New Homes for Old Pols

Third parties have two pools of potential voters to recruit from. The first pool is people who either already belong to a party but are dissatisfied with it or consider themselves independents. These are voters who clearly have some degree of interest in politics and already have experience with the process. The second pool is composed of the disinterested masses who do not vote at all. People don't vote for all sorts of reasons -- some definitely do feel alienated and disenfranchised by the two party system and thus have reason to be interested in a third party alternative -- but I think the majority of people don't vote because they are busy with their daily lives and don't follow politics very closely. Those who have been reading this blog for a while know I belonged to that category myself for a long time. It is arguably easier to recruit an active voter to join a new party than it is to convince a non-voter to join the process. "Why don't you start voting so you can support a candidate like me who has virtually no chance of winning?" That's not a great selling point.

Since smaller political parties really do need to court current voters, nominating an established candidate formerly associated with another party can seem like a very appealing prospect. Established candidates have name recognition -- if you doubt that is a powerful thing, remember how great Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson did in the early presidential polls. Established candidates are also seasoned campaigners with useful experience, contacts, and perhaps even an existing organization. There is, however, a big potential downside to welcoming in such candidates. People don't always leave parties for purely ideological reasons. Sometimes they leave because they don't agree with the party leadership on organizational matters or simply don't get along with a particular person or group of people within the party. This being the case, it's possible that an established candidate can leave one party and join another armed with the very same set of ideas and beliefs. The new party, then, risks being hijacked by the candidate -- this seems to be just what happened to the Reform Party when Pat Buchanan joined it and ultimately became its presidential candidate in 2000.

Several of the potential presidential candidates competing for small party nominations are already well-known politicians. Alan Keyes has left the Republican Party and strongly hinted that he wants to become the Constitution Party's presidential candidate. We'll know more after the Constitution Party Convention next week. I don't know enough about the Constitution Party to judge whether Keyes fits there, but one Mississippi CP member is already saying, "No Thanks, Alan Keyes." At least the title of his blog post is polite. Mike Gravel has also left the Democratic Party and is now seeking the Libertarian Party's nomination. This is more than a little wild. Gravel surely has some libertarian leanings when it comes to foreign policy, individual liberties, and abolishing the IRS, but I've never thought of him as someone who wants to drastically reduce social spending like many Libertarians want to do. To tell you the truth, I thought Gravel was much more likely to join the Green Party than to become a Libertarian. Instead, another former Democrat has become the likely Green nominee: Cynthia McKinney, a former Congresswoman from Georgia. She gained some notoriety for hitting a police officer in 2006 -- I had an impression of her being a mentally unbalanced individual probably entirely due to the media coverage of this incident. She actually seems to be quite a good and downright levelheaded speaker, however, and she has done very well in the Green primaries so far. Judging from how the Greens have embraced her, perhaps McKinney's crossover makes the most sense.

In any case, Keyes and Gravel and McKinney are at least bringing some attention to three minor parties. McKinney will probably be a presidential candidate in the general election. We'll have to see about Keyes and Gravel. I imagine that there are a lot of people who right now perceive Keyes and Gravel as being Buchanan-esque hijackers and will oppose their nominations for the long-term good of their parties, but I think both Keyes and Gravel could win over a lot of people if their voices are allowed to be heard. I don't know enough about the other candidates from the smaller parties, but I'm willing to bet Monopoly money that at least a few aren't any more "ideologically pure" than Keyes or Gravel. Ideological purity and political parties just don't seem to go very well together.