What are the possibilities for a right-leaning, small ‘r’ republican third party in 2020? Basically, an option for those who will not vote Democrat but cannot bear to support Trump?
There would be a good chance, I suppose, that the presidential candidate of such a party would be committing political suicide (as would the VP nominee). On the other hand, he/she could play an important role in determining the political future of the US.
Disclosure: I would be delighted if it happened since it would pretty much guarantee a Democratic POTUS.
I don’t see a political party forming around opposition to Trump. If it reaches enough weight, then the Republicans will just dump Trump and run a different candidate. (Although, Trump might turn around and try to run again as an independent.)
Do you suppose Trump is/has threatened this in an attempt to secure Republican fealty (well, at least to something other than their unforgiveable convictions about what is ‘good and right’ and ‘needed’)?
Just a reminder, Trump prevailed over (or at least outlasted) 16 other Republican candidate in 2016, including conservative darlings like Cruz, Paul and Huckabee.
Trump’s approval rating holds pretty steady no matter what he does. Where’s the outpouring of conservative opposition to him that’s large enough to generate either a serious primary challenge or a third-party movement.
I don’t think it has to be a “serious” challenge; just enough to deny him the presidency.
In my OP, I had in mind what I will call the sane and/or moral conservatives/small ‘r’ types. Is it a fantasy to think they might want to take him down?
Actually, we can’t be sure of that. It’s clear from the polling that - for whatever the reason - the shutdown absolutely HAMMERED Trump’s numbers.
At the beginning of the shutdown he had a 42.2% approval and was underwater by 10.5%. Somewhere around average for him.
Right now the aggregate approval is 39.4% and he’s underwater by =16.6%. That’s an erosion of 6% in about four weeks. His approval dropped by about as much as his disapproval jumped. So this was the thing that tanked him. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly that approval number recovers going forward. It’ll be especially interesting to watch it if we’re back at a shutdown in February.
This (as well as other posters who said similar things). Basically, I expect Republican voters to hold their noses (a hell of a lot better than Democrat voters did with Hillary) and vote for Trump. Perhaps some small percentage won’t vote, but I don’t expect any large surge towards 3rd party candidates or even towards other Republicans, assuming others challenge him for the top spot in the primaries. I know a lot of Republicans, and those who are not fervent about Trump (which is, sadly, not the majority of the ones I know) will definitely rally to the party, especially if anything like a progressive is nominated by the Dems, which I expect this time around. Unless it’s a moderate Democrat (by Republican standards), they will vote Trump or not vote…and those not voting would be just the ones most against him and/or most apathetic, which is a minority.
The caveat to this is if Trump’s legal woes start to gain momentum and more comes out that can’t be handwaved away. I think the fervent faithful will STILL vote Trump, but if it’s pretty clear what he did was illegal and his hands are shown to be red with guilt I think a lot of the disenfranchised Republicans would be pushing for a Republican alternative. But that doesn’t mean 3rd party either, at least not IMHO.
After 2016, I think that a real, sane Centrist candidate could do well. But it would genuinely need to be someone who could and would draw equally from both sides and - more than that - create a new political base out of the people who are disenfranchised from the parties. Anyone leaning one way or the other will, probably, just recreate the 2016 experience where people are too afraid of splitting the vote to even abandon a horrible candidate.
To avoid that, you need a by and for the disenfranchised voter first candidate. At the moment, I don’t know of anyone who would fit that bill.
The GOP has been shifting to the far/alt-right since Newt Gingrich deployed his “Contract With[On] America” and leaving any semblence of moderate conservatism behind, and while the Democratic Party tried to shift into the middle (Bill Clinton was arguably the most “Eisenhower Republican” since Ike) it hasn’t netted them the kind of votes they needed to consistently stay in power. With the rise of ‘progressive’ candidates (although progressive only in relation to the current American state of affairs; even in European politics turning to the far right, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would only be ranked a very moderate liberal presence, and Liz Warren is a pretty hard-leaning capitalist with a consumer protectionist stance) there is just no moderate representation, and the GOP shows no interest in filling that void, having ejected even many of their not-radical-enough consecatives like John Boehner (who bounced somhard that he turned into a pot-smoking hippie).
