I love most of the Libertarian party’s economic philosophies. And their stance on, say, how to address illegal immigration. What I can’t handle is the socially liberal stances: abortion, to name a big one.

But I’m getting off my planned topic. Third parties like the Libertarian party have not to date been a force to their own ends in American politics. They have certainly been a force to other’s ends (hat tip to the efforts of Bill Clinton’s evil assistant AlGore in 2000), but that’s certainly not the primary goal of their efforts. The goal of most independant voters logically seems to be to find an alternative to the classic two-party system for their vote — in which, independant voters will tell you, they find no “good” choice, merely a variance in two evil (or “less-than-desirable”, to be diplomatic) choices. So we see this year, as in 2000, an independant candidate (Ralph Nader) appearing on the presidential ballot in more-than-a-few states.

So what?

As an acquaintance msg’ed me just today,

If this were a battle ground state, I might have to vote Bush. Luckily, it isn’t. Because that would be very distressing to me. I flipped flopped back and forth but was never comfortable with any “decision” on what to vote. So it finally boiled down to don’t vote – or don’t vote for either Bush or Kerry. Finally, something I can live with.

In this person’s mind, voting for Nader in a non-battleground state is essentially equivalent to not voting. (The conventional wisdom being that voting for Nader in a battleground state would be like a vote for Bush …which assumes that their vote would have otherwise gone to Kerry). Clearly, third party votes don’t matter in that they’re a vote for the third party as much as they matter that they’re not a vote for someone else. Perhaps that’s effective in “making a point”, but that argument smells suspiciously like the track my little sister would take by storming out of an altercation with my parents and slamming her door: the “point” was conveyed, but it was still a pretty useless course of action, at that time and in future throw-downs.

Theoretically, the day might come when neither of the Big Two candidates win the requisite majority of the electoral votes cast (270 in 2004) due to the diluting effect of a third party candidate — but those sneaky Founding Fathers already thought of that (and don’t miss the tweaks from Amendment 12). Constitutional lesson aside, I can’t see how effecting such an outcome would serve the goals of the third party voters.

The problem with the third-party-for-pres approach is that it has no real projected timeline to a payoff. At the current rate, it could be decades before a third party contender really has a shot at taking a more-than-marginal-share of a presidential election. What to do to keep the troops motivated? And, more importantly, how to continue to grow enlistment numbers? (Some “reinstatement of the draft” joke seems apropos here, but I’m just too tired of pandering to that particular idiotocracy).

And then, somewhat out of the blue, I see this post by Ramesh Ponnuru in the NRO Corner:

An email: “Ramesh makes a good point (in his noon post) concerning 3d parties. But, the one thing I don’t hear anyone address is why all these 3d parties run for President, but don’t (normally, except for California) run for Congress or the Senate. It would seem that a 3d party with a serious long-range view, would concentrate national resources on winning a couple of Congressional seats a year. Then (after 10 or so wins) they would try to get a few senators elected. Think of the power 5 Senators would have if they were conservative (actually, the power would be the same no matter their leanings, I would just like it more if they were conservative), and the Senate was nominally split down the middle. Now, they could run a presidential campaign, and use their electoral votes to influence things.”

And with that one email, a glorious action plan appears for the political aspirations of third parties in America (to me, anyway). It seems so simple. So clear. So attainable. BUT: it’s not the Big Enchilada, the Presidency. I would hope that the third party movement would be able to set a long term goal, like the one outlined above, and set to the task. I don’t know where it would go, but that’s the beauty of this country: the voters would decide. What really excites me isn’t the organization of a for-real politically influential party made up of social relativists; what excites me is the promise of balance (of “checks and balances” fame) that this approach could bring back to the runaway Two Party system.

I guess we’ll see.