Bush's (presumed eventual) Third-Party Threat
This is a relatively large article about the story that both Libertarian Party nominees are hoping will become a major part of the Election 2004 dialogue. Below is just an excerpt.
Notably, the article doesn't actually mention the Libertarian candidates by name until about 2/3 of the way down. A lot of people would like to blame the media for that, but I'm inclined to blame the two Libertarian campaigns. Neither of them have shown that their campaign specifically is a threat, and so the article focuses on the more generalized, theoretical threat of the proverbial "Nader from the Right". If either Russo or Nolan had proven themselves in a dramatic, newsworthy way by now, the article would have led with "Gary Nolan could be a threat..." or "Aaron Russo could be a threat..."
Instead the threat theory is backed up by results from other Libertarian candidates, like gubernatorial and Senate candidates who earned more votes than the margin of victory, and even by Nader's ability to be a spoiler in certain states in 2000.
To the Russo campaign's credit, the article does highlight the fact that Nevada, where Russo ran for governor in 1998, is a swing state (where either Bush or Kerry could win). I don't know whether it was a failure of the Nolan campaign or of the reporter that he did not mention that Gary Nolan's home state is Ohio -- the number one "battleground state" and the only state the Bush campaign has said is a "must-win" state.
The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am with the Nolan campaign for not using that to their advantage earlier. The day the Bush campaign said that Ohio was a must-win state, the Nolan campaign should have held a press conference saying that it was going to devote major resources to making sure that Bush does not win Ohio. And they should get folks from the left to fund an ad campaign highlighting Bush's un-conservative stands (and there are many), and touting a vote for Nolan as a way to protest the administration's embrace of big government. It would have made news, and it would have stayed in the news as long as the story continued to have "legs" -- i.e., as long as the campaigns and pundits continued to have something to talk about concerning it. "The Ohio Crisis" for the Bush campaign could have been one of the hot stories for the past month or more.
The openings and weaknesses are still there and can still be exploited later, but I see it as months of free major media frittered away.
The two Libertarian campaigns would probably say that they have been busy pursuing the party's nomination, or battling the opposing campaign, but I don't really think there is an excuse. There is an election on -- it's readily visible when you turn on the news. And right now it's between Bush, Kerry, and Nader. And that's not (just) because of the media bias against thrid parties. It's because those three campaigns have, by a factor of anywhere from 10 to 1000, done a lot more that is electorally newsworthy than any other currently active campaign. No offense intended to my Libertarian brethren, but it's true.
One other note: the article claims that Aaron Russo "believes he can get a million voters to contribute $100 each". If that's true, then it's an apparent reduction from his original goal, which was to get 5 million people to donate $100 each. That bigger goal used to be displayed on his donations page -- here's the original image.
Here's the opening long excerpt from the article that prompted this entry:
CBS News | Bush's Third-Party Threat | May 21, 2004 18:45:11
While Democrats fret over the possibility of Ralph Nader causing them to lose another election by stealing votes on the left, President Bush may face an even greater third-party threat from the right wing. The Libertarian Party nominee could cost Mr. Bush his job in 2004.
With conservatives upset over the ballooning size of the federal government under a Republican White House and Congress – and a portion of the political right having opposed the war in Iraq from the start or else dismayed at how it's being handled – the Libertarian nominee, who will be on the ballot in 49 states, may do for Democrats in 2004 what Nader did for Republicans in 2000.
It is a hypothesis not yet made in the mainstream media. But interviews with third-party experts and activists across the country, as well as recent political patterns, illustrate that there could be a conservative rear-guard political attack against President Bush.
"I think [the Bush campaign] should be concerned. I don’t know how concerned," said Don Devine, vice chairman of the American Conservative Union and a longtime GOP insider. "They need to work on it and I think they know they need to work on it."
Grover Norquist, president of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, says "there is a strong strain of Libertarian in the Republican Party." He agrees with Devine that the Republicans should be paying attention to the Libertarian candidate, but says it is hard to gauge this early if the nominee will siphon many votes from Mr. Bush.
"I don't expect it to happen but it's possible," Devine adds. "A smart Republican campaign has to keep that in mind."
But so far, indications are that the Bush-Cheney campaign is not keeping it in mind. A senior adviser to the campaign, who did no want his name used so he could speak more frankly, said there was no concern in the campaign.
"None, none," the adviser emphasized. "[Mr. Bush is] as strong as Ronald Regan was in 1984."
However, historians point out that Mr. Bush is no Mr. Reagan. The Cold War had the effect of unifying the Republicans like little else. Even the dramatic deficit increases of the time, largely due to defense spending, were seen as necessary in the fight to end communism.
And President Reagan did not have an unstable occupation on his hands. Nor did he face nearly as united a Democratic Party as exists today. The result: some conservatives are questioning the voluminous spending for the war in Iraq.
"There is some unrest, there is some uneasiness, there is some unhappiness," said presidential historian Lee Edwards of the conservative Heritage Foundation, regarding the political right today.
...
Read the whole story here.
Posted by Lance Brown at May 22, 2004 10:39 AM
