How 'bout this for a 3rd party

Imagine a popular centrist candidate of one nominal party decides that the two-party system is destructive and must be overthrown. He contacts someone close to him (or her) ideologically but nominally a member of the other party. Privately, these two reach out and form a coalition, secret for a while, of other independents who resolve to pick among them a ticket (one former Dem, one former GOP) that will run for the Presidency and the Vice-presidency in x years, but won’t decide the question of who will head the ticket until they run a few primaries, head to head, and let the popular vote decide what the ticket looks like. The primaries will be positive, since the two participants are aligned ideologically, more or less, and know they’re running against their own running mate, so there will be nothing negative said.

As a further wrinkle, you have the candidates agree in advance that if their ticket wins, they will run again but with the ticket reversed in four years, assuming the group agrees to renominate the ticket. (If not, then the process repeats in four years.)

This has the further advantage of attracting moderate GOP candidates who have been or who face being Tea Partied out of a seat, and have very little political future otherwise. And Yellow Dog Democrats have never been in short supply. This is probably political suicide, if it fails, of course, but I think many centrists don’t see a bright electoral future for themselves anyway.

Let’s say that Michael Bloomberg and Richard Lugar get nominated by this group. Can you see a way for them to win in 2016?

In which primary are they running? Their own? If so, as soon as they do that their parties will come down hard on them. If it’s the Republican primaries, we’ve seen how thoroughly moderates get stomped there; if the Democratic primary, I don’t think people who have just switched parties would have a chance.

Their best shot would be to just announce the new party (the Moderate Party?) right off the bat and hope to gain traction. All this under the table stuff would just piss off everyone else, including voters - who would feel deceived.

It’s their own primary. I don’t see where voters would feel deceived more than they would by Bloomberg or Chris Christie or Olympia Snowe or whoever announcing his or her own Independent candidacy. Bloomberg would be saying, as would any other candidate, “We both agree on many issues, and we’ve been vetted as the most electable by a small group of other independent pols, and we’re giving you a chance to decide what our ticket will look like.”

Okay. It’s early and I was unclear on the concept.

However, what’s the value of a closed primary system? What if other candidates like the idea and also decide to run?

I don’t see the idea of an all-positive debate going very far. The media will view it as a propaganda session, and will not be far wrong.

“You’re right, Mr. Smith!”
“No, YOU’RE right, Mr. Jones!”

I think the idea of a viable third party has merit. I just think the bugs would need to be worked out first.

Centrist third parties never win because, by definition, they don’t take a position to energize any base.

Republicans: Cut taxes and reduce government! Base: YEAH! Money pours in, signs get pounded in the ground.

Democrats: Raise taxes on the rich and enact UHC! Base: YEAH! Money pours in, signs get pounded in the ground.

Centrist party: I propose modest tinkering with the tax code and some government programs are good and others are bad! Base: *flips channel

A lot of these guys, Bloomberg and the moderate Pubbies who’ve gotten TPed the last few years, are pretty fucked anyway as far as the national stage goes. All they need is the guts is to make that call themselves and give the Moderate Party a shot.

Bloomberg
Giuliani
Lugar
Scott Brown
Bob Kerrey
Chris Christie
Olympia Snowe
Susan Collins
Colin Powell
Jon Huntsman
Joe Lieberman
Charlie Crist
Mike Castle–

Hmmm, most of these seem to be Republicans with little or no future in their party, but if they could locate a few centrist Dems (Bloomburg and Kerrey and Lieberman are the only ones on my list who vaguely qualify) I think they could put something together.

Christie Todd Whitman. Bill Weld. Bob Casey. Seems to be an awful lot of Pubbies whose careers are not going anywhere in the current GOP. I think a Bloomberg-Huntman ticket, supported by all these folks I’ve just named, would do pretty well (not win straight off, but maybe outpoll the TP nutjobs that the GOP puts up).

No.

This has been another installment of Simple Answers to Silly Questions.

As Atrios regularly reminds us, people disagree about stuff. The Dems and GOP have deep and fundamental differences in worldview, and their drastically different policy prescriptions flow from those differences in worldview.

