Posted on 07/14/2015 5:11:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
"My sole focus is to run as a Republican," Donald Trump told my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York last week, "because of the fact that I believe that this is the best way we can defeat the Democrats." He went on, "Having a two-party race gives us a much better chance of beating Hillary and bringing our country back than having a third-party candidate."
But when York asked if he would definitively rule out running as a third-party candidate, Trump said, "It's not something I'm thinking about right now." And as John Fund pointed out in National Review, it is something Trump has thought about in the past.
He made a feint at getting Ross Perot's Reform Party nomination back in 1999. And while Trump recently called Clinton "the worst secretary of state in the history of our nation," somehow overlooking James Buchanan's feckless stint in the Polk administration, he also contributed to her Senate campaigns and has called her "a terrific woman."
The fact is that Trump, as a national celebrity and a non-politician often at odds with both parties, has the capacity to launch an independent candidacy scoring double digits in polls, just as Perot did in 1992 and Colin Powell could have done in 1995.
That should scare not only Republicans but also Democrats. History tells us that third-party candidacies have reshuffled the political desk and disrupted seemingly stable political alignments in unanticipated ways.
Consider the Populist movement of the 1890s that came during a 25-year period when partisan competition was as close as today and divided government as much the norm, though with Republicans usually holding the presidency and Democrats usually with congressional majorities.
The Populists supported inflationary silver currency and aid to farmers, and the 1892 Populist nominee carried most electoral votes in the plains and mountain states (all admitted to the Union by Republicans).
In 1896 Democrats nominated the pro-silver, pro-farmer William Jennings Bryan, but in reaction the Northeast and industrial Midwest swung to the pro-gold standard Republican William McKinley. Republicans won seven of the nine next presidential elections.
Half a century later, in 1948, Strom Thurmond's States' Rights Democratic candidacy destabilized the national Democratic Party's majority coalition. Thurmond's 39 electoral votes didn't defeat Harry Truman, but Thurmond helped to detach the South from its traditional Democratic allegiance. Democratic nominees carried all the Confederate states 17 times before 1948. None ever has again.
George Wallace's third-party candidacy in 1968 advanced that process at the presidential level. But his 1964, 1972 and 1976 campaigns in the Democratic primaries provided a template for conservative Democrats to win congressional and state races in places that tilted Republican presidentially. That delayed Republicans' capture of majorities in the U.S. House until 1994.
Ross Perot's candidacy in 1992 came after Republicans won five of the six previous presidential elections, and after 1988 George Bush carried 40 states in 1988. But Perot's spring campaign "de-partisanized the critique of Bush," as deputy Democratic chairman Paul Tully told me at the time, in a way no Democrat, certainly not a little-known young governor of Arkansas, could have done.
But when Perot abruptly withdrew from the race, on the Wednesday of the Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton's standing in the polls rose 25 points in one day -- surely a record that will never be beaten. Democrats won four of the next six presidential elections.
But their leftish policies, in Clinton's first two years and Barack Obama's two terms, have helped produce Republican majorities in nine of the next House elections and have resulted in the polarization of the electorate that so many pundits lament -- and which is the last thing Perot promised.
What could be the consequences of a third-party Trump candidacy? Immediate speculation is that it would cost Republicans the votes of many conservatives disgruntled with the party's officeholders and angry about immigration, trade and Common Core. That's certainly plausible.
But Trump might also siphon votes of non-college whites from Democrats in states where their support was high enough to produce Obama victories. Examples include Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. All voted 54 percent or less for Obama in 2012, and altogether they have 84 electoral votes.
The present close partisan balance and polarization will not last forever. And Donald Trump seems like just the kind of guy who could disrupt it -- in ways no one now can anticipate.
I disagree. Hillary Clinton will win if there is a repeat of the 2008 and especially the 2012 election where many on our side refused to vote in the general election and that arrogant pos of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave got reelected.
Bush was forced?
How does anyone force a President to do anything he does not want to do?
Bush 1 was a feckless one worlder—a nice person, but not strong in the mold of his predecessor.
You can chart the descent of America from the middle of 1990, and the Bushes and the Clintons play starring roles.
I don’t need the media to tell me that.
And he and Bill Clinton go back a long way, which is why he oversaw the rehabilitation of Bill after the 2004 tsunami.
Another thing we can thank him for.
I live in Texas and I saw Perot for the traitor he was, I would never have voted for him no matter what he said.
I think you are seeing clearly, Trump may be on the same path that Perot was on.
I am willing to bet that a lot of Jeb's big donors are also big donors to Hillary. It doesn't matter much which one wins the result will be pretty much the same.
What scares me is how many people here are ok with (and even appearing to be secretly rooting for) a “Hillary” presidency.
That woman cannot be president and I will vote for anyone who will keep her out of the WH. Stopping corrupt Hillary should be the main goal instead of attacking fellow republicans.
That is why every caution should be used
Correct. A third party candidate has to get a clear majority of the Electoral College to win the election. If he wins a plurality (less than 50%) then it goes to the House of Representatives.
If the Republicans control the House, then the Republican candidate will be elected. If the Democrats control the House then the Democrat candidate will be elected.
Who besides Trump can beat Hillary and how can they? The conservative vote is not enough to win, that is sad but true.
If Trump’s numbers hold it will be between Trump and Jeb for the nomination. Jeb is just about as bad as Hillary and could not beat her anyways.
Trump is doing a masterful job of selling his "deal". It does not matter what he thought last year or even last month. He is not an ideologue, he is a pragmatist, and he is not campaigning, he is negotiating.
"Everybody asks me to do it. … And I think … I'd get a lot of votes," Trump said. "But the best way of defeating the Democrats, and probably Hillary — I think it's going to be Hillary — is to run as a Republican.
"If I do the third party thing it would be I think very bad for the Republicans," he added. "I think it would be very bad in terms of beating the Democrats. And we have to win."
If my choice in November is Jeb Bush or Hillary I am voting third party.
If Trump decides to pull a Perot and run as an independent then there will be no question that he is just a Democrat plant.
And a beltway GOP that enables the Obama TPP and Iran nuke deal? Are they Dem plants also?
Stopping corrupt Hillary should be the main goal instead of attacking fellow republicans.
John Boehner’s strawman allies SPENT MONEY to attack conservatives recently. Do you think he will go to the war chest to stop the Iran nuke deal? Of course not. Sorry FRiend, your “fellow republicans” are now co-conspirators with the Democrats. Us folks on Main Street are lower than dirt to the beltway crowd.
Perot voters gave us clinton, people who didn't like Romney and stayed home gave us obama. I don't want another disaster and I don't want president Hillary on my conscience and in my WH.
Nope. Just RINOs and incompetent idiots.
Trump is a good negotiator. Perhaps he would run third party if he didn’t get the nomination. But saying this now also serves the purpose of telling the GOPe that they’d better back off or he’ll take his ball and play somewhere else, and then they’ll have nothing.
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