No Vote Tonight on Boehner Bill

The usual effect of third parties , if they have any effect, is to elect the party opposite them, not near them, in the political spectrum. Thank goodness for Ralph Nader. Be sure to sign the Green Party petitions.

“Perhaps you should run for congress, and the Speakers job, if you think it is so easy. At least John is trying to do something.”

I don’t know what kind of job you have, but I don’t keep mine for “trying to do something”. My employer rightfully expects me to work smart and produce results. Granted, its not an easy job, but he’s making it harder and losing credibility in the process by coming up with plan after plan, once of which the CBO determined will produce less results than advertised. He has succeeded in one respect; he has focused an inordinate amount of attention on Republican bickering and is making the Party look responsible for this debacle. I have relatives who have worked in leadership offices on the Hill and they are appalled at Boehner’s bungling.

“The usual effect of third parties , if they have any effect, is to elect the party opposite them, not near them, in the political spectrum.”

Emphasis on the word “usual.” These aren’t “usual” times, and given the deep level of dislike a majority express toward the 1 and 1/2 political parties, the timing isn’t going to get much better.

There’s always a first time. The following, I believe, are all the presidential elections decided by third-parties:

1844 - Liberty Party defeats the Whigs and flips election to Democrats

1848 - Martin Van Buren (Free Soil party) defeats the Democrats and flips the election to the Whigs

1912 - Teddy Roosevelt defeats Taft and flips election to Woodrow Wilson

1992 and 1996 - Ross Perot defeats Republicans and flips elections to Bill Clinton

2000 - Ralph Nader defeats Al Gore and flips election to George W. Bush

TWO other presidential elections might be mentioned:

1856 - Fillmore (American/Whig candidate) helps defeat Fremont (Republican candidate) and helps election Buchanan (Democrat candidate). Filmore only flipped three states to the Democrats (CA, IL and NJ). So, although Buchanan was elected with less than a majority of the nationwide popular vote, he won enough states with a majority, that it is clear he would have been elected whether or not Filmore was in the race.

1968 - George Wallace almost defeats Richard Nixon and almost flips election to Hubert Humphrey. Although Nixon won the election, it turned out to be very close. Humphrey only carried four states with a majority of the popular vote. Nixon would have achieved a landslide if Wallace were not in the race.

What I think is interesting as well about the elections of 1852 and 1856 is that a third party (gop) was on the rise, and the whigs essentially went defunct.

The Whigs had already fallen apart by 1856 (the first year that the Republicans ran a candidate for President).

Through 1852, the Whigs finagled the slave issue, intimating that they were for gradual or perhaps compensated emancipation. The big problem, though, is what would have resulted. In the deep South, slaves were the majority of the population. They were uneducated, had no property, and were hardly ready to act as citizens of a democratic republic. So, would they have the right to vote, the right to be witnesses and serve on juries, etc.? Remember that Lincoln, while a Whig, himself finagled the slave issue.

But, this moderate position became untenable. In the South, the Union Party emerged in places to represent Whig interests against the Democrats. In the North, the American Party emerged, combining nativism with Whigishness. In the meanwhile, there was growing dissatisfaction on the slave issue within the Democratic Party. In ‘48, mostly former Democrats running as Free Soil’ers, contested the election.

So, by 1856, the the new American Party, sometimes called the Know Nothings, combined with the what remained of the Whig Party. In the meanwhile, most of the Whigs and the Free Soil’ers combined to form a regional (Northern) party, namely the Republicans. In their first try, the new Republicans were the second party. So, the Republicans were never a third party.

If we were to make a parallel to today, it would be the Libertarians and the independents in the Tea Party movement joining with the majority of the Republicans to form a new major party, call it the Taxpayers Party. Perhaps what remained of the Republicans tried to field candidates. It would be the remnant of the Republican Party, acting as a third party, that would defeat the Taxpayers Party (if they did) and flip the election to their opposite party.

I say let’s take over the Republicans the way the socialists took over the Democrats. No doubt, it will take us a while. But, we are already underway.