Is it possible that Nader tapped into the “Anti-AIPAC” vote?......How does these 3rd party candidates compare to the race that George Wallace ran in a time gone by?

Despite the absence of traffic in response to your column, I myself learned a great deal
from reading it, most of which went into my commentary for Lancater Newspapers. It is
shocking to learn how few voters rallied to third-party rightwing candidates,
something that the media and the neocons will undoubtedly cite to justify running other
RINOs with Scheuermann-type advisors in future presidential races. Note that even Nader
picked up more votes than our guys,although a leftwing black, spouting socialist ideas
was the Democratic presidential candidate.

For whom the bell tolls; it tolls for the old Right.  If paleocon parties can’t beat Nader’s vote count in a year that pits a black leftist Democrat against an aging neocon, we are in deep doo-doo.  Maybe it’s time to rebuild the movement intellectually, and shun the party system for a while (like the early National Review days).

None of the third-party and independent presidential candidates promised to “give” the voters anything or “do” anything for them.  That is why the non-Republicrat political footprint was almost non-existent in 2008’s national election.  21st-century Americans vote with their hands extended, palms up.  It’s that simple.

“Despite the absence of traffic in response to your column,...”

For a long time comments were not allowed for this article.

I agree good article. And I agree with Vlad that I think we are pretty much screwed.

I ended up voting for Nader, because I don’t share Barr’s laissez faire “Libertarian” economic nonsense, theory which is not only downright idiotic, but the complete antithesis of what I consider “Russell Kirk” conservativism, which embraces the idea of economic sovereignty.
And the idea of voting for a evangelical minister was equally unattractive. I am a complete protestant, but Baldwin’s religious ideas are too far out there.

Nader is the authentic voice of opposition to Coroporate Power, and Wall Street economics, and has been for some time. As an Arab-American, he is also the real voice of opposition to the “Israel First” mentality. His opposition to American interventionism is also completely authentic.

Interestingly enough, on the issues of war and the economy, it is both the far right and the far left who led to the opposition to the Iraq Occupation, to internationalism and meddling in the affairs of others, to the bailouts of Wall Street bankers, and to generally, the deterioration of American culture into materialistic consumerism.

Nader was the only one to bridge this gap, but he---and the idea of third parties---have been so demonized that most folks don’t even consider it as an alternative. The politics of America has been so manipulated by ethnicity. religion and gender into a 50/50 standoff, in which any change is dead on arrival.

I agree with Kevin Phillips that the future is widespread disillusionment with politics, much like Mexico/Latin America, or third world countries, where it’s everyone for himself, and getting what you can out of what’s crumbling around you.

It’s going to get worse, as Obama finds it impossible to keep his promises to help the “middle class”, and his promises to blacks and browns for “equal opportunity”, so we are going to be suffering through a lot of “diversity” and “multiculturalism”, as the white working class continues to hand over what’s left of it’s dwindling share of the economic security to the blacks and browns. Obama can’t fix the economic system, so he will concentrate on “redistributing” what is left to his blacks and browns...while Wall Street bankers adn Hedge Fund oligarchs laugh at the gridlock that protects their wealth and power.

The conservative right made the mistake of embracing “libertarian” laissez Faire economics, which works to undermine the white working class and the economic soverignty of the USA---and incidently the very voters which have given the conservative movement any power it once had. Another problem is concentrating on the Republican Party...to the exclusion of the Blue Dog Democrats, who don’t like Laissez Faire, but do support fiscal sanity and economic sovereignty. 

If you can’t make it with a third party, you better reach out to Blue Dogs and others in the Democrat Party if you want to stop the Obama agenda.

How can any third party candidate get anywhere with a populace that doesn’t spend more than 5 minutes on the election? You knew Ron Paul was in trouble when so many self-described informed voters at the New Hampshire primary told pollsters they voted for McCain due to his tough border enforcement first policy.

The inability of any traditional, small government candidate from the Right to attract significant support....despite a widely acknowledged failure of a Big Government agenda....is a clear indication of the diminishing returns we remain set to endure. Small government, fiscally conservative policies have been given their best display of support by way of a demonstration of enormous failures by their opposite...and in particular, their opposite that actually claim to be “conservative”. The sham is revealed for all to see, including the half-truth of blaming the fiscal crisis on laissez faire economic principles as though government had no role in the spectacular lapse of prudence and long term thinking.

The voter simply thinks the wrong “big government” agenda was in office. Anyone suggesting a more traditional and chaste approach in Washington is branded either crazy or hopelessly romantic. The only humor related to the farrago is the fact that the Big Government,government-lovers are being handed a gutted and charred corpse to pick over by the Big Government, government-haters. It is all a matter of us against them.....either-or...the big game must have a winner. Discourse and factual debate are either boring or passe. Identity Politics is the Harlot of the Hour. The debates of the Framer’s Era are frozen set-pieces, of no use in the current “reality”.

