I’m a big fan of Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative weekly magazine, The Weekly Standard. It’s the one magazine I make a point of reading every week. I highly recommend you do the same (after of course you read my weekly blog. HA!)
That being said, I strongly oppose Bill Kristol’s effort to dredge up an alternative Republican candidate to Donald Trump. Bill tweeted out over the weekend “there will be an independent candidate – an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”
Not surprisingly, Donald Trump lashed out at Kristol, calling him a “loser” and a “dummy” among other things. More importantly, Trump said if a Republican “spoiler” candidate gets into the race, “say goodbye to the Supreme Court.”
Unfortunately, I’m afraid Trump is exactly right. If we split the Republican vote in the presidential race, we can kiss the presidency, and the Supreme Court, goodbye. We’ve seen this film before, and we know how it ends.
Back in 1992, George H. W. Bush was running for re-election, against not only Bill Clinton, but also against independent candidate Ross Perot. Since Perot emphasized such issues as balancing the budget, paying down debt, and protecting the Second Amendment, he appealed far more to Republican voters than to Democrats. As a result, when he garnered nearly 20% of the votes in the November election, most of those voters would have gone to George Bush had Perot not been in the race. So, in effect, the Republican votes were split between Bush and Perot, and Bill Clinton won the election with only 43% of the vote.
Similarly, back in 1912, Republicans were divided between William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. Woodrow Wilson won with virtually the same percentage of votes that Bill Clinton won with – 42%. Republicans split the rest, and lost.
If we’re smart, we’ll learn something from this. If Republicans stay united, we’ve got a reasonable shot of winning in November. If we’re divided, in my view, we have no chance, and Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States.
So who might this potential independent candidate be? Here are some of the names you hear thrown around: Mitt Romney, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, John Kasich, Condoleezza Rice, Jeb Bush, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Speaker Paul Ryan (who I’m quite certain would not do it due to his loyalty to the Republican Party), several retired Army generals, and most recently a writer for the conservative publication National Review by the name of David French. We’ll see.
Some Republicans in the “Stop Trump” camp hold onto the hope that even if their independent candidate can’t win the electoral college vote outright, he or she can win enough states to deny the necessary 270 electoral votes to either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Under the Constitution, if this happens, the presidential election is decided in the United States House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. Since Republicans control more states in the House, the House would pick either Trump or the independent Republican candidate to be our next President. This is probably a pipe dream, although this scenario did play out in the election of 1824. Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, but not enough electoral college votes, and the House of Representatives picked John Quincy Adams to be our sixth President, over Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford, who were the other three candidates in the race. Again, I don’t think this is a likely scenario.
Here’s another observation. There are always several minor parties who field candidates for president each election cycle. In recent years, the two most active parties have been the Libertarian Party on the right (more or less), and the Green Party on the left. It seems to me that the press has been giving far more coverage to the Libertarian Party, and their candidate for president, Gary Johnson, than they have to the Green Party. Is this by accident? I don’t think so.
Many on the left, including their friends in the media, are still kicking themselves for letting George W. Bush get into the White House, rather than Al Gore, because of Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s candidate, siphoning off 50,000 votes from Al Gore in Florida, resulting in Bush beating Gore in Florida by 500 or so votes. The point being, every vote that goes to the Green Party candidate, is a vote that doesn’t go to the Democratic candidate, and any vote that goes to the Libertarian candidate, is one that doesn’t go to the Republican, Donald Trump.
Could the press really be so aligned with the Democrats that they’re boosting the Libertarian candidate, to the detriment of the Republican candidate? Well, Politico did a survey of the 72 members of the White House press corp recently, and what they found is that not a single one of the reporters, was a registered Republican – not one. Now they’ll say that this doesn’t affect their reporting, but I don’t buy that for a second.
Anyway, the bottom line is, any effort to recruit or encourage another candidate, to run as an alternative to Trump in the general election against Hillary, is foolish. It will only split the Republican vote, and hand the election to Hillary.
Let’s not be the Stupid Party.