Trying to come up with a split-the-difference third party makes about as much sense as trying to come up with a religion that is an attempted meld of atheism and evangelical Christianity.

Huh. I was just about to propose that, too. Gimme some time here, wouldya, RT? Let me do my own shtik at my own pace, okay?

No, seriously, these Moderates are totally fucked–they’re never going to be eligible for a national GOP ticket, and most of them are unelectable locally. But their views are smack in the middle of the political spectrum, so you know they’ll win some votes. Probably they’d split the GOP vote, but they’d also win some conservative Democratic votes–I could see a Bloomberg-Huntsman ticket getting as much as 25%-30% of the popular vote, which would be a weak third, possibly a weak second, in a national election, but that would transform the GOP. They’d be forced to moderate their own views, or else die out. Dunno what would happen, but I’d like to see it. As demographics change, they’re going to die out–this new Moderate party would just speed up the process.

And who would vote for them, and why? What would they stand for? (What sane moderate ideas that the GOP has abandoned, haven’t already been adopted by the Dems?)

Jon Huntsman is arguably more conservative than the last two GOP nominees, so I’m not sure why his presence on a third party ticket would force the Republicans to moderate their views.

Who was that PA senator who left the GOP because he wasn’t going to get re-elected anyway and swapped over to Dem? He went down in a ball of flames. I would never vote for anyone running as described because it sounds like they’re just looking to further their career by any means possible.

The only way that I’d vote for a Republican is if they walked away from the party in disgust (there’s plenty in this last year they can point to) FIRST. Once they’d taken their lumps over that, then they’d have to affiliate with a different party and act absolutely sincere about it. If they are not willing to PUBLICLY stand up to Rove and company, then I don’t want anything to do with them.

I am also not too thrilled by “yellow dog dems” as they always seem like a spineless group to me.

no, if that was the case, he’d be better off heading off to the mountains for ninjitsu training with the childhood friend he grew up in an orphanage with so they could bond and form a pact one would take the high road and the other would join the mob, helping the political guy from the shadows while the political guy keeps the cops away while the other one slowly climbs the mafia ladder all the while keeping reporters silenced from the fact that both had super badass ninja powers and by super badass i mean totally sweet

Well, he just died (like a month ago) if you mean Arlen Specter. It was in all the papers. I personally think he’s roasting in flames now. (Not really.)

Of course al these guys would be breaking with, and denouncing, the Republican party. Essentially, they’d be running on the same platform Mitt tried running on for the last few weeks–“ObamaLite.” What RTF is claiming is absurd and impossible in American Politics has JUST HAPPENNED. The difference is that Romney looked like an asshole because he was just running on essentially the same principles as Obama (as Bill Maher summarized Romney’s responses in the third debate: “What HE said–but coming from a white guy”) months after he had publicly announced that he was running as a “severe conservative.”

What I am wondering about is the future of the Republican party as a party of moderately conservative ideas–right now, they’re a bunch of lunatics committed to a platform that, if you believe it, is far to the right of center. Republican voters keep endorsing this insane platform, and then their candidates try to distance themselves from it in the general election. With a Moderate Party, and no primary process, they could run on the same platform without the burden of the far-right agenda. They could run to the right of the Democrats on economic issues and foriegn policy, say, but run a candidate who’s open to anti-handgun legislation (Bloomberg) or who has a pro-choice background (Giuliani), with either of them stressing that they don’t expect that Congress will send them any laws to sign on either issue.

This would pretty much guarantee zero votes siphoned from Republicans. Even Obama knows not to say he’s open to anti-handgun legislation.

And maybe that’s a reason they wouldn’t pick Bloomberg (there are others). But they could give him a seat at the table where a moderate is chosen. He could always vow, as candidates do, not to bring up guns as a national issue, and change the subject (“That’s more suitable for local or state elections and legislations to decide”)–every candidate carries baggage, and look how neatly Mitt doubletalked his way out of multiple positions he’d taken in the past.