Sarah Palin open to splitting the GOP and creating a third party

[phlinak]

Originally Posted by Griffis

Not a bad idea necessarily. She could take all the fundy/neocon big government Big Brother nanny state fringe wackadoos with her and maybe the GOP could finally return to some actual conservative principles, engage once more in something resembling intellectual activity and pertinent debate and be taken seriously again.

^THIS^

Maybe there are still a few left in the GOP who are not whack-a-doodles and have strong enough numbers to retake your party.

I tend to lean liberal myself but I sincerely wish you success, because intellectual activity and pertinent debate will benefit everyone and produce better results overall.

[rbohm]

Originally Posted by sickofnyc

Then the word "Party" was not applicable. If it started as a grassroots movement that was only concerned with what you claim and that is how the story goes, then it has been hijacked by other movements and that has been made quite clear during these the last two years.

whether the word party is applicable or not is not my call, its theirs, they chose the name not me.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by rbohm

you might want to check that again with real facts. in 1992 ross perot got 19% of the popular vote in the presidential election, and in 1996 he got 8% of the popular vote. as far as i know that is the most any thrid party candidate has gotten since abe lincoln won the presidency in 1860 when the republican party was a third party, the whigs were still around then but dying off quickly.

But Perot was never a member of any party when he ran for President. He ran as strictly an Independent, so he can't be counted as a Libertarian.

I believe that only a truly independent 3rd candidate with no declared party affiliation is the only person who could beat the two party system and become elected.

As long as there is a party affiliation, any candidate is going to run afoul of something in a party's platform these days. And any part affiliation is going to become a target for something by both of the two majors.

Ralph Nader could have been an independent, but his Green party affiliation entangled him. That affiliation made him a spoiler for the Democrats. At least, that's what the Democratic party claimed after they lost the 2000 election.

But in his own exit polling, Nader claimed 25% of his voters said they would have voted for Bush, 38% said they would have voted for Gore, and the rest would not have voted at all. That means that Nader pulled in 37% of voters who only showed up to vote for him. In all, Nader got 5% of the 2000 vote.

Ralph Nader - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Think about that. In 2010, Gallup polls showed 29% identified as Republicans, 31% as Democrats, and 38% as Independents. The same polling in 2011 showed the Independent identification rose to 40%.

That means that Nader was the only candidate in 2000 that was attractive to roughly 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3 of his voters. His lopsided Democratic leaners came from his Green party affiliation, but the independents who would have not voted for anyone else were only 1 point behind that group. With no party affiliation, Nader could very likely have pulled in more Republicans and fewer Democrats.

Perot was as close to a true independent populist as it gets. He may have been conservative at one time, but he crossed swords with both Reagan and G.W.Bush over the return of the Viet Nam POW/MIAs, and never declared a party affiliation afterward.
During his 1996 campaign, Perot hired a top Democratic campaign manager, Hamilton Jordan, and a top Republican manager, Ed Rollins, as equal managers.

At one point, Perot led the race with 39% of the vote, but faded because he failed to heed his managers' advice and a personal need to control everything. This led Rollins to resign, and Jordan to give up and let Perot have his way. In the end, Perot shot himself in the foot and pulled apart his winning campaign due to his personality.

Right now, as it most often is, the swing voters- the independents- are the decision makers in our Presidential elections.

The candidate who learns what attracts that group, goes for them with no entangling party platforms or party conflicts, and finds and listens to savvy advisors from both parties, could be the next President.

Perot never called himself an Independent. He said he was the Reform candidate, and ran under the Reform name on the ballots. I think that was one of the smartest things he did, and he was the smartest of the 1996 bunch.

I also believe that if Perot had won, a Reform party would have been organized around him, and could have become the party of independent voters.