Welcome back Ralph Nader!
The Great Green Hope of Leftie La-La Land is back, and not a minute too soon!
Will he have much of an effect on this year’s election; only time will tell.
Did Ralph Nader hurt Al Gore’s chances of winning Florida in 2000? Absolutely! Did Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election? If you look at only Florida the answer is yes, but when you cannot even win your home state of Tennessee, which would have handed you the White House, I have a hard time empathizing with the former Vice President.
Third party candidates can indeed siphon off voters; Ross Perot did so in 1992, but that backlash was in response to President George H.W. Bush’s failure to maintain the strong conservative values of his predecessor Ronald Reagan. Perot took 18.91% to Bush’s 37.45% allowing Clinton to win by default with a paltry 43% of the vote.
In 1996, Perot took 8.4% of the vote compared to Dole’s 40.72% and Clinton’s 49.23%. I think it is safe to say that Ross Perot was indeed the GOP spoiler, definitely in 1992.
Ron Paul ran in 1988 but had virturally no impact on the outcome; Bush collected 53.37% to Dukasis’ 45.65%; Paul received 0.47% so he harmed no one.
In 1980 John Anderson made a good showing for himself as a Rockefeller Republican running as an independent collecting 6.61% of the vote compared to Reagan’s 50.75% and Carter’s 41.01%, but again, the third party candidate did not hurt the outcome.
When does it hurt a major party candidate? When the third party candidate is more conservative than the GOP candidate. We’ve shown the effect Ross Perot had on the more moderate Bush and Dole candidacies. George Wallace almost cost Richard Nixon the 1968 election by receiving 13.53% of the vote compared to Nixon’s 43.42% and Hubert Humphrey’s 42.72%. Now the electoral vote wasn’t close, but Wallace still siphoned off 9.9 million votes.
In 1912 the third party candidate actually took second place, former President Teddy Roosevelt running on the Progressive Party beat out incumbent GOP candidate President William Taft 27.4% to 23.17%. Both lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s 41.84%. Now Taft was supposedly the more conservative of the two, but his presidency had caused so much consternation in the business sector that the vote was split almost down the middle.
The point here is that many conservatives are talking about a third party candidate or simply just not voting. That is ridiculous.
Look what Woodrow Wilson brought us: the 16th and 17th Amendments which were a slap in the face of federalism. Wilson brought us the wonderful Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve Board. Wilson also pioneered the failed League of Nations that shaped the Treaty of Versailles that helped usher in Nazism to Germany.
Ross Perot brought us Bill Clinton, twice! Nuff said. Thank you Ross Perot.
As much as conservatives do not like John McCain, and for good reason, we have to not only ensure he gets elected, we have to win back both houses of Congress. And we will not settle for the nonsense of a Republican Congress backing the President if he supports policies that are counter to conservativism. We did that too often for eight years with George Bush but every time we opposed him we won. We will have to do the same with President McCain.
Conservatives, we need to fix the broken house from within. We cannot allow strangers in to do the work we need to do. It’s time to switch from being consumers and become citizens once again. That means you will have to come to realize that little Johnny’s soccer match and little Suzie’s ballet lessons are not more important than who becomes our elected officials. Neither is American Idol.
We have much work to do in the remaining 253 days before the general election. Stay tuned!
Excellent Post Dave- and a good call to action too. I remember all the messes made by Perot and Nader, although I was new to the States when Perot happened. I also read earlier about Nader finally going for it. It will be interesting to watch- I’m already fascinated with the barbs between bama and hill. They’re getting a little nasty now- no more mr/mrs nice and tolerant people. God Bless you Dave- with a wonderful week, and I pray He helps us out of the mess we’ve made in this country!
Dave,
I can’t bring myself to vote for a liberal with a Republican name tag. We’ve talked about that before and I’m not going to change my values just to see someone who calls himself a Republican get into office. As one of your other posts read… God puts kings into office. You and most of the other folks that write in probably say I’m throwing my vote away and maybe so. As you said before vote your conscience, that is why you rallied behind Thompson. Why change now? Is he still not your first choice?
Here’s why I can vote for McCain:
1. He learned his lesson on immigration; he took the beating. Others in the GOP or Dems who say they learned their lesson didn’t take the beating McCain took. I give him credit there so I’ve come to an agreement there; but I will still use the Reagan approach…Trust but Verify.
2. He good on abortion and although he was in favor of embryonic stem cell research, new discoveries have made that obsolete and no longer a real issue.
3. National defense…the Democrats have clearly stated that they will leave Iraq early. I know pundits are saying they won’t be able to, but are you going to trust them? I got one word for that: Vietnam.
4. Taxes – McCain did vote against the Bush tax cuts but he’s vowed not to do so again. I do like his stance on cutting wasteful spending from the budget. He is troublesome as is Huckabee for his reliance on government, but so was Bush.
5. We cannot, cannot allow the Democrats to regain complete power. They have the courts now and there will be as many as 3 seats up for the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will be liberal for the next 20 years if we lose this election. Some say, oh well, they’ll only last one term and they’ll screw it up so bad like Carter we’ll win it all back. That worked in 1980, but it took 16 years because when Goldwater lost in 1964, conservatives went into the wilderness. Some say, but Nixon won in 68 and 72…Nixon was a RINO.
I love Fred Thompson…I spent hundreds of dollars supporting that man. The fact is he isn’t going to be President and so if John McCain wins the nomination, I will vote for him.
Then the real work begins. We watch our elected GOP officials like guard dogs and bite a chunk out of their leg the minute they get off the conservative path. All the while we are working hard at the local level to put conservatives in the county and then the state and finally the national GOP Party headquarters.
It’s all about grassroots and it takes hard, dedicated, and relentless work. I hope everyone who reads this blog will join me.
The world of “should” says we shouldn’t have to vote for McCain and we should teach the Republicans a lesson by losing. We did that in 2006 and we got the McCain-Kennedy Grahamnesty Immigration Bill.
I live in the world of “is.”
So, we kick the door in, spray the room with a suppressing fire and once all the RINOs are shaking under their desks, we tell them how they can get back in their seats or they leave if they want to get out alive.
We either convert them or they become refugees. We take no prisoners.