Oh, Stop the Third-Party Stuff ... Just Stop

I'm in the process of living through the last months of the Obama administration and its miserable legacy -- the loss of the prestige of the USA, the immeasurably high costs of Obamacare, deterioration of our relationship with friends, loss of the the fear of us by our enemies.  Overreach by the IRS, the Justice Department; underreach by the military.

But we are going to survive.  We can hope that the American voter has learned enough not to let it happen again anytime soon, but we will survive.

That is my lesson to the deeply misguided who are scrambling to try to get a third candidate or a third party whumped up in a hurry to run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, if she is not in prison by then.  We will survive.

Well, that's my sub-lesson.  More importantly, there is a reason that it is insane to be trying to vent one's frustration by imagining that a third party can possibly address the problem.  That reason is actually pretty simple, at least to me.  As I wrote a long time ago, there are not three schools of thought around which a voting bloc can coalesce; there are two.

They are called "liberalism" and "conservatism", and they differ fundamentally on a lot of things -- the role of government, the obligation of the citizen, the freedom of that citizen from excessive taxation, the sanctity of our founding documents, that sort of thing. Most importantly, though, the type of upbringing that leads an individual to feel more conservative or more liberal on one issue does the same for the rest.

That is a simple way of saying that there is not a third school of thought that could attract voters.  The various issues I cited in the referenced piece align so commonly to the two camps, that those who are left in what the press calls "the middle" represent a chaotically disorganized set of beliefs that are as likely to oppose each other as to align.  Please read the piece; it's brief enough.

A third candidate, like a Ross Perot back in the day, can only represent one or maybe two major issues -- if he represented more, he'd be in the party that already holds that view.  Accordingly, he will draw votes from both sides but predominantly from one other candidate -- the one he is actually more aligned with.  The rub is that by doing so, he directly hurts his own cause in the issues he supports, by causing the election of candidate of the opposite view.

That, friends, is what the Republicans who are pondering the sudden-onset candidacy of some white knight as a third-party candidate are inviting self-inflicted wounds.  Trump not hawkish enough for you?  Well, a third-party alternative is going to siphon very few votes from Hillary Clinton and a lot from Trump -- losing all the other issues.  Trump not sufficiently pro-life?  A third-party candidate would ensure a win for the Planned Parenthood-friendly Hillary, if she is not ... you get it.

These Republicans need to take a deep breath and separate the candidate from the party.  You may really, really like Alternative Candidate X.  Shoot, I might like him or her, too.  But we also have to vote for a core set of principles.  And those principles are already represented in an existing party.  For a huge percentage of voters, enough of them are represented either by the Republicans or the Democrats that it has made sense to vote fairly consistently along those lines.

Even if 20% of the core principles of the party to which a voter leans are not that of the voter, it rarely makes sense to vote for the other candidate.  And that applies even stronger to a third candidate or third party, since one would be voting against his predominant self-interest.

When a party starts thinking that way, it is suicidal.  Not just stupid, but suicidal.  Take a good, long look at the Supreme Court and tell me that you're willing to sacrifice conservative interests on the Court for a futile pursuit like a third party run.

Just stop it -- now.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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