3rd Party Candidates?

from PolMach Forums
Here is a suggestion for the next version of this game: Adding 3rd Party Candidates! Examples would include: The Reform Party, The Green Party, The Libertarian Party (The third-largest political party in the country), or the Constitution Party.


Granted, they would be doomed to failure, but for Libertarians such as myself, I would like the chance to play as Michael Badnarik, running for president on the LP ticket.

Has there been anydiscussuion on this?
4,163 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from PolMach Forums Top
Frankly 3rd party candidates are overblown. Occassionally they have an effect on Presidential politics, but for the most part, they do nothing. Frankly until a 3rd party wants to put in the hard work to get a grass roots with candidates elected to state legislatures and the national congress, they are irrelevent, as they should be.
Reply #2 from PolMach Forums Top
I agree with much of what you said, except the last part. Third party candidates are important because the two established parties are the same! Both are committed to increasing spending, bot are committed to keeping benign drugs illegal, such as marijuana, both support the PATRIOT act,, both advocate submitting our sovreignty to supranational entities like the WTO and United Nations. Both favor regulation of industry, much of which is unnecessary. Both oppose the First Amendment in the form of the McCain Feingold Act. Both supported the No Child Left Behind Act, which lets the fedeeral government dictate how your children are to be educated (and poorly at that!). Both prey on the fears of the electorate to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Both participate in pork barrel programs for their constituency. Both parties think the solution is more government, when it hasn't done anything right at all! (consider the crash of 1938, the war in Iraq, the Great Society, the current recession that was triggered by Greenspan monkeying with interest rates in 1999 and environmental quality) And finally, both are against the injection of third parties into politics! I have seen the last firsthand where the Ohio Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, arbitrarily denied the Libertarian Party ballot access, since he knew our presence would siphon votes from the Republicans.

Neither party gives a damn about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. They just twist them for their own purposes.
That's why it is important to have third parties: to kick the crooks and despots out of Washington.
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Reply #3 from PolMach Forums Top
Since a 3rd party candidate rarely has even a remote chence of winning (maybe TR in 1912), the only way they will have a substantial impact is if they can get some people in the House and Senate, and they have a balance of power (say, 48 dems, 48 republicans and 4 libertarians), like the NDP in Canada does occaisionally (Though a lot of people might disagree, I would say that the most progress we ever had as a nation was arguably when we had a minority government held up by the NDP). But I know how you feel supporting a third party, where people laugh when you say that the best possible situation is an NDP majority government. But I made a couple of third party candidates (Debs and Lafollette) you can use in "Hooray! New candidates!"
Reply #4 from PolMach Forums Top
I agree with much of what you said, except the last part. Third party candidates are important because the two established parties are the same!


To someone who is a libertarian, they probably do seem the same. They have vast differences, hence the infighting going on right now. Unless the libertarians, or any other 3rd party, can get some people elected to lower offices, they should have no support for higher offices. How would Bednarik propose to govern when he has absolutely no allies in Congress. How can any 3rd party not even have their people elected to state legislatures and expect to be taken seriously for national congress. It can't just be "we're right so annoint us." They have to put the work in first. Your presidential candidate has a resume of running for Congress twice and finishing 3rd. Why did he think he could be elected to serve in Washington when he's never even served in Austin?