Third parties and independents in 08
I see three possibilities for significant third-party/independent campaigns that might have an effect on the 08 election.
1. Michael Bloomberg. He has the money and significant name recognition. He also owns a news service, which doesn't hurt.
Bloomberg would run as an independent and his schtick would be that he is the unifying candidate for a nation sick of partisanship. But running as an independent would mean that he would have to endure the arduous process of gaining ballot access in 50 states. Even with a pile of money you need loyal cadres to fan out and gather signatures. Buying signatures from aid petition hawkers gets you low-quality stuff vulnerable to multiple challenges. he'll end up spending a lot of money on lawyers.
Bloomberg mostly helps Republicans. If he doesn't fizzle out, he could make Republicans viable in states like New Jersey and Connecticut. He has made noises recently about running despite having denied earlier that he would do so.
2. Ron Paul. He is going nowhere in the GOP primaries but he has a huge pile of cash. he could easily claim either the Libertarian ticket or the Constitution Party ticket. That would give him ballot access without having to spend a big wad of that cash. It's just hard to imagine that Paul will be willing to disappear into the background after February. And it is hard to see him settling for going back to the House. A Paul candidacy has the greatest potential to hurt the GOP. It would certainly deliver Ohio, Florida and a number of other close states to the democratic nominee.
3. Roy Moore. He's a rock star for the evangelical right. He's Mike Huckabee without the charm but he also has supporters who will walk through fire for him. The Constitution Party tried to recruit him for a 2004 run but he declined so he could run for governor of Alabama. Moore would absolutely hurt the GOP in Southern states where the GOP margin of victory has been diminishing -- Virginia, Florida, Arkansas and North Carolina. And he would make for an interesting contest in Alabama, where he onced polled 800,000 votes when he ran for chief justice.
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No good candidates
I'm really starting to get cranky regarding the very low quality of our candidates this time around.
I've been advocating for Ron Paul for awhile, but his unwillingness to confront white supremacists that are endorsing him and his underwhelming disavowal of his previous newsletter is turning me off to him. I've heard plenty from his campaign staffers about these issues, but nothing concrete from him. That is very disappointing.
No one else is perking me up either. Kucinich, of course, won't win the nomination so I won't be voting for him unless I move to the western suburbs of Cleveland. My support for Edwards is very, very soft, and even then, I think it's an Obama-Clinton race from here on out.
The Libertarians haven't offered up anyone worth looking at. The Greens are a former shell of themselves (which is hilarious considering they never were much of anything). I'm hoping for another Nader candidacy and may even look at Bloomberg if he runs.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
The problem
is that the system is so biased towards having only two parties that the only thing a third party candidate can do is play spoiler.
What's the point then unless you are running some kind of cryptocampaign meant to sink the very issues you pretend to care about?
If we really want to have any meaningful diversity in candidates we have to eliminate the two party system. And that'll happen right about the time I become pope.
Which means our current system will keep circling the drain until it crashes and we get the chance for a do over.
Presuming we don't kill ourselves off during the crash. We do have an awful lot of big boomy toys laying around.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I would think that the way to start a third party
would be to focus on state and congressional races first and build a base of support.
You'd also have to be broader based than the third parties we have right now that are too far out on the edges of the left and right.
qui tacet consentire
I'd agree
but at the same time the institutional levers in place to kill third parties are so powerful that you'd have to have a huge amount of grassroots support to get anywhere.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
At this point I think...
...the only way a third party could become viable would be the mass migration of conservatives from the Republican Party.
This party would most likely appeal to the conservative Democrats and Blue Dogs that have been driven from the party over the past 10+ years. It would also attract hawkish and or conservative Libertarians and Independents that don't necessarily agree with neocon control of the Republican Party.
If this effort were to be coordinated (not this cycle mind you) over a 2 year period it would have the money, strength and membership to be viable. imo
Btw- I would be a member of such a Party!
As to this cycle Bloomberg is a liberal with a Republican mask on so he doesn't get my vote
Ron Paul would have my support right now if it weren't for a few wacky positions (war - federal reserve - gold standard... Art Bell stuff) and his failure to distance himself from racists. Paul also swore he wouldn't run as an independent this cycle...for what that's worth.
