvious that if Palin runs as a third-party candidate in Alaska, many people on Free Republic would become a major cheerleader for her. That could turn out to be a very good thing.
No problem at all.
Shutting them down?
I am just fine with that.
There might be a couple of useful functions amongst one or two of them but the 10th should take care of that.
.
I’m there and I will not have left the GOP but they will have left me.
I’m telling GOP telemarketers if they want money get it from the Democrats because that is obviously the constituency they are pandering.
She has positions, but they’re not coherent and she’s risked nothing by standing outside and sniping at people who are actually trying to do something. She takes no responsibility for anything and she doesn’t have to because really, she has no job..
If she’d like to be a Rush-type pundit, that would be good too, but she hasn’t even done that.
Sorry, I used to like her, but I really haven’t seen much evidence of anything solid and we’ve had way too much of that.
I'll offer one...
Imagine a new party, "freedom" if you will, organized from the ground up according to founding-like principles. Lets put our heads together and imagine our framers, as much as they were averse to factions and parties, had to come up with the organization and competing forces to make a viable party. They did so for the Constitution... and made it simple (and limited!)... same for the "Freedom" or whatever party. Should be organized simply, would emphasize individual liberty, and thus the individual within the party. It would work-in the foibles of men into its own constitution (small c) in such a way that it would promote its purity...
I’m not sure from your posts, that you used to like Palin.
But hey.
Then you haven’t looked too hard have you.
It’s quite shocking to see a person that a lot of people respect at this level, say something like this in public.
I approve. And I will say, if she has abandoned her prior beliefs regarding a fix for illegal immigration, then I would have a hard time not backing her.
Immigration is flat out the biggest deal-breaker I have had in my lifetime. I hope she’s on board with that too.
If not, it’s all a waste of time.
Potential breakthrough.
Just saying. :D
That’s why I called it a movement, because it’s not a party. Yet.
She’s tHe only reason I voted for McCain, but she has been a disappointment since she left the governorship because she really has no skin in the game. She can say whatever she wants - obviously, funded by her followers - but she doesn’t have to really justify anything and can spend all of her time attacking people who actually have jobs.
I don’t necessarily like what they’re doing, but at least they’re trying. She bailed on the whole thing.
My apologies then.
Maybe we just have hugely different perspectives, on what is helpful.
From my standpoint, I currently see nobody anwhere, except for Rush, Levin and Cruz with as much say-so in things.
I believe she is ramping up for a presidential run.
If she does that, perhaps you can re-assess her. Ok?
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