The beauty of America lies in the fact that for a very long time, one was freed and empowered to create one’s own reality and find a diverse marketplace where this innate human urge was rewarded and reinforced. A rich and productive nation of doers was given full expression. Washington D.C. was a bit player in the lives of the people who inhabit the Republic. The live and let live philosophy of a truly free civics flourished within a legal framework that treated laws as something to encourage freedoms rather than enforce them. Morality was a far more effective check on this freer, less encumbered populace than it is now under the Statist regimes. The public did not wish to be protected, it wanted most to be left alone and unhindered. Unfortunately, this lesson in polygonal realities was subsumed in a kind of State sponsored Relativism and the egalitarian became the tyrannical. It is not a tyranny of violent force or subjugation so much as it is a tyranny of mediocrity and circumscribed behavior. You are what you are spoon-fed. “Whatever” is the new E Pluribus Unum. Accurate debate is replaced by cant and consensus and a definition for this malady is arrived at: Politically Correct.

We have just been given a remarkable tutorial in how to succeed at failure. Liberty and prosperity will continue to erode and authoritarianism will now be handed off to another Big Government Agent of “change” . The American People, disdainful of history, dismissive of tradition, worshipful of change and novelty for their own sake and suspicious of intellectual endeavor within an overall society drenched in physicality...if more often than not practiced from an armchair....will get their change alright, panhandling at their hardscrabble corner of declining returns.

It does not have to be this way but by all portents, it will. The citizenry stubbornly insists that it only wishes to warm it’s neck by placing it in a noose. The anti-monarchist, nation of immigrants has for so long been championing the underdog that it would appear he has adopted the role and will do everything possible to submit with fervor while the brief pleasures of indiscriminate optimism will be elevated to a near religious rite by a media that thinks journalism is avoiding the harder questions in favor of a snappy headline.

The idea that we’ve had a ‘laissez faire’ economy under ‘conservatives’ is
idiotic on its face. Ignorance is skin deep, stupid goes to the bone.

Speaking of stupid, take the American electorate. Face the reality - the majority of
our fellow countrymen don’t WANT liberty (it’s too much work), they want goodies, in one form or another,
formform or another, from their government. The fact that this is bankrupting the government and themselves
and their posterity matters not one whit. Envious, selfish, petulant, arrogant.

Piss on the whole ugly mess. I’ve got a ringside seat to the collapse of the biggest fraud of ‘liberty’
in the hisotry of the world to date. I’ll be here with my bowl of popcorn and my AR.

Dirk, another beautiful and brilliant post. Thank heavens you’re here.

Since publishing this piece, Bob Barr has cracked the half-million mark. CNN puts his vote totals at 503,198 nationally. That doesn’t change much—it certainly doesn’t affect my point that the third parties of the right disappointed this year—but it does suggest that Barr took slightly more votes from the Republicans than I originally assumed.

We can speak about ideals and ideas and principles. But this is American, so it all comes down to money. As long as third parties don’t get billions in donations to give it to marketers and the media, they’ll remain forever virtually irrelevant.

Can conservatives fight the non-conservatives from within the Republican party? Unlikely. Conservatives will be more visible, that’s for sure, and they may even get some media attention here and there. But they’ll be ridiculed and excluded by the party-at-large. Money talks. They Republicans are all about returns to their investors- principles be damned. And those truly in power donate plenty to both parties so they never lose.

Now lets assume for a moment that a conservative candidate is able to stir up a movement within the Republican party. He would get money from Israel-firsters, banks, drug companies, etc. He’ll be surrounded by some good people and a whole lot of opportunists. Would they reject dirty money? Unlikely. Would he be able to remain conservative or would he compromise with the devil for the sake of a possible victory? What would he do if he faced this dilemma: we’ll give you victory if you compromise on some of your positions, or you are finnished as a political entity?

Let’s not forget that every one’s favorite “conservative”, Reagan, brought us terrible Supreme Court justices, Wolfowitz and the rest of neo-cons, and mass illegal immigration.

While none of the third party candidates would have won, something that happened to me gives me good reason to believe their true vote totals are far higher than what is being reported.

Right after the election I went to the Texas Secretary of State’s website to get the official vote totals.  I was particularly interested in the totals for Chuck Baldwin, the candidate I had voted for.

I hit the ceiling when I noticed that Baldwin had NO voters in my county on election day.  First, I called up my county clerk’s office.  She told me that it didn’t matter, as the election was over, and that the county didn’t have the money to count up write-in candidates.  She proceeded to hang up on me when I told her I wanted my vote counted. 

I then called up the fraud division at the Texas Secretary of State’s office.  The Texas SOS then called up my county clerk.  The SOS’s office told her that these votes would have to be counted, and that the totals would be reflected in the final count.

So, had I not complained, my vote for Baldwin, as well as the others in my county, never would have been counted.  Considering the extremely hostile reaction I got, just how many people are willing to complain?  In other words, how many third party votes are simply never even counted?  I know mine would not have been.

Joe Populist,

Ron Paul was on our ballot in Louisiana so I voted for him over Baldwin but tarring
Chuck Baldwin with the “far out there evangelist” peg is just nonsense. He alienated
every other popular warmonger evangelist on the face of the earth by coming out
against the Iraq war. Barr was for the war. And being antiwar is a much easier leap
for Nader than it was for Baldwin. Nothing against Nader but you look like the
one showing religious intolerance as a pseudo-conservative snuggling up to Nader
rather than Baldwin

I wouldn’t be shocked to discover there is some amount of undercounting of third-party votes that is going on, but in my experience that is something you are more likely to encounter when writing in a candidate—even a recognized write-in—than when the candidate is on the ballot.