Posted on 01/28/2021 4:07:38 AM PST by Kaslin
Ditching the GOP is a bad idea born of justifiable frustration, and we need to stop being emotional and start being ruthless in our campaign to retake this country from these liberal establishment aspiring fascists. A third party is not the way. It is a bad idea, one that is technically impractical and which is strategically inept. It will lead to disaster. And the Democrats know it, which is why they love this third party palaver. The only thing that makes the tooting likes of Eric Swalwell coo in delight harder than some mediocre Chi Com honeypot is the thought of us conservatives committing ritual suicide by splitting our half of the country in two because some of the 50 percent of Americans in our camp are insufferable sissies.
News flash, folks. We’re going to have to suffer the sissies forever. The question is whether they run the party apparatus, or whether they are consigned to the fringes, scribbling in their blogs about how True Conservatism™ requires that we go to war everywhere, that we allow giant corporations to limit our speech, and that we all wear vinyl gimp suits with ball gags and address Nancy Pelosi as “Mistress P.”
Just kidding.
The part about “we” going to war is a joke. You and your kids get to go to war while they, with very few exceptions, who never shut up about it, get to stay home and fight their endless war against push-ups and testosterone. The rest is pretty dead-on.
Let’s look at the big picture. The design of the Constitution essentially mandates a two-party system. A third party has never won the presidency, and one rarely wins legislative seats. Usually, such candidates call themselves “independents,” but Democrats know they are really Democrats and understand this is just a ploy to appeal to the suckers.
There is always going to be a party of the left, and a party of the right, with the battle over the middle. A party getting 55 percent of the vote is considered to have won in a landslide. America is that closely divided. For our sins, the party of the right is the Republican Party. And math says we are stuck with it.
You cannot divide the 50 percent of America on the right up and hope to beat the 50 percent on the left. It does not work, and all the hopes, dreams, and krakens of a million outraged conservatives on Twitter will not make it so. Politics must be about addition, and that implies we need to add people who are not as conservative as we are. If you want purity, date a nun. This is politics, and if you don’t win, you lose.
I propose we win.
Third parties do have a track record of disrupting elections. The Left blamed the Greens for Bush in 2000, and some blame the Libertarians, among other factors, for President * in 2020. Clinton won in 1992 because Perot split the vote for George H.W. Bush. But these events all have one thing in common – the third party never wins. Nor will one.
Trump himself seems to understand, walking back the “Patriot Party” stuff in order to settle in as a GOP kingmaker. He knows he loses in 2024 running as a third party candidate – 50 percent of people already hate him and some percentage of the GOP will stay GOP out of habit if nothing else. You can’t expect to win if you start off, best case, losing 50 percent + 1. But by remaining in the GOP – as its most popular figure by far – he has real power to influence events.
The third party talk also ignores the practical reality of the GOP’s irreplaceable infrastructure. A competitive national political party is a Broadway play, not a show some kids put on in a barn. While some imagine a sort of spontaneous, math-defying movement materializing out of the political ether, the reality is that a party structure performs essential tasks and there is no substitute for it. Who has the donor lists, the volunteer lists, the organization to drive get out the vote efforts? The party. You can’t patch one together overnight out of fervor and contempt for the squishes.
There are many things that are critical that go into a campaign and go on behind the scenes that most of us never even imagined. For example, who are the lawyers who worked for the GOP who know election law who will be leaving their GOP contracts to come and keep the “MAGA Party” candidates out of jail? You think the Establishment will give the “Constitutionalist Party” a pass for not understanding the campaign finance laws? And who pays these lawyers, assuming any really good ones want to flush their career in electoral law down the toilet to go all-in on a losing one-shot cause?
That’s just one example of many of the things a party infrastructure does, and no one is going to build another national structure (not to mention a structure in each of the 50 states) in the next four years. It is appealing to leave the jerks in the GOP behind, but if you do, you are choosing irrelevance.
But hey, you’re angry so you gotta cater to those feelz.
That’s stupid and weak. Tighten up. Yeah, the GOP establishment sucks – and no, you’re not the only one who has noticed. We are always going to have people near the center who frustrate us. That’s the reality, and being angry about it is like yelling at clouds. But what we can do – and have done – is slowly force the party to conform more closely to our vision. It’s like turning the Titanic, an apt metaphor if there ever was one, but it is happening already.
Look at the GOP just five years ago and look at it today. Yeah, we have the rump Renfield contingent with tiresome goofs like Mitt (R?-Miracle Whip). We have others who alternate between establishment-curious moderate wimpiness and coming through for us at many key junctures – Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. But look at what we don’t have – Jeff Flake is gone. Jeb! is a flabby footnote. And as hard as Nikki! is trying to make herself happen, she’s not happening. The GOP has shifted our way – on wars, on culture, on tech, on playing to win. We have earned the support of Americans of all races in unprecedented numbers because we have focused on people who – remember this? – work hard and play by the rules. That’s progress. Not enough, not nearly, but to deny the progress because you are angry only empowers the people you are angry at. We can’t throw out what we have already achieved simply because we have much more work to do. Take the W, people.
