Another Republican splits the Presidential scene

Although he hadn’t won a delegate nor garnered more than a tiny fraction of the primary voters to date, it took until yesterday for Buddy Roemer to finally stop seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Blaming his GOP bid’s demise on the lack of participation in the debates, Roemer is now seeking either the Reform Party nod or ballot access via Americans Elect, an internet-based nomination process which was started late last year.

Throughout his campaign, Roemer has been a Republican of a different stripe; for example, he’s backed the Occupy Wall Street movement. Buddy has also made waves by vowing not to take PAC contributions or individual donations exceeding $100, with his point being that 3 million people donating $100 would net him $300 million and make him competitive. Obviously, though, reality has smacked him in the face as he’s collected under $400,000 in this cycle – by comparison, Rick Santorum, the weakest financial link still in the GOP race, had raised $6.6 million by the end of January.

The Americans Elect movement is an interesting one. Unlike most other third parties, they are only interested in one race: the presidency. To that end, they are looking for a choice determined via internet poll, with the winner then getting a vice-presidential nominee from the other party – if Roemer won the nomination as a Republican, the vice-presidential candidate would have to be a Democrat. Meanwhile, the Reform Party has its roots in the long-ago presidential run of Ross Perot.

Over the last forty years, the two elections Perot was instrumental in helped Bill Clinton secure two presidential terms. The elections over that span where a third party succeeded in getting a significant portion of the vote (1980, 1992, 1996, and 2000) generally shook out in such a manner that the third-party nominee took away support from the political side he resided on.

  • In 1980 John Anderson, a renegade Republican, got 7% but didn’t materially affect a 10-point Reagan win.
  • In 1992 Ross Perot picked up 19% of the vote, with Bill Clinton winning by a 43% plurality over incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
  • Perot ran again in 1996, receiving 8% of the vote in an election where Bill Clinton was re-elected with just 49% over Republican Bob Dole.
  • The infamous 2000 election featured Ralph Nader taking just under 3 percent of the vote. Al Gore had the plurality with 48.4% but George W. Bush got the majority of electoral votes with 47.9% of the vote.

So more often than not, the result of an insurgent third party has been the political philosophy of the third-party candidate getting more votes but losing the election due to a split. It can be argued that a large number of Perot voters would have helped Bush and Dole in the 1990’s – I know I would have held my nose and voted for Bush in 1992 had Perot not been in the race. (I voted for Dole in 1996.) The inverse was true in 2000, when it can be presumed that Nader cost Gore the election, particularly in Florida where he got far more than the 500 or so votes that Bush won Florida by.

By many accounts, at least at this early point, the election of 2012 looks to be a fairly close one, with President Obama leading over prospective Republican opponents by a few points in national polls. But an insurgent campaign from the right (such as Ron Paul) may draw voters away from the GOP candidate and assure Obama a second, disastrous term.

But if Americans Elect selects a far-left candidate, such as the Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Republican could pull the upset. Yet the Left seems a lot more disciplined about not deviating from their chosen candidates, knowing that even a moderately liberal candidate will pull America in the political direction they desire.