Read My Lips: No Third Party

Pre release of websites: VoteCongressOnly.com // VoteDownBallot.com

Read my lips....no new party! But we can have just as much fun anyway...

Read my lips..no new third party! For soooooo many reasons. But that does not mean you cannot register your disapproval in this upcoming election without sitting out. Sitting out was a disaster in 2006....in the name of "punishing the Republicans" the voters punished the COUNTRY by ushering in more power for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

But consider this....if in November, as B. Hussein Obama rolls to a victory over John McCain, there is a huge movement that shows the conservative base is alive, well educated, nuanced, informed and also practical. It is a swell of votes...say a couple million...that vote for Republican candidates for congress (senate and house) and other offices...while not voting for anyone for President. (yes, you can do that).

Third party movements have many flaws...the biggest of which is they do not work. Yes, I know Jesse Ventura made it work. But the irony of that campaign was that Ventura campaigned hard as a common sense hard nosed conservative....then he won by shocking the Democrat and the Republican in the race (Norm Coleman, btw)...and got into office and had no friggin idea how...or why....he won.

He listened to the pundits....the same ones who said he had no chance of winning....when they said he won by being "independent." Well, yes, independent by voter registration. But conservative by platform. Coleman ran as wimpy lace panty moderate...while the Dem was a far far lefty.

And after listening to the pundits, and getting some bad press, Ventura limped off to the left in his governance and had a disasterous moderate administration that was so bad he did not even consider running for re election.

Another big flaw in third party movements is that they tend to muddy the water between the Democrats and Republicans. This almost always works in favor of the Dems...though a third party run by NYC Mayor Bloomberg would have likely worked in the GOP's favor this year...since he is so liberal...and would take votes from Obama and in Blue states only.

The Ross Perot movement in 92 and 96 elected Clinton because Perot struck a nerve in folks who were conservative...but too stupid to know it....and because George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole were too wimpy to define it so they would know. It was stunning, as Perot would agree with Bush about 80% of the time in the debates, and no one in the Bush campaign (especially the President) was smart enough to call him on it.

I would add that in 1994, the Contract with America congressional election year, that the contract itself was a whole lot of what Perot was talking about when he would say on CNN "Larry...Larry...it's broke...and we'll just open up the hood and fix it." Almost all of Perot's fixes were consistent with the Contract with America.

But a down ballot vote only (down ballot is term for everything below presidential race, for example) movement could work. Meaning it could work well enough to send some strong messages. This could be by sending a strong message PRE election and shocking the McCain campaign into not running as a moderate....or it could work in the election...if there could be a situation where the Democrat won the White House while the GOP won the congress. This is a long shot...but could happen if by some chance McCain keeps it close. And it could send a very strong message POST election....working in concert with the Move The RNC movement...to the party apparatus that has so perverted the GOP...if there were say 48 million votes for McCain but say 52 million votes for GOP candidates for other national offices.

In the meantime, it's as much fun and as exciting and as "dangerous" as a third party type movement...but it actually is viable and can be successful in different stages and by different increments. And it has legs...stretching into the future...not just the 2008 election cycle. MORE LATER. Buckle up.