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What minor party has the best chance to become a major party?

What minor party has the best chance to become a major party?

  • Total voters
    69
duhu said:
By articulate I mean someone who can actually convince the masses that they are the best choice. Someone like Reagan. Or Slick Willy. Or heck even Obama in 2008.
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The thing about that is, they need a podium. Have you even heard the current Libertarian nominee? He may be as articulate as any of them, but how would we know?
 
Dittohead not! said:
The thing about that is, they need a podium. Have you even heard the current Libertarian nominee? He may be as articulate as any of them, but how would we know?
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I have, for obvious reasons. Gary is on TV sometimes (Stossel, Stewart, etc), so he's had chances to capture audiences. If enough people wanted him to debate, he'd have been there.
 
This should be a gimme - a piece of cake - a foregone conclusion - a no brainer. It should be the Libertarian Party in a romp but it is not. If everybody claiming to be a libertarian actually was a libertarian and they put as much effort into working for the party a they do posing on websites like this one, the Libertarian Party could be a solid third party. If everyone claiming to be a libertarian rejected the Republican Party and denied them their vote and support at election time and was willing to let them lose and then die so that the Libertarian Party could rise in time as the GOP dies out the loser- they would have something.

But all self proclaimed libertarians are not in the Libertarian Party.
Far too many self proclaimed libertarians are really Republicans.
Far too many self proclaimed libertarians care nothing for doing the actual grunt work of building a party.
Far too many self proclaimed libertarians will not stand by and see the hated Democrats win elections when they themselves deny the GOP a few percentage of the vote and tip elections to the Dems.

So its the two party system and the libertarians are merely a pimple on the ass of the body politic that is more of a minor irritation than anything else.
 
haymarket said:
But all self proclaimed libertarians are not in the Libertarian Party.
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I am a self proclaimed libertarian, and I am in the LP. I campaign for and donate to them when I can, and I refuse to vote for the Republocrats. This is the only way through which our system works.
 
Ikari said:
I am a self proclaimed libertarian, and I am in the LP. I campaign for and donate to them when I can, and I refuse to vote for the Republocrats. This is the only way through which our system works.
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Glad to hear you follow through on your convictions.
 
haymarket said:
Glad to hear you follow through on your convictions.
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There's no choice in the matter. To keep this Republic has been our charge since the forefathers created it. It's not an easy task, a free Republic is a low entropy state and constant work must be put in just to maintain it, even more to improve it. You cannot rest on your laurels and expect to remain free. To keep the Republic, we must educate ourselves to the conditions and dynamics of the government, to understand its course and desires, to regulate and restrict and keep the government confined to its proper role. Blind voting, ignorant voting, not voting, allowing political oligarchy, party allegiance, these things will DESTROY the Republic. If we do not control the government, the government will grow till it controls us.

“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.”
― Daniel Webster

In the end, I desire to be free. Everything else is secondary.
 
I would say that the best chance would be either libertarians or the Constitution party, as the core values of those two are such that a higher percentage of the population could agree with them. The greens are too single-issue. I'm not even familiar with the Justice Party at all.
 
duhu said:
I have, for obvious reasons. Gary is on TV sometimes (Stossel, Stewart, etc), so he's had chances to capture audiences. If enough people wanted him to debate, he'd have been there.
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Please scroll up from where you posted the above and read this (literally, I am 2 posts above yours);

http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/130788-minor-party-has-best-chance-become-major-party-8.html#post1061006704

It's not that people do not want to hear third party voices, it's that the election commission refuses to let them speak.

How much Ballot Access did the LP have in 2008? - http://www.lp.org/ballot-access

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2012-07-09-Third-Parties_ST_U.htm
It is a quirk of American democracy: Your choices for president depend on which state you live in.

For instance, voters in Colorado and New Mexico who do not want to vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama for president will have the option to vote for Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party, Libertarian Gary Johnson or several others -- but those candidates will not be on the ballot in neighboring Oklahoma.
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Kr1ll1n said:
Please scroll up and read this;

http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/130788-minor-party-has-best-chance-become-major-party-8.html#post1061006704

It's not that people do not want to hear third party voices, it's that the election commission refuses to let them speak.
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The commission refuses them because they do not have enough support. 2% - 6% doesn't cut it. It's not that they just simply won't allow anyone not D or R. Look at Ross Perot. It's been done before, and it can be done again. It's just rare.
 
duhu said:
The commission refuses them because they do not have enough support. 2% - 6% doesn't cut it. It's not that they just simply won't allow anyone not D or R. Look at Ross Perot. It's been done before, and it can be done again. It's just rare.
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You know, Ross Perot is the reason why the put the restriction of 10%, purposefully to keep third party candidates out of it. Perot was crazy, but because he was allowed to participate and had so much money he could buy a lot of air time, he got over 10% of the popular vote. If someone who remotely made any sense was allowed to participate, they'd get more than that; and that is why the elections commission preemptively cut off further participation.
 
Ikari said:
You know, Ross Perot is the reason why the put the restriction of 10%, purposefully to keep third party candidates out of it. Perot was crazy, but because he was allowed to participate and had so much money he could buy a lot of air time, he got over 10% of the popular vote. If someone who remotely made any sense was allowed to participate, they'd get more than that; and that is why the elections commission preemptively cut off further participation.
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I'm not saying you (or anyone else) is wrong, in fact for the most part, I agree that more candidates in the debates would be nice. I'm just trying to explain why they don't let them.
 
duhu said:
The commission refuses them because they do not have enough support. 2% - 6% doesn't cut it. It's not that they just simply won't allow anyone not D or R. Look at Ross Perot. It's been done before, and it can be done again. It's just rare.
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The third party candidates don't have a lot of support, so they can't participate in debates. Since they don't participate in debates, most voters don't know who they are, so they don't have a lot of support.

