Dreaming of a Third Party
Should conservative patriots abandon the GOP?
Over the weekend, Idaho’s Constitution Party announced the formation of a central committee for Ada County. When I saw the story, it made me think about the constant temptation we face to leave the Republican Party in favor of a group that is more ideologically pure.
The Constitution Party is one of many so-called third parties in America. The most prominent over the last few decades have been the Libertarians and the Greens, but there are several dozen other less famous groups. None have seen much success beyond the local level. The Constitution Party claims to be the true standard-bearer for conservatism, as opposed to the GOP that is infiltrated by moderates. The Libertarians always make noise during presidential elections, but have not accomplished much of substance either.
In the wake of the contested presidential election in 2020, I heard many conservatives suggest that we break away from the corrupt, decadent, impotent Republican Party and instead form a new organization dedicated to traditional values and America First ideals. Should we form a “MAGA Party?” Or should we continue to work within the Republican Party instead?
Many people have decried America’s two-party system over the years. Every political and social issue is distilled into a binary option, and Republicans and Democrats have become ever more polarized over the past twenty years. If you are pro-life, for example, you have no home at all in the Democratic Party, but what if you support socialized medicine or other leftist ideas? Additionally, if there is an issue on which the two parties mostly align, such as free trade, increased immigration, endless foreign wars, and massive foreign aid, then there is no voice for anyone who disagrees.
Some have suggested that we should be more like the United Kingdom, with a parliamentary system that allows minor parties to influence the vote on their pet issues. In 2010, David Cameron’s Conservatives won a plurality of seats in Parliament, but not an outright majority, forcing them to form a coalition with the left-wing Liberal Democrats. This gave the LibDems a platform to advance some of their own policies, while the far-left Labour Party was completely shut out.
This form of government is a nonstarter in the United States. The two-party system was essentially created by the Constitution itself, with its “first past the post” system. YouTuber CGP Grey explains it well in this old video:
Why not just create a new conservative party to supplant the Republicans?
On its website, the Constitution Party of Idaho claims that so-called moderates have taken over the Republican Party, which is really the only game in town in our state. Their solution is to urge voters to select the most conservative candidate on the ballot, even if that person is not a Republican. However, the only way this works is if the Constitution Party wins enough statewide races to earn a seat at the table. If only one or two candidates won, they would be marginalized in Boise. What is more likely is that they will not even win, but will, as Grey explains in the video, draw votes away from the Republican candidate, allowing the Democrat to win, thereby strengthening the power of the left in Idaho - the opposite of what conservatives want.
The best argument for this plan is that if a Republican candidate is losing votes to a third party, then he does not deserve to win anyway, and this should influence the GOP to nominate a better conservative candidate next time. While I grant that, I think that a conservative candidate has a better chance of influencing the party from within, rather than from without.
Let us take a look at how third parties have fared in our history.
Ironically, the Republicans themselves are the most successful third party in American history. Despite being nicknamed the “Grand Old Party,” the GOP is in fact the younger partner to the Democrats, who grew out of the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson in the 1800s and Andrew Jackson in the 1820s.
Forming a new party was easier in the 19th century than it is today, as our political system was still in a state of flux. By the 1850s, the Whigs had disintegrated and the various start-ups that aimed to replace them, such as the Know Nothings and the Free Soil Party, gained little traction. The Republicans formed in 1854 on a platform of only two planks: “to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery.” (While the GOP can claim to have successfully ended slavery, they have unfortunately failed in their mission to preserve traditional marriage.)
The first presidential candidate for the new Republican Party was former Army officer and military governor of California John C. Fremont. The 1856 presidential election was split between Fremont, the Know Nothing candidate and former president Millard Fillmore, and the eventual winner, Democrat James Buchanan. Fillmore and Fremont combined for nearly 55% of the popular vote, but Buchanan won a solid majority in the electoral college.
The Republicans were much more successful next time. By 1860, the issue of slavery had become the singularly dominant issue in American politics. The Republican Party had worked hard to become the voice of abolition. Meanwhile, the Democrats split between three different candidates - sitting Vice President John Breckinridge, who was pro-slavery, former Senator John Bell of Tennessee. who opposed secession, and Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who preached popular sovereignty, which would allow the voters of states and territories to choose whether to be slave or free.
Abraham Lincoln won less than 40% of the popular vote, but had a resounding victory in the electoral college. The Republican Party was here to stay.
The next third party movement was made up of progressive populists from the rural west in the late 1800s James B. Weaver won 22 electoral votes as the Populist Party candidate in 1892, and by 1896 the firebrand William Jennings Bryan united the Populists with the Democrats. Nevertheless, he lost two consecutive elections to Republican William McKinley. By the early 1900s, both parties had adopted various planks of the populist progressive platform. Once again, working within the existing party structure paid off more than trying to run outside of it.