We need to do more. We need to infiltrate the infrastructure and remake the Republican Party from the inside into a party for working Americans of every demographic who love their country and demand their rights, as opposed to the 2015 party that shafted working Americans so Democrat-donor big corporations can rig the system and let SJW twerps endlessly hassle us for the crime of being normal.
But Kurt, we do vote and sometimes we lose!
Yes. You will lose much of the time. This is called reality. People who compete often lose. The ones who don’t compete never lose, but they never win either.
Here’s your action plan. If you are a registered Republican, stay that way. If not, register Republican. Then vote in the primaries to rid ourselves of squishes. Then take the next step. Find your local GOP organization and join, then run for local party and then government offices. We need to build our farm team, and that means traveling along the American cursus honorum from GOP precinct captain to county GOP committee member to city council to state assembly to Congress and beyond.
Gee Kurt, that sounds like hard work.
It is. It’s a lot easier to declare you are never ever voting GOP again on Twitter. But I was under the impression that we are the faction that is not averse to hard work, especially when it is our country at stake. So, this is a test – if you’re serious about winning, you stay GOP.
A third party hands total control over to the left, and if you want to see what that scenario looks like, check out my newest novel Crisis, as well as my other four novels of America splitting into red and blue nations, People's Republic, Indian Country, Wildfire, and Collapse!
Your post is dishonest...........at one time, both the Democrat and Republican parties were precisely “third parties”. And today’s political situation is far more like those that existed when THOSE SUCCESSFUL THIRD PARTIES displace a dominant existing party than at any other time period in MY life of 73 years.
It’s not insanity, it’s necessity. We have to break up the duopoly. The fact that we just keep switching control between 2 parties that don’t actually stand for anything is a big part of the reason for this mess. We were never supposed to be a 2 party system. They made it that way by cutting off competitors.
The Democratic Party left me. They are the Bolshekratic Party. I campaigned for Johnson, my first vote was for Nixon. Nixon was still a better President than Jimma. Reagan was, probably, the best President. I think, I was voting Libertarian then. (Libertarians have adopted a policy I cannot accept now.) For the most part, I am a TEA Party type. I am Cruz man, unless, there is a more conservative person that can win. I hate Bolshekrats.
Right on! Also, I don’t believe we have two parties today. What we have is is a pretense of two parties.
So what is really need is a REAL second party that will represent Americans.
“Unless a candidate has an endorsement from President Trump, they’ll not have my vote.”
INDEED
I am going to WRITE IN TRUMP for every office on every ballot UNLESS a candidate publicly announces STRONG public support for President Trump and HAS NOT taken part in the bs congressional whitewash of the steal or the great Jan 6 Panjandrum.
Presidents of the U.S. listed in a timeline graph of elections with results of the popular vote color coded for political parties. A gray arrow points to the name of a person who became president without having been elected as president (9 total). The double arrow indicates becoming president without having been elected as vice president as well (Ford). 5 other former vice presidents are underlined (14 total). The top line indicates the Presidency number (e.g. Reagan: 40th) with Roman numerals indicating election (and term) number.
You’re aiming at the wrong place. Government is made at lower levels. The place we need to break the duopoly first is the state legislatures. Get a 3rd and even 4th voice there and you can end gerrymandering. End that and you can get these other voices in Congress. Then you’ll make ALL the parties actually stand for something other than power. And the presidency can actually matter.
Two factions that fight over the one contending issue - more central government control or less. No matter how many parties you create they will always eventually reduce to two that fight over that one issue. Its been that way since the federalists & the anti-federalists, Democrats & Whigs now Democrats and Republicans. The names are unimportant. In fact the Republicans and Democrats have switched sides on the powerful central government vs not powerful central government issue.
Dividing our strength now in the face of monolithic Rat solidarity would mean conservative electoral extinction.
Trump has 90+% support, that needs to leveraged for a hostile takeover of the GOP. The old RINO bulls need to be primaried, retired or told to go from precinct captain, to county executive committee to state executive committee to governor\congresscritter\senator. The good news is most of the old RINO bulls are old. (Yes there are exceptions!). It will not happen instantly. It will take work. What the GOP needs to be is as disciplined as the Rats !
Says who? The only reason we’re a 2 party system is because the 2 parties that took over (both starting as minor parties) have worked together to close the door behind them. The Founders did NOT design a 2 party system. They wanted to ban parties entirely but couldn’t without castrating the 1st Amendment.
