Currently, the only Republican senators from New England are Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine. The only Republican senator from the Mid-Atlantic is Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. There aren’t any Republican senators from Virginia or West Virginia. And there are zero Republicans from New England in the House of Representatives. The Democrats are weak in the South, but they aren’t anywhere near as weak as the Republicans are in the central-to-northern Atlantic. Is it time for someone to launch a third party that will supplant the Republican Party in New England? I think it could be done. And it could include New York and California, too, due to the unconventional election laws in those two states.
In New England, the Republicans are so unlikely to win seats that there isn’t much risk of throwing an election to the Democrats by dividing the right. In New York, the electoral fusion law allows candidates to run on multiple slates. That means that it is possible to run simultaneously as a member of the Republican Party and as a member of a rival party. In California, the general election isn’t necessarily between the Democratic nominee and the Republican nominee. Instead, California general elections are between the two top vote-getters in the primaries, even if they are from the same party, or a major and a minor party nominee.
Politicians who are ideologically similar to Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Jeffords, Susan Collins, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, could in theory form their own party and run candidates mainly in New York, California, and New England. They might be able to build up a decent bloc in Congress before too long. While they might be more naturally inclined to caucus with the Democrats, like independent Angus King of Maine, they could caucus with the Republicans and force them to moderate their policies.
If I won the lottery, I might even try to make this happen. The modern southern-dominated GOP really should not even try to represent the values of Blue America. It’s a sham.
