They could only emerge in a power vacuum left by a disintegrating major party. That's how the Republicans did it; they emerged out of the ashes of the Whig Party in the early 1850s, combining some Whig qualities with the abolitionist movement and tariff supporters. A Third Party has never risen up in the midst of two strong parties and beat one down. They always come from a vacuum left by one declining. Sometimes they take awhile; the Federalist Party ceased to exist by 1820, but it took 15 years for the Whigs to rise as a viable second party. Then, after the Whigs fell apart, it took a few years for the GOP to build up momentum. The Progressives are kind of a stretch for me to count them; they came up under our two party system in the late 1800's/ early 1900s, but made only one brief flash of power during the 1912 Election. Even then, they were taking advantage of a severely weakened and divided Republican Party, culminating in the bitter feud between William H. Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, and still needed a dynamic political giant, Roosevelt, to get them popular appeal. After 1912, the Progressives quickly faded. I don't really count Ross Perot's Reform Party. That party was all Perot, and even he never won a single electoral vote, carried a single state, and the party has only two elected officals on state and federal level to it's credit after a decade of existence. They've also been racked by internal feuding. And the Reformers are merely GOP-Lite, in my opinion (and on some issues, they are even further right of the GOP). The Libertarians actually have a unique identity and philosophy that could appeal to many and siphon voters from both parties if they could get their message out. The Democrats collapsing would be the perfect oppurtunity. No other party has the broad appeal they do; the rest are all too far on the fringes or are single-issue parties. They could do it. But the Democrats must collapse before they can take their place. And that will only happen if the Democrats suffer several more humiliating defeats in a row and become more and more fringe and more and more sectarian.
Yeah I know. I have figureed out a lot of your preferences from your posts so I wasn't really targeting you. I was targeting those people that say Bush stole the election and such.....
But let's throw another wild card in here. What if Pat Buchanan had never split off from the GOP and run as an independent? Exit poll research since Election 2000 shows that Buchanan voters would have gone nearly 4-to-1 for Bush, much like Nader voters, who would have gone 3-to-1 for Gore had they voted. Using these numbers, it was deduced that Buchanan's candidacy cost Bush three states: Maine, Wisconsin, and New Mexico. If most Buchanan votes had gone Bush's way in Florida, it wouldn't have been nearly as close as it was. Of course, had neither Nader nor Buchanan run, Gore would have won Florida. But losing the other three states, and no Buchanan making other states competitive, the margin still would have been razor thin.
all things considered, buchanan and nader both, nader cost kerry worse than buchanan hurt bush, and cost him the election. i hope it happens again. if buchanan runs or doesnt run, it doesnt matter, bush would have won. however, if nader does not run, gore wins. so nader made more of a difference.
