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ON A NATIONAL BASIS, THIRD PARTIES ALWAYS LOSE – AND RUIN THE CAREERS OF THE LEADING PARTICIPANTS.

Consider the fate of the Bonkers Billionaire, Ross Perot, the most formidable minor party candidate of the last 95 years. In 1992, against Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, he invested millions of dollars from his personal fortune and drew an impressive 18.9% of the popular tally (though he failed to win even a single electoral vote). Four years later, he tried again but more than half of his former supporters abandoned him, and he polled a scant 8.4%. The “Reform Party” he had assembled as a personal vehicle for his quixotic quest quickly collapsed when Perot lost interest in it: in 2000, “Pitchfork Pat” Buchanan claimed the party’s nomination and drew a spectacularly pathetic 0.4% — even fellow-fringie Ralph Nader topped his vote total by an astonishing ratio of six-to-one. If anyone today recalls Ross Perot and the Reform Party they do so only as a punch-line, or as a factor in allowing Bill Clinton to win the White House twice without ever winning a majority of the popular vote. Perot’s credibility as a political commentator all but evaporated in the wake of his campaigns -— and Buchanan’s stature also suffered major damage even after his return to the Republican fold to back Bush in 2004.

Other conservatives similarly destroyed once-promising careers with their third party obsessions. Howard Phillips, twice elected President of the Student Council at Harvard, qualified as a rising Republican star when he headed two federal agencies in the Nixon administration. In 1992, however, he succumbed to the temptation of running for President as candidate of the “US Taxpayers Party” (later re-branded as the “Constitution Party.”), and then ran again in ’96 and 2000. Each of these pompous and preachy campaigns drew less than 0.2% and made him an irrelevant (though incurably self-righteous) annoyance to the conservative movement.

Time and again, prominent leaders wasted their time and shattered their reputations with their third party misadventures. Henry A. Wallace, the supremely charismatic and widely admired Vice President of the United States (1941-45), ran as the standard bearer of the leftist “Progressive Party” in 1948, and won a surprisingly paltry 2.4% — not nearly enough to damage the re-election drive of his arch-rival, Harry Truman. Former President Martin Van Buren drew a humiliating 10% as a “Free Soil” candidate in 1848 (eight years after leaving the White House), and in 1856 another former president, Millard Fillmore, drew 22% as the anointed champion of the anti-immigrant “Know Nothing” or “American Party”; as a result of their fringe-party escapades, both one-time chief executives ended their careers in embarrassment.

Michael Medved

http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2007/10/...

No, Catholics used to vote solidly Democrat, back in the days when most of them were ethnics: Irish, Italians, Poles, and other groups who were widely discriminated against by the WASP establishment. Most Catholics then were workers and union people, and they got support from the Democrat party.

That started to change in the late 60s and 70s, when the Democrats became the party of the hippies and the privileged, and when they began to stand for abortion. Also, when discrimination eased off, and the WASP establishment pretty much collapsed.

Since that time, Catholics moved steadily over to the REpublican side, especially after the Republicans adopted a pro-life plank. In recent years it has been roughly 50-50, and analysis suggests that church-attending Catholics are much likelier to vote Republican, whereas dissidents still vote Democrat.

But the Country Clubber faction in the party turns Catholics off—and rightly so.

Sarah is an Evangelical, but real Catholics would be happy to support her. Having the Downs syndrome baby would be a powerful argument for them. She is clearly someone with strong, Christian moral values.