Comment on Third Parties at LRC
Written by James Ostrowski on January 18, 2010 – 9:48 pm -Posted by James Ostrowski on January 18, 2010 08:37 PM
Third parties have a dreadful track record in US political history. There are huge formal and informal obstacles to their success. That doesn’t mean a tea party could not emerge. First, I’m not a statistician, however, my hunch is there are not enough prior instances, say, in the last 100 years, to “prove” a third party cannot win. (Perot was leading the polls before he self-destructed.) Further, the best route for a third party is not to “join the crowd,” but to wholly replace one of the two parties. That is in my view the most likely approach for a tea party. That is what happened from 1856-1860: in just four years, the Whigs disappeared and outside the South were replaced by the Republicans. If you take the current Republican Party and subtract the grassroots tea party folks, there isn’t much left other than hacks and the country club Republicans. Thus, in principle, a tea party could simply replace the GOP and thereby obviate concerns over splitting the anti-Democratic vote. If a tea party did emerge, we could once again have an anti-statist party in America.
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January 18th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
[...] Third Parties Third parties have a dreadful track record in US political history. There are huge formal and informal obstacles to their success. That doesn’t mean a tea party could not emerge. First, I’m not a statistician, however, my hunch is there are not enough prior instances, say, in the last 100 years, to “prove” a third party cannot win. (Perot was leading the polls before he self-destructed.) Further, the best route for a third party is not to “join the crowd,” but to wholly replace one of the two parties. That is in my view the most likely approach for a tea party. That is what happened from 1856-1860: in just four years, the Whigs disappeared and outside the South were replaced by the Republicans. If you take the current Republican Party and subtract the grassroots tea party folks, there isn’t much left other than hacks and the country club Republicans. Thus, in principle, a tea party could simply replace the GOP and thereby obviate concerns over splitting the anti-Democratic vote. If a tea party did emerge, we could once again have an anti-statist party in America. [...]