My hope is that all of these guys stay out of the race this time around I'd like to see what comes of a straight up battle of ideas between the two parties
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I said this on OTB as well...
if we had two different presidents, one for foreign policy issues and one for domestic, I'd vote Ron Paul for the former in a heartbeat.
His non-interventionism bordering on isolationism is sounding really good right about now.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
If there is a mass migration from the GOP
it would most likely be evangelicals doing the migrating.
qui tacet consentire
Then I won't be involved with that party ;0) n/t
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Huckabee increased his lead in the latest polls
The vaunted Des Moines Register poll.
Huckabee 32
Romney 26
McCain 13
Paul 9
Rudy 5
I don't know how long the H can maintain in other states. I don't think he has much or a ground game...... but then there always the church volunteers, who could come out strong!
Obama (happy dance :+) has increased his lead, outside the margin of error, over Hillary with Edwards about the same.
Obama 32
Hillary 28
Edwards 25
DMR Poll
It is the economy, stupid.
Iowa polls at this point are meaningless
It's a toss-up. Just the nature of caucuses.
And actually, it is sort of refreshing to know we can tune in on caucus night and not really know already who is going to win.
qui tacet consentire
Hey.....!
I tend to like polls that agree with me...... :)
If you look inside the poll numbers, more independents are saying they will caucus for Democrats and of those more are leaning to Obama.
Last years DMR poll was in exact alignment with the results of the Iowa caucus. So I'll give this poll extra weight. I don't want to kill hope yet!
As far as electability, again IF the polls are reliable, Barack beats ALL Republicans in a head to head match up.
As far as the honesty of saying you support a minority race candidate, and going behind the curtain and actually pulling that lever, you can look to how Harold Ford polled and the final results. That myth has been busted, and it is the conservative Michael Barone who went over those numbers with a fine tooth comb.
It's a New Year, so don't squeeze the hope out of me. You can do that tomorrow.
Regardless...... its wild that so many people seem interested and are paying attention all across America to this all important Presidential election.
It is the economy, stupid.
I'll be glad when Iowa is over
It's getting pretty ridiculous over at DKos. Elsewhere too I imagine.
qui tacet consentire
They need a push
It's time for the GOP to decide what it wants to be: sensible and pro-individual liberty, or the father figure (social conservatism).
I would humbly suggest the former. Social conservatism is becoming as harmful to liberty as modern liberalism.
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
I think they decided years ago
I'd put it as a physically and emotionally abusive father figure ("Sure I hit my kids, but it builds character!")
You look at the Supreme Court nominees, Terry Schiavo etc. I think their choice was pretty clear. Now if you think they should change their minds, hey, I'm all for that.
The GOP Coalition
For lack of a better term, the GOP "coalition" includes many that do not fall into the social conservative realm that you're describing --- for example, 99% of our red bars do not, and the red-leaning purples and yellows do not in any way conform to that stereotype. Do we even have a bona-fide social conservative here anymore? Leon was, and maybe BirdDog is -- I don't know him well enough to know.
The problem comes in in that they (our 99% for example) allow the social conservatives to have too much power in the party and those social conservatives are acting in ways that are opposed to the more libertarian leanings of the rest of the coalition. It's time to choose again, I think. Do the social conservatives stay and every one else go, or vice versa?
Now, the fault may be pinned this time on George, who turned out to be way more socially conservative than I think they expected him to be.
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
Something...
...I and others have been working to correct in the Party!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Unfortunately, this site is not a representative sample
Like it or not, without social conservatives and "big government conservatives", there is no Republican Party. Small-government conservatives such as myself make up maybe 10-20% of voters.
Reducing the size of government is not popular.
Eliminating government waste is
It is the economy, stupid.
Reducing the size of the government is very popular
as long as you are talking about the portion of the government that affects other people.
If you are referring to the government programs that directly affect me, then you are talking about vital services.
