From Stark
Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls is not a welcome development for many GOP conservatives.
Sonia Smith, writing in Texas Monthly, notes that conservative commentators seem to be trying to outdo one another in heaping abuse on Gingrich.
(Here’s an example from George Will at the Washington Post.)
That has fueled speculation that Ron Paul could rally the faithful as a third-party candidate. But others note that this development would pave Obama’s way to a second term while creating awkwardness for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
(I would also observe that, besides getting Obama re-elected, a Ron Paul candidacy would also be another step toward disintegration of our political system’s ability to build concensus that is necessary for successful government. I do not want ANYONE elected to the Presidency with 40 percent of the popular vote.)
40% of the popular vote, would that be less than 10% of the population?
The type of election small factions should dream about!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I hope he does run as 3rd Party if he does not get the nomination
RP supporters know better than that. They know that the GOP nomination is the smartest route.
This speculation could be the conservative media trying to scare people about RP, or RP people indicating the dire need to rally around RP, or a combination of both.
If RP somehow surprises everyone in Iowa and a few early states, he could theoretically do what Obama did in 2008.
The GOP establishment does not want an actual small government, sound currency, cut the military to balance the budget, kind of guy. However, if he somehow beat the system and got the GOP nomination, we would find out if anti-corporate Democrats would be willing to give up some crucial social wedge issues in order to save the economy and war issues.
As a third party, RP would need 51% to sidestep the major party system. This would hinge on the middle part of the ven diagram that shows the overlap between anti-corporate occupy and anti-government tea sentiments… ie the growing part of the population that perceives that the fix is in between government and corporate influence.
But coalitions seldom form like that, since there probably isn’t a 51% that can agree a diverse range of issues. Many of the needed voters would have to sacrifice some issues to unify around the economy and war alone.
Yup to all or most of that, Richard.
Paul’s stance as a dove/isolationist makes him intriguing–and the biggest threat to the status quo since–who? William Jennings Bryan? Huey Long? George Wallace?
Look at the Canadians over the last decade. They seem to be doing just fine without “consensus”– a lot better than us, in fact!
Scott: a valid point–but the Canadians have a parliamentary system, with a head of state who represents a governing coalition if there is no majority party. We have an independently-elected president.
As I see it, we either need to keep the two-party system (which, of course, evolved without any constitutional groundwork) or we need to adopt a parliamentary system that forges consensus after voters choose their MPs.
Didn’t a third party once abolished slavery in this country?
So third parties can’t be all bad!
Maybe they come along when they are really really needed?
IMHO if the GOP elects another big spender like W, they will be going the route of the whigs.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
AFY–indeed, I believe our first Republican president did have something to do with the abolition of slavery…:-)
The election of 1860 also illustrates the cost of political fragmentation, with four candidates carrying states and winning electoral votes: Bell, Breckenridge, Douglas and Lincoln. This political difficulty was resolved the hard way…Of course, if Douglas’s political strategy had succeeded in convincing the southern slave powers that he would be a safe choice as president, and if he had managed to get elected on that basis…what would have happened then? I suspect the slaves would have been freed eventually, but the wait might have been a few more decades, and the war might have come eventually as well. But who knows?
I would hate to see the union break apart — or public finances collapse — over the political issues that we have been unable to resolve in the current environment.
John, I agree that the slave issue would have been solved eventually, the question is would there have had to be 600,000 dead in the doing.
IMHO this country today is at a crossroads as it was then and the slavery issue today isn’t one of color but one of economics, some see it as class warfare between the have’s and have not’s; others see it as an issue of liberty between the individual and the might of government, freedom is in the balance, sides are being picked and I for one hope for solutions that are based on freedom and love and not hatred and slavery. What would a collapse (one that some wish for) today lead to?
Hopefully more calmer cooler heads will prevail today than back then because if not the toll then most likely would be a fraction of the one today.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!