Steve Baldwin, who appears to be insane, has brainstormed a way for the far right to create a third party to supplant the Republican Party without helping Democrats win elections in the interim. His idea is that the party would be built online, gaining members, supporters, donors, and potential candidates, but that it would remain virtual and inactive in elections until a certain threshold of support was met. When they reached, say, 20 million supporters, they would launch a slate of candidates.
It’s not a terrible idea as long as they realize that they’d still be trying not to win but to supplant the GOP as the second of the two big national parties. Whenever they launched, and however strong they managed to be in their inaugural election season, they would initially help the Democrats win elections. If they were strong enough, however, they could replace the Republicans as the dominant party on the right. Maybe by the second election season, they could emerge as the first choice of the right and perhaps the GOP would simply go away.
I still think a better way to go is to have candidates declare themselves as “constitutional Republicans” or “progressive Democrats.” The candidates would commit to voting for one of their own on the first ballot for Speaker of the House. Over time, pledged elected officials could become a majority within the respective caucuses, and gain control over the leadership.
I have to run an errand or I would flesh this out. I can do so in the comments.
I like your idea, Booman. But Baldwin’s is not bad, either. If democracy is to be saved, we have to ditch the two party system as currently devised with Wall Street pulling the strings of both parties.
The problem with Baldwin’s idea is avoiding astroturf, but that may be a feature to him instead of a bug.
If democracy is to be saved, we have to ditch the two party system as currently devised with Wall Street pulling the strings of both parties.
How do you intend to do that?
Running highly charismatic candidates for President every fourth year, and disappearing in between.
Baldwin has one idea. Booman has another.
I don’t think it is possible to do away with the two-party system, but it is possible to either:
a) take over an existing party, or
b) create a party that supplants one of the two majors.
I think it is much easier to do a) than b).
Conservatives showed us how to do a).
We have to go back to 1856-1860 to see an example of b).
The only thing that would work for liberals is “A” and apparently they don’t even have the stomach to do that. “B” is certainly out of the question. Just look at all the people still whining about Nader, instead of blaming Gore.
they?
It’s easier to blame Nader than all of the Democratic voters who apparently cannot think strategically and voted for the “pure” candidate with no shot of winning, even if that was essentially a vote for Bush. People don’t get as angry when you blame them indirectly.
I blame the one that failed to meet his objective. He ran a crappy campaign and lost. You shouldn’t lose your home state when you and your father held office. There’s no excuse.
Additional parties already exist within the two party framework. The GOP has rabid nuts and roasted nuts and they’re duking it out all the time in competitive primaries. Strengthening the Progressive caucus is the short term – and much more effective – approach we should take on the democratic side.
When I was a lad the rabid racists were Democrats, and the environmentalists — the last GOP candidate I ever voted for, Frank Hatch, was one — were Republicans.
My black Senator — Ed Brooke — was a Republican. And John Stennis and Eugene McCarthy both sat in the Democratic Senate caucus.
We have three, four, five — Michael Lind says six — parties, but only two labels.
In Europe, you fight the election, form the coalition, and govern.
In America, you form the coalition, fight the election, and govern.
And the movement conservatives arose to try to purge the GOP down to a European-style ideological political party. They’ve only had success at that by controlling the media. But now the purges have taken them over the edge.
At least the Democrats have now lost most of their Blue Dogs. Its the establishment-oriented New Democrats and the remnants of the DLC bunch that are holding up progress at the moment. And the dynamic trio of Israel, Menedez, and Wasserman-Schultz making the electoral scene dismal.
I was going to dispute this because I count the New Democrats and DLC in the Blue Dogs. With your Southern perspective I’m sure you are more nuanced.
As for me, I see little difference between Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Rauner.
offshore $$ is a huge difference.
also, re: the nation states comment, sorry for sparse comment, little online time, but the entities you list were empires, kingdoms, and city states not nation states, which are a relatively recent state structure. but your point, that all of these have governance, refutes Norquists romantic notion of reading Ayn Rand in a state of nature
Just terminology. The state vs happy anarchy (“going Galt”) was the point, although Rome was a republic before acquiring an Empire. Athens? Smallish but a state.
Yes, I wonder what Caligula or Louis XIV would say about those claims.
Seabe commented specifically about the nation-state, not the same as governance. Athens, for example, was a city state, as was Rome initially, until it became an empire etc. that’s why Seabe wrote that it was “recent”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state
The only people they support running for office are Blue Dogs.
Yes, Steve Baldwin does appear to be insane:
Well, some combination of insane and stupid. Look at who he envisions joining his new party:
So it’s really just the next stop in the ongoing purge. The factions he cites overwhelmingly vote Republican already, so what’s going to be different about his new party? It will be purer, but also smaller. It’s generally understood that you win elections by expanding your base of support, not shrinking it. So that’s fine with me.
The recent experience on both ends of the spectrum is that campaign declarations of political position are worthless. What changes the party is the character of the party infrastructure. Neither the Baldwinites nor a lot of progressive Democrats have been up to the knock-down, drag-out intra-party fight that the modern conservatives carried out from 1946 in order to take over the Republican Party. Those fights are best taken where the party establishment is weakest, which is why modern conservatism changed the geographical base of the Republican Party.
Baldwin’s best bets are in New York, and the northeast. Progressive democrats are best poised to organize in areas where the county Democratic Party is non-existent or almost inactive. In fact, that was the strategy of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party–replace an inactive, self-serving, established Democratic Party that relied on one-party voters with a party that broadened participation. Their venue was not a primary fight or a county convention fight, but a move to get seated at the Democratic National Convention–which challenged the position of the national party.
There is no way to avoid spoiling the party closest to your own movement. After all, you are seeking to replace them.
It’s not an entirely bad idea. It’s something like what happened with the Republicans. They ran for two election cycles before Lincoln won, but they ran using already existing political infrastructure left around by the collapse of the Whigs.
Shorter version: If we had more votes we could take over the party.
Exactly. The major reason why we don’t already have a functioning social democracy is a shortage of actually-existing social democrats.
And the powers that be have invested billions of dollars over the past hundred years to make sure that the number of social democrats does not increase to the tipping point.
And of course it has nothing to do with liberals until recently (like 2006 recently) taking unpopular positions with women’s rights, LGBT rights, gun proliferation, international relations, labor unions, and taxation.
It’s all shadowy billionaires. If it weren’t for them we’d have a social democracy.
Never underestimate the power of false consciousness….
I, for one, welcome the neo-KnowNothing Party, in their jihad against the neo-Whigs.
Open carry on the 2016 GOP Convention floor!
Where can I contribute to the ammunition fund?
Do all the members of the Republican party just disappear and become politically inactive?
Does the new party hang a sign on the door saying, “No former Republican party members welcome?”
How would this be anything other than the current Republican party with a different name on it?
The Republican party is looked at pretty negatively here.
This is all just a big re-branding. Nothing more.
I think this is a great idea but I have one suggestion. The GOP plus this spur party should try this in a new country. One that would appreciate their style of politics, Russia comes to mind.
So hey all you GOP members and spur GOP want a be members pack up and relocate to the open arms of Brother Putin in Russia. He would love you all there.