Rejected conservatives could for their own oppositional party…but there are few enough people reading George Will at this point (and most of them not ‘conservative’) and no H. Ross Perot-type candidates running. Unless you think Gary Johnson is suddenly going to leap into the public consciousness—and he has about as good of a chance as Jill Stein, Rocky De La Fuente, or Joe Exotic—and unless Trump resigns or gets himself impeached and removed, you will have the choice of Trump or…whomever the Democrats ultimately choose out of the burgeoning field of unappealing and largely unelectable candidates.
If someone seriously wants to run for president on a third party, they need to be thinking of two back-to-back attempts. The first one is merely to try to garner enough votes to qualify for federal campaign funds and the right to take part in televised debates. With a reasonable amount of success in the first year, then they can spend the next four years campaigning against the incumbent as well as drawing votes away from their old party by emphasizing how out of touch they are or whatever.
The problem with all this is that third parties are usually the same as the two biggies, only more so. And that’s not a winning demographic. The further from the center you get, the sparser the support gets. There will never be a successful third party candidate until the two parties become so widely spread that the middle ground is left wide open. We began to see that in 2016, but that was an outlier and not big enough of a gap. We may never see that much of a separation again in our lives. The middle ground is where the meat of the votes are, and if there is ever a successful third party presidential win, it will be someone who appeals to moderates.
Sure, but that just means the Republicans lose. Which is kind of what I expect to happen. But the OP is asking about a large migration to a 3rd party candidate. I don’t see it happening for the reasons I gave. Well, I THINK I gave some…no idea really at this point.
Well, I thought he meant it as a way that some small ‘r’ republicans could guarantee a Trump defeat. And it wouldn’t take many of them to do so (especially in key states).
If the people voting in the Presidential election could utilize instant-runoff voting, also known as ranked-choice voting (* notes below), and thus have their initial first choice vote for Gary Johnson or John Kasich or Susan Collins or Ron Paul or Bill Weld or Kay Bailey Hutchinson not turn into a defacto vote for whoever the Democrats are currently fielding, so that their second (and if necessary third, fourth etc) choices be taken into account as the least vote-getters are discarded from serious consideration, I think Donald Trump would be the eventual choice of lots of folks registered Republican but the first choice of damn few.
Most conservatively-inclined voters will not be inclined to throw their vote away in the general. Considerably more will be inclined to support a solid-looking candidate in the primaries if it looks like said candidate is not just a spoiler and has a 1/4 decent chance of dethroning Trump.
I’m absolutely not a Republican and I don’t identify as a conservative, so salt this as you deem appropriate, but honestly I think y’all could do worse than beg Kay Bailey Hutchinson on bended knee to consider carrying your banner forward, if not in 2020 then while you’ve still got her. I can’t promise that I’d vote for her but I respect her and would not feel the country was in bad hands or anything if she won.
ETA: the fucking notes that I forgot: I think any individual state can choose to allocate its designated electoral votes using ranked-choice/instant-runoff voting if they are so inclined, but obviously that doesn’t carry forward to what happens in the Electoral College. To truly utilize this technique to vote for president, each state would have to have the option of casting ITS votes within the EC using ranked-choice voting, which would be immensely cool but would presumably require a constitutional amendment, although conceivably just a new federal law (??). For purposes of this what-if, pretend that your state gets to cast ITS electoral votes for its first choice and then fall back on second choice if no candidate gets 50+ % of the vote, so that if your entire state goes with (let’s say) John Kasich but he’s 3rd in a 3-person situation in the EC, your state goes to its second-tier vote-getter, Donald Trump or whatever.