President Theodore Roosevelt, who had championed progressive policies during his administration, retired in 1908. He was dissatisfied with his successor William Howard Taft, challenging him in 1912 as the candidate for the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party. Despite running an energized campaign, all he accomplished was to split the right wing vote and allow Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win with less than 43% of the popular vote. Wilson would not only usher in such pernicious policies as the Federal Reserve and the income tax, which still trouble us today, but he also took the United States into World War I, costing the lives of more than 65,000 Americans.
The last time a third party candidate won any electoral votes was in 1968, when Alabama Governor George Wallace ran on a platform of racial segregation. He won the South, but President Richard Nixon successfully integrated the region into the Republican fold before his 49 state landslide in 1972.
In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot saw early success in his campaign, at times polling ahead of both President George H.W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. In the end, Perot carried zero states, and might well have split the conservative vote enough to allow Clinton to win with just 43% of the popular vote.
Do you see a pattern yet? The most common result of a third party run throughout history has been to split the conservative vote and allow the less conservative candidate to win. On the other hand, working from within the party has often been successful. In 1976, former California Governor Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford in the GOP primary. Ford’s nomination was not secured until the convention, and Reagan continued his crusade to move the party rightward leading to his successful campaign in 1980.
The evolution of the Republican Party over the last twelve years is encouraging. Remember that in 2008, the GOP nominated the politically moderate warmonger John McCain as our presidential candidate. He lost to Barack Obama for many reasons, but a big one was the fact that McCain offered no real reason to vote for him. He had no vision to share with voters, and he even undermined his own VP candidate when she attacked Obama.
By 2010, populists on both sides of the spectrum were revolting against the establishment. The Tea Party expressed the frustration of conservatives over the expansion of government while Occupy Wall Street embodied the anger of the progressive left at how big corporations were increasingly running the show. The time was ripe for a leader who could unite both these populist factions.
Instead, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney.
These populist movements both went to work attempting to remake their respective parties. Ron Paul’s campaign worked hard to put liberty-minded activists in positions of power throughout the Republican Party after 2012, all the way down to precinct committeemen. Supporters of Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders were doing the same thing in the Democratic Party. In 2016, Sanders himself ran in the Democratic primary while Donald Trump captured the populist spirit on the GOP side. Sanders, however, ultimately surrendered to the left-wing establishment, despite credible evidence that Hillary Clinton had worked with the DNC to rig the primary. On the other hand, Trump’s triumph that year was at least partially due to the hard work of grassroots activists who had spent four years remaking the party from the ground up. Many Bernie Sanders supported switched their allegiance to Trump, as he was the only candidate remaining who represented the populist movement in America.
The GOP of today barely resembles the party that nominated John McCain fourteen years ago. The party of tax cuts, free trade, and endless war is on its last legs, if not dead entirely. While some old guard politicians like Mitch McConnell remain in power, they cannot hang on forever. A new generation of Republicans is rising - Joe Kent of Washington, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Blake Masters of Arizona, Anthony Sabatini of Florida - and they know what is at stake at this moment in history. They know that the GOP must evolve past simply caring about GDP and instead present a vision for the country we want to bequeath to our children and grandchildren.
Starting a third party is tremendously hard work, so why reinvent the wheel? The GOP has name recognition, an existing power structure, and built-in access to tens of millions of voters. While I understand the desire to start fresh, we will be far more effective changing the Republican Party from within than attacking it from without. All you have to do is show up. Attend your legislative district meetings. If your precinct does not have a committeeman, then file to run - you will probably be unopposed. Get enough like-minded people in these positions and you can decide who chairs your committee, who represents you in the state party, and what measures are adopted at the state level. You can also influence who runs for office under the Republican banner, or even run yourself!
The people of the Idaho Constitution Party are all solid conservative patriots. I am sure we agree on most every issue and I would be proud to fight alongside them in the great battle of our time. But the answer to GOP corruption and decadence is not to marginalize ourselves. The only way to win is to stay in the game. Let us work to retire establishment politicians like Jim Risch, Mike Crapo, and Scott Bedke. Let us take the reigns of the Grand Old Party, which, despite its faults, is still the best-positioned organization to restore liberty to the American people and to keep Idaho the last conservative redoubt in our country.
Very insightful commentary Brian. Thanks for posting it. While we had Libertarian and Constitutional party candidates here in Wyoming during the 2020 general election, they had absolutely no impact at all when looking at the overall Democratic and Republican candidate vote tallies.