That's how it works. Everyone has his own piece of pie and goes along with everybody else's piece of the pie so as to not screw up his own deal.
qui tacet consentire
Is it?
(with apologies for the sentence-splicing)
I wish! I'm not sure even that much is popular.
If taxes were evenly distributed among the population, each of us would save approximately $3 for each $1B saved in federal government spending. $3 isn't much. That SCHIP expansion that I think is unwarranted? $35B over 5 years, or $7B/year? (Let's ignore the budget gimmicks that make this figure inaccurate, since they don't change the overall conclusion.) That's maybe $23 for each of us per year. Not enough for the average person to get all freaked out about.
And then even this understates things. A large fraction of Americans pay very little in federal taxes. The bottom 50% of tax returns filed pay just 3% of all income taxes
, with many of those returns owing negative income tax (credits are greater than taxes). That's 66 million returns paying just $28B in income taxes, with an effective tax rate of just 3%. Percentiles 51 through 75 pay an average federal income tax rate of just 7%. Even percentiles 76 through 90 pay only a 9% tax rate. If you're not in the 91-100 income percentiles, you're probably not paying a whole lot in federal income tax.
(And no, payroll taxes don't invalidate any of this, since Social Security and Medicare are both on net progressive when you take their benefit structure into account. Especially Medicare.)
For the average person, there is presently little or no reason to see much downside to the federal government handing out more goodies. From your point of view, those goodies are basically free.
This is one of the reasons I think it's very important for as much government taxation and spending to happen on the most local level possible (state better than federal, city or county better than state). If the numerator is $1B and the denominator is 302M (the entire US), your share of the taxes required is $3. If the numerator is $1B and the denominator is 24M (Texas), your share of the taxes required is $42. If the numerator is $1B and the denominator is 920K (Travis County, TX), your share of the taxes required is $1087.
A $1B boondoggle at the federal level? People will shrug. A $1B boondoggle in Texas? People will notice, though they might not do anything. A $1B boondoggle in Travis Couny? People will be *pissed*.
The old adage is
that the federal government is most efficient at raising money and local governments are most efficient at spending it. That is generally true. That's the idea behind the CDBG program, which works pretty well.
But I'll give you a good example of how one man's waste is another man's vital program.
In Birmingham, Alabama, there is a large iron statue of the Roman god of the forge, Vulcan, that sits atop Red Mountain overlooking the city. It's been there a long time and has always been the symbol of the city and a beloved icon.
A while back it was in danger of collapsing because it was rusting because some idiot years ago had filled the inside of it halfway with concrete. The park it is in had to be closed and a big private fundraising program was established to raise the $12 million or so to redo the statue.
Well, the fundraising came up short so our congressional delegation managed to get $3 million from the federal government to help out.
McCain denounced the money for Vulcan as a boondoggle.
Indeed.
qui tacet consentire
I'm with McCain
I have no problem with Birmingham or the state of Alabama spending their own money on that statue. Nor do I have a problem with the statue itself. I *do* have a problem with them spending *my* money on that statue.
I don't see a whole lot of reason to believe that this is the case. The Texas system (state is mostly funded by a sales tax, localities are mostly funded by a property tax) would seem to be a lot less economically harmful than the federal system, which is full of all sorts of loopholes and preferences and double-taxation and so on.
It doesn't matter anyway
Even if the feds were the most efficient, that doesn't mean we should adopt it. I thought we were supposed to be a federal republic. We don't just throw that away because it's more efficient to be a unitary republic.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Personality Parties vs viable Third parties
The only way a third party will develop is if one of the other parties has a mass migration and is willing to lose and party-build for several cycles. You could see the Republicans fracture and have the new party blame everything on the 'Old Republicans'; i(ncluding the new issues they blame on the Democrats who rule unchecked for 8-20 years. Go through Protest Vote->Opposition Party->Contender.
It'd be interesting to see a third party focus at the district level, with messages saying that they have a serious contender "Party-X-Candidate" running in a specific district and "go ahead, hold your nose and vote for whoever you want in your district, but send your money to those districts."
But I don't think it will happen, and this running for President is nothing but venting.