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Thanks for the link. I was looking for the other platforms just the other day. AmericanPresidency.org looks like a great site. I have bookmarked the archive of political platforms. Unfortunately the third party programs stop at 1924. It might be interesting to see just what more recent third party candidates have run on. There was a large reference set of volumes released by Arthur Schlesinger a few years ago, but library hours are restricted and the Internet is always open and searchable.

The thing about ideas is you can take them as units, as stackable black boxes; or else you can open them up and try to find out what's inside. Lott doesn't seem to be a very inquisitive fellow. He has these boxes like "Southern way of life" or "Limited Government," that he cares about deeply, but he's incurious about what may be "inside."

I'd say Lott was more of a spirited temperament -- or a manipulative cast of mind, than a reflective or analytical one, but I suspect we're all like that about some things. We can break down other people's basic ideas into what we take to be their components, but our own basic ideas are foundation or the indissoluble atoms of our mental world.

Third parties are interesting beasts. They come about when neither of the two parties accommodate a particular dissent. In 1948, we have Southern Democrats objecting to their party acting like Republicans. Third parties invariably go away when either but usually both of two things happen: 1) one of the major parties absorbs the dissent by adopting its ideas or its outrage; 2) the issue driving the third party dissappears. Anderson and Perot fell to no. 2. The People's Party of the 1880s fell to the first condition, thanks to William Jennings Bryan. The Dixiecrats fell to both in that the issue of segregation was driven away by Ike (and adopted by Johnson) and the issues of States Rights and opposition to Federal centralization was adopted by the Republican Party.

The Republican party today has a legitimate claim for States Rights. States Rights, we are told is segregation. I've said it before: the South fought the wrong battle for State Rights. Too bad they punted it by tying it up in slavery and, then, segregation. That left it to the Republicans to adopt. Southerners turned to the Republican party in legitimate expression of their legitimate defense of States Rights. No where can it be found that the Republican party supports segregation. We hear from the morons that Republicans speak in "code" about racism and segregations. That's nonsense, demogoguery and stupid. It's also desparate.

The Republican complicity in all this comes of Reconstruction and its subsequent abuse of the black vote. Johnson could never have absorbed blacks into his party had Republicans not used them for so long as a means of controlling internal politics, particularly at the conventions.

Btw, the 1948 complaints about government desegregation wouldn't have been an issue had that Democratic icon, Woodrow Wilson, not segregated the civil service.

*Bumping* El Gato's #50, and calling out to inkling's #58, Dems_R_Losers's #75 and Ken in Eastman's #115.

Of all people, I failed to include a third category for third parties: personality.

The 1912 bolt was above all about a certain personality. I think Anderson in 1980 was, too. La Follette's 1924 third party, one of the more successful ever, was also more about personality than the movement he tried to represent. Like the Thurman bolt of 1948, La Follette tried to personally adopt a transition between the two major parties. Thankfully, La Follette's "Progressive-Socialist" party has been as forgotten as -- up until Lott's idiocy -- the Dixiecrats of 1948.

Both disappeared. Too bad Lott reminded us of the latter.

I'm not inclined to hang him for it, and I'm not inclined to reward our enemies for the stupidity of one of our own. He ought be sent off to fight the Indians, like Gen. Burnside, although we ought be careful not to turn him into a Gen. McClellan. That's why I advise a slow dismemberment. Let the outrage follow its course. If we satisfy it too quickly it will go unsatiated. Nothing prompts more attacks than appeasement of them.

I might invite the bouncer's attentions by stumbling over my whiskey and some guy's girlfriend, but my friends would do better to sit down with him than to get thrown out, too. He'll enjoy beating us up too much. If he smacks me once and I'm gone, I'll never get back into the club, and if I try, he can punch me without provocation. My friends could blame it all on me, and he'd be all happy to act on it. Instead, if they defend my person while blaming my idiocy, he'll have to walk me to the door, and let them stay. He'll have no more excuse to beat me up. And my friends can come back another day.

"I'd say Lott was more of a spirited temperament -- or a manipulative cast of mind, than a reflective or analytical one, but I suspect we're all like that about some things. We can break down other people's basic ideas into what we take to be their components, but our own basic ideas are foundation or the indissoluble atoms of our mental world."

Beautiful.

And very true. Bias, no matter how disciplined you may think you are, always colors your perspective.