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4 Constitutionalists, Greens, and Libertarians Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. John Quincy Adams, quoted by 2008 Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin Hobbled by duopolistic regulations and other structural and cultural infirmities, people wanting today to build a third-party movement with the strength really to take on the major parties also face a conundrum: where on the ideological spectrum is there sufficient and attractive space for constructing such a movement? Put another way, at what point might the oxygen be found to breathe life into this new party? To Ross Perot it appeared that the two major parties had moved far apart on policy and ideology, leaving millions of middle-of-the-road voters feeling alienated and disenfranchised. Perot invested his energies and a substantial portion of his wealth on the supposition that a well-nurtured centrist movement could succeed provided it was a movement with an attitude—a movement hostile to insiders and professional politicians and dedicated to a handful of issues that, though important to many voters, were being ignored by the major parties. Perot’s 1992 presidential showing was the second best that anyone other than a Democrat or Republican has mustered since the Civil War. His organized movement —United We Stand America and then the Reform Party—turned out to be disappointingly ephemeral and short lived; but there are those outside that majorparty realm who still are betting on Perot’s hunch about a movement at the center. Some of these people, in Minnesota, New York, and elsewhere, are trying now to build the Independence Party of America. Another movement was attempting in 2009 to launch the American Moderate Party of the United States. The Moderate Party has fielded candidates in Illinois. It achieved state recognition and ballot status in Rhode Island in 2009 and has been at work to crack the California ballot. Constitutionalists, Greens, and Libertarians 55 Other builders, real and potential, reject this assumption about room at the center . For them talk about the major parties moving far apart may seem to be just idle chatter. They are laying their bets on what Helen Keller declared and many have long considered to be conventional wisdom: the Democrats and Republicans are as alike as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and if a third-party is to succeed, it will be built to the left or the right of both major parties. Table 4.1 Presidential Campaigns of the Constitution and Green Parties Constitution Partya Green Party Year Presidential Votes (Number Presidential Votes (Number Candidate of Ballots)b, c Candidate of Ballots)b, c 1992 Howard Phillips 43,369 (21) —— —— 1996 Howard Phillips 184,820 (39) Ralph Nader 685,297 (22) 2000 Howard Phillips 98,022 (41) Ralph Nader 2,883,105 (44) 2004 Michael Peroutka 144,499 (36) David Cobb 119,859 (28) 2008 Chuck Baldwin 199,750 (39) Cynthia McKinney 161,797 (32) a. Until 1999, the party’s name was the U.S. Taxpayers Party. b. Given minor discrepancies in reporting popular votes, the table presents the highest vote reported by the sources. c. The maximum number of ballots is fifty-one (fifty states and the District of Columbia ). The popular vote totals include tallies in states where candidate had ballot access but also reported write-ins in states where the candidate’s name did not appear. Sources: Federal Election Commission reports; Ballot Access News; and Dave Leip, Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, http:\\uselectionatlas.org (accessed August 1, 2011). On the Right: The Constitution Party To the right of the right flank of the GOP, the major party that declares its devotion to conservative principles and to conservatives’ interests, there resides the Constitution Party. Its partisans contend that most of what the Republican Party has for sale ideologically is a neoconservative sham. The truth—conservative truth as they see it—lies largely outside the mainstream parameters set by the parties of the duopoly. Howard Phillips, the Constitution Party’s principal founder and three-time presidential candidate, has long been a recognized leader of the New Right movement. Phillips directed the Office of Economic Opportunity in the Nixon administration. He parted ways with Nixon because of the president’s decision to continue some Great Society programs inherited...

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