Three weeks ago we wrote about people leaving the Republican Party. They were mostly those who really liked Bush-style Republicanism - funded by the mega wealthy and both corporatist and internationalist.
Today Politico writes of such individuals, and concludes they have no place to call home.
If the Republicans’ reasons for leaving the GOP are obvious — primarily, disdain for former President Donald Trump and his stranglehold on the party — the sobering reality confronting them on the other side is that there’s really no place to go.
The Democratic Party, which continues to move leftward, isn’t a good ideological fit. Those who want to fight to recapture the GOP from within are vastly outnumbered. Building a third party from scratch requires gigantic sums of money and overcoming a thicket of daunting state laws designed in large part by the two major parties.
For better or worse, ours is a de facto two-party system where third parties exist mostly as recipients of protest votes. We’ve seen the instability that having several significant parties brings to Italy and Israel, it’s not something to emulate.
If an American chooses to be consequential politically, it will be within one of the two major parties. Many for one reason or another choose to be politically inactive, and that’s okay too.
The most former Republicans could achieve as a third party is to take enough votes away from the GOP to ensure Democrat victories. So they need to ask themselves if the Democrats are the lesser of two evils; some will conclude “yes” and others “no.”
I’ve voted for the lesser evil several times, including votes for Romney and McCain, neither of whom I much liked.
