Third Party A Guarantee of Failure.

The more I watch the conservative movement, the more I am convinced that our biggest enemy is ourselves in the conservative movement. As Pogo once said, " We have met the enemy and he is us." Why do I say this? Especially after the glorious conservative march on Washington, seeing ACORN finally come under fire, and Van Jones demoted? It is because, unlike the left, we seem to not be able to stand together when it counts.

We make fun of all the special interest groups on the left, however, when it comes to election time they put their differences aside and elect the candidate on the left. Once done they go back to fighting among themselves. Those on the right side of the aisle are too sold out to their own special interests to come together to make sure that the candidate who more closely fits their beliefs is elected. We are too proud of our righteous virtue to our causes, so we vote for the guy or gal who fits that narrow scope and in so doing not only waste our vote on someone who will be luck to get double digit percentages of the vote, we assure that the candidate most against our principles is elected. This happened twice with Clinton due to Perot's third party candidacy. The left must be laughing themselves silly as they keep advancing their agendas.

Today, we find a strong grassroots movement against the corruption, the out of touch, and out of control government in Washington. We have momentum that should keep building to give us the opportunity to take back the reigns of power in 2010 and 2012. However, the most sure way of losing that power, and that momentum is if we decide to back a third party candidate. That would be assuring more power to Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.

This is going to not sit well with my Libertarian friends, but the only way that they will ever have power is to join and force the GOP into a new direction. That is very doable now if we will unite and make it happen. Our best chance, our only chance is within one of the two parties. Of those two the GOP is our best chance, we have a lot of people in it now who want to push it back to Conservative Constitutional values and principles. We need to unite and push it together.

I have heard a lot recently that "I will never be a part of either major party again!" All I can say is that is very foolish, it may feel good to say such things in pride, but it dooms you to being out of power forever. It is then all about you, and not about what is best for your country, in other words, it is the very definition of selfishness.

The Libertarians are screaming at me now, I think I can hear them. They are saying that they are the answer to fill the void. Historically there is nothing to make us believe that but blind faith in fantasy. There is going to be the ever present "proof" of a successful third party candidate in pointing out that "Lincoln was the third party candidate as the Republican." That sounds like a great, and convincing argument, it is just not true. However, since very few people know history it sounds very good and holds up until you find someone who does know.

In the 1860 presidential election, the Republicans were a new party. They were the new party after the Whigs imploded a few years earlier, they were also the party of the anti-slave democrats, and the by then defunct Free Soilers. Lincoln was his parties candidate, but keep in mind this new party that was only six years old, had already won a major governorship two years before and had momentum. The Democrats were split into two candidates one from the Northern Democrats Stephen Douglas and one from the Southern Democrats John Breckenridge. John Bell was the "third party" candidate for the Constitutional Union party. Lincoln won with 39.8%, to Douglas's 29.5%, Breckenridge's 18.1%, and Bell's 12.6%.

The Libertarians formed in December of 1971, soon to be celebrating their 38th anniversary without winning anything but low level offices at township or county levels, and never gaining more than about 5% of the vote Nationally. There are many things that those of us in the conservative wing of the Republican party and those in the Libertarian party agree, it is time we forge an alliance and take our country to our Constitutional principles. Our nation today is in critical condition, I heard it described the other day that we are in triage now, we can worry about cosmetic differences later. Now we must save the patient. My favorite way of looking at this is too often we are fighting among ourselves about what color to paint the dining room all the while our house is burning down around us. Let's get together, put the fire out, then argue about paint colors, okay?