Third party rumblings?
George Will describes the increased volatility of the left and the right and the apparent empowerment of third party movements by the multiplicity of media (and the BCRS, which Will does not cite):
the responses of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in the Sept. 26 debate, to this question: “Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?” Their dusty answers were clear enough: No and no. Because those responses were more or less sensible, they infuriated the party’s incandescent antiwar activists. Those activists thought that in the 2006 elections they had won for their party the power to end the war, but they have had to settle for increasing the minimum wage.
Surely it is not fanciful to imagine that in the fevered recesses of these activists’ minds there are thoughts of running, or at least threatening to run, an independent antiwar candidate in the general election. Most political professionals discount this possibility, saying that restive Democrats learned their lesson in 2000, when Ralph Nader’s 97,488 votes in Florida cost Al Gore the presidency. But another lesson of that episode is that a small number of intensely disaffected “progressives” can have momentous consequences. Hence they might have considerable leverage by threatening an insurgency.
Speaking of insurgencies, last week there were menacing rumblings from social conservatives about running an independent antiabortion candidate if Rudy Giuliani is the Republican nominee. Perhaps if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, social conservatives will be terrified back into the fold, their fury assuaged by Giuliani’s repeated genuflections in the form of promises regarding what such conservatives care most about — judicial nominations.
But do not underestimate the temptation, to which the intense cohorts on Democratic left and Republican right are susceptible, to kick over their party’s furniture for the fun of it. The pleasures of moral purity are available to those who fancy themselves a small-church militant in an unconverted world. The multiplication of political media has infused politics with an extraordinary volatility. For example, in 2006, when Rep. Mark Foley, the Florida Republican, was incinerated in the House page scandal, his national name recognition went from essentially zero to the high 80s in six days.
Will quotes Adam Smith on causation: “It is not the multitude of ale-houses…that occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but that disposition, arising from other causes, necessarily gives employment to a multitude of ale-houses.”
However, while it is true that the fiery sentiments of some on the Left and Right arise before any third party movements, McCain-Feingold and the New Media have lowered the barriers to entry and created favorable conditions for schismatics: (a) low cost, instant, professional looking messages; (b) the appearance that smallish groups have critical mass because it’s so easy to generate a crowd in cyberspace; and (c) ample funding for the fringes; among other elements. We shall see if any serious insurgencies arise over the course of the next 13 months.