{"id":1138,"date":"2009-10-15T07:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T11:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/15\/gops-third-party-conundrum\/"},"modified":"2009-10-15T07:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T11:46:00","slug":"gops-third-party-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/15\/gops-third-party-conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP’s third party conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next month, Republicans hope to reclaim the national momentum by picking off two governor’s seats — in New Jersey and Virginia — currently held by Democrats.<\/p>\n

They also hope to retain the 23rd district House seat here in the North Country, vacated by John McHugh when he took the Army Secretary post.<\/p>\n

The problem? The GOP might lose two out of three of those races. And in both cases, the trouble lies with third party candidates.<\/p>\n

Republican Dede Scozzafava’s campaign has been discombobulated from the start by Conservative challenger Doug Hoffman, whose “Dede’s too liberal” message has been relentless.<\/p>\n

Hoffman is siphoning away crucial votes and crucial dollars, making it possible that Democrat Bill Owens could win with as low as 40% of the popular vote.<\/p>\n

A similar situation is shaping up in New Jersey. Democratic incumbent Governor Jon Corzine is deeply unpopular.<\/p>\n

But a third-party independent candidate is dividing the opposition vote, complicating the fight for Republican Chris Christie. <\/p>\n

Here’s Politico<\/a>‘s take:<\/p>\n

The result has left the Republican grappling with a two-headed Hydra that could enable a narrow plurality win for the deeply unpopular incumbent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Republicans have been down this road before. In 1992, Ross Perot sucked up roughly 19% of the vote, leaving George H.W. Bush with only 37.4%.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, Democrat Bill Clinton captured the White House with only 43% of the popular vote.<\/p>\n

Democrats suffered a similar fate in 2000. Ralph Nader hoovered up fewer than 3% of the vote nationally , but in a couple of key states (Florida!) that difference might have been crucial.<\/p>\n

Obviously, all of these third-party candidates have every right to be in these races.<\/p>\n

Some of them carry important or at least interesting messages, tackling issues ignored by the major party candidates.<\/p>\n

But the fact remains that in this year’s political season, that third name on the ballot could be disastrous for Republicans hoping to begin rebuilding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next month, Republicans hope to reclaim the national momentum by picking off two governor’s seats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}