The chart below is a breakdown of the political party landscape of the United States' 13 distinct state executives offices.
Office | Democratic | Republican | Independent | Nonpartisan | Total seats | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Governor | 23 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 50 | |
Lt. Governor | 21 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 45 | |
Attorney General | 24 | 26 | 0 | 1 | 50 | |
Secretary of State | 20 | 25 | 1 | 0 | 47 | |
Treasurer | 15 | 21 | 0 | 12 | 48 | |
Controller | 6 | 4 | 0 | 9 | 19 | |
Auditor | 10 | 13 | 0 | 8 | 33 | |
Superintendent of Schools | 0 | 8 | 0 | 42 | 50 | |
Insurance Commissioner | 3 | 8 | 0 | 35 | 50 | |
Agriculture Commissioner | 1 | 10 | 0 | 38 | 50 | |
Natural Resources Commissioner | 1 | 2 | 0 | 46 | 52 | |
Labor Commissioner | 0 | 3 | 0 | 50 | 54 | |
Public Service Commissioner | 12 | 36 | 0 | 146 | 201 | |
Total | 136 (18.2%) | 196 (26.2%) | 1 (0.1%) | 295 (39.4%) | 749 | |
Current as of January 2021 |
ok whatever
History says otherwise.
Actually it doesn’t. History says what I’m saying. The fact is we had numerous parties. Frequently 2 were dominant, but it wasn’t until the Dem-GOP restructuring of the rules of Congress that other parties became completely neutered.
The focus should be state legislatures. Because they control congressional districts and use gerrymandering to keep others out. The 2 parties like to talk a lot about how they screw each other over with that, but really that’s just a distraction. The true point is making sure all districts belong to one or the other.
I agree with you. I was arguing for a third party headed by Trump. The GOP is worthless.
Prudent U.S. Senators who have highly respect the U.S. Constitution (Tom Cotton and Rand Paul come to mind) had one simple request. To paraphrase: "I am willing to contest the electoral votes from Pennsylvania (for example) if a person or governing body with the legal authority to represent the state government of Pennsylvania notifies me that they are contesting the state's electoral votes, I'll vote to reject the electoral votes that were certified in December."
Without this formal notification, Cotton correctly pointed out that any Senator who rejected a state's CERTIFIED electoral votes would basically be turning the U.S. government into a parliamentary government where the President is elected by the legislature instead of elected as a separate branch of government. Giving a Senator or House member from one state the authority to reject the electoral votes from another state in the absence of a competing slate of electors sent by that state would be an absolute disaster.
If you think I'm kidding, just look ahead to 2024 and see how this would play out. With the Democrats in control of the House and Senate (if this remains the case), you'd have Chuck Schumer leading a bunch of assholes in the Senate to reject the electoral votes even from states like Wyoming and the Dakotas that vote for the Republican candidate by wide margins.
Your tune would change if 300 million new Illegal foreigners were voting here. Or we’d be forced to learn Chinese...
A third party could flock unlucky Americans (and Illegals) to the new “SERF PARTY”.
See my above comment...
I will just say Amen; having already warned of what I consider 3rd party insanity many times these past few weeks.
Trump himself seems to understand, walking back the “Patriot Party” stuff in order to settle in as a GOP kingmaker. He knows he loses in 2024 running as a third party candidate – 50 percent of people already hate him and some percentage of the GOP will stay GOP out of habit if nothing else. You can’t expect to win if you start off, best case, losing 50 percent + 1. [...]
The third party talk also ignores the practical reality of the GOP’s irreplaceable infrastructure. [...] no one is going to build another national structure (not to mention a structure in each of the 50 states) in the next four years. It is appealing to leave the jerks in the GOP behind, but if you do, you are choosing irrelevance.
But hey, you’re angry so you gotta cater to those feelz.
That’s stupid and weak. Tighten up. Yeah, the GOP establishment sucks – and no, you’re not the only one who has noticed. We are always going to have people near the center who frustrate us. That’s the reality, and being angry about it is like yelling at clouds. But what we can do – and have done – is slowly force the party to conform more closely to our vision. It’s like turning the Titanic, an apt metaphor if there ever was one, but it is happening already.
[...] The GOP has shifted our way – on wars, on culture, on tech, on playing to win. We have earned the support of Americans of all races in unprecedented numbers because we have focused on people who – remember this? – work hard and play by the rules. That’s progress. Not enough, not nearly, but to deny the progress because you are angry only empowers the people you are angry at. We can’t throw out what we have already achieved simply because we have much more work to do. Take the W, people.
We need to do more. We need to infiltrate the infrastructure and remake the Republican Party from the inside [...]
But Kurt, we do vote and sometimes we lose!
Yes. You will lose much of the time. This is called reality. People who compete often lose. The ones who don’t compete never lose, but they never win either.
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