The First Law of Third Parties
By podcasts@redstate.com (Redstate Network) on 2008
Further to California Yankee's post below about Mayor Bloomberg leaving the GOP, two observations.
1. The big winner? Eliot Spitzer. Bloomberg would have been a formidable challenger for the governor's mansion. I can't see him taking out an entrenched incumbent as an independent.
2. Think Bloomberg will run even a semi-serious third party campaign for president? Think again. Remember the first, and perhaps only, rule of even modestly noteworthy third parties in our system: they must be organized around some issue on which the two major parties agree. The gravitational pull of the major parties is too strong to overcome simply by fielding a candidate who is charismatic (as the bloodless Bloomberg most assuredly is not) or who picks a different set of positions from the menu than either major party candidate. I've argued for some time that the sweet spot for an impact third party in 2008 would be anti-abortion, anti-war, anti-immigrant, anti-spending, anti-trade and perhaps anti-racial preferences, and almost none of that describes Bloomberg. I can't think of any issue on which he is likely to dissent alone from a consensus shared by the two major parties' nominees, and without that he would lack a rationale other than "let's elect a really, really rich guy."
Despite his various forays into nanny-state-ism, Bloomberg is, by New York City standards, not a bad mayor, particularly in having done a lot to consolidate Mayor Giuliani's gains in enforcing the law. But he will not get 10% of the vote in any state in November 2008 if he runs. |