Sounds like a Catch 22 to me.
 
duhu said:
The commission refuses them because they do not have enough support. 2% - 6% doesn't cut it. It's not that they just simply won't allow anyone not D or R. Look at Ross Perot. It's been done before, and it can be done again. It's just rare.
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I updated and edited my post.
For 2008, when Badnarik was arrested, they had the following;

Ballot Access: 45 states
Write-In: 1 state
Pending Status: 2 states
Did not Qualify: 3 States

You end up with 51 because of the District of Columbia having their own set of Ballot Access rules, and being counted as a separate entity.

Long story short, 45 states wanted them on the ballot. Is that not enough for you to accept that something nefarious is going on with the Federal Election Commission?
 
duhu said:
I'm not saying you (or anyone else) is wrong, in fact for the most part, I agree that more candidates in the debates would be nice. I'm just trying to explain why they don't let them.
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In most states, the requirement for a political party to have ballot access is in the range of thousands, to tens of thousands of signatures.

If we round down the middle, and say an average of 5,000 signatures per state (some states much higher, some states lower), then at 45 confirmed states in 2008 for the LP you had roughly 225,000 citizens that supported having them on the ballot. I fail to see how people wanting them on the ballot means they don't want them to participate in a debate. If anything, supporting their ballot access shows they WANT to hear them debate.
 
duhu said:
I'm not saying you (or anyone else) is wrong, in fact for the most part, I agree that more candidates in the debates would be nice. I'm just trying to explain why they don't let them.
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Yeah, but it's Catch-22 and that's purposefully set up. I understand that you cannot open the flood gates because if you get too many people, then you can't have a productive debate (also we no longer have productive debates, it's all a song and dance and nothing more). But I don't think the number should be capped at 2. They claim there is a way to have more than 2, but in practice that doesn't occur. I think 5 is a good number. 5 candidates by party popular vote.
 
Anrch-Cptlst said:
A two party system is not apart of our tradition. If you look back in early history of past presidents, there were different parties other then Democrats and Republicans. The two parties now just have found a way to stay in office by constantly lying to people and making false promises. Yet year after year we keep voting them in. Why?
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Actually, the two party system is part of our tradition. While the names have changed over the years, no President has ever been elected that wasn't a member of one of the two major parties at the time except for George Washington. The Whigs are the forerunners of today's Republican party, and the Federalists are the ideological forerunners of the Whigs.

For a time, there was even only one major party with different factions within it. The Whig and Democratic parties only started when Democratic-Republicans loyal to J Q Adams split from those loyal to Andrew Jackson. Jacksonians became "Democrats" and the Adams faction took the name "Whig." The Democrats are the same organization to this day. The Whigs split apart over the slavery issue in the 1850s, Northern Whigs regrouped as "Republicans," which is the GOP we have now.
 
I say the Green Party though not in its current form. If it evolves into a true environmental movement, then it could pull in lots of people.
 
Any minor party to have a real chance would likely be a re-organization of the Reform Party, which brought us Ross Perot and eventually Jesse Ventura. But that party got taken over by Buchananites.

Or, the Tea Party will succeed in cleansing RINOs from the Republican party, and moderate Republicans will regroup under a new banner.
 
Neomalthusian said:
You didn't comprehend what the OP asked. The OP asked which of the minor parties has the greatest chance of becoming one of the major parties.
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Get off your high horse, mr holier than thou.

Simple fact is, I found the conversation I was participating in to be more interesting than of what the OP asked.

Also, your claim is refuted on the fact that you didn't bother to look at my vote.
 
Libertarian but what typically happens is there are factions that would identify with the non mainstream parties within the mainstream, hence Ron Paul, Rand Paul, etc.
 
Why do people say the libertarian party has a better chance of becoming a major party rather than the Green Party? I mean honestly you only hear about them equally as much.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Why do people say the libertarian party has a better chance of becoming a major party rather than the Green Party? I mean honestly you only hear about them equally as much.
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Libertarian is the third largest right now. Also, imo the Green Party's focus on the environment is already something Dems do, just not to the same extent. Whereas the Libertarian party separates itself well from all other parties, for the most part.
 
duhu said:
Libertarian is the third largest right now. Also, imo the Green Party's focus on the environment is already something Dems do, just not to the same extent. Whereas the Libertarian party separates itself well from all other parties, for the most part.
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The green party has over 300,000 members... Libertarian party has under 300,000 members. Also the Green Parties goals go beyond just the environment. Much more progressive and much more grassroots democracy.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
The green party has over 300,000 members... Libertarian party has under 300,000 members. Also the Green Parties goals go beyond just the environment. Much more progressive and much more grassroots democracy.
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Yeah, but they aren't as good about getting public recognition, or having their philosophy and platforms talked about in the media.
 
samsmart said:
Yeah, but they aren't as good about getting public recognition, or having their philosophy and platforms talked about in the media.
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Well when you have a party promoting that raising taxes on the richest is "class warfare" and "socialism" and you have a good chunk of the public believe that the media is probably going to cover that for rating sake and not for objective reporting sake.
 
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