For most any involved follower of politics, there are the occasional uncomfortable moments when one realizes that one of their beliefs does not conform to that of their chosen party’s. The discomfort is the scraping as the person tries to fit his or her rounded peg of values in the square-shaped hole of their party’s ideologies.
No matter how contorted and ideal the person’s peg is, it is still not going to fit exactly in the sharply defined hole. There will always be the gaps between the right angles and the actual curve of that person’s beliefs.
Sometimes these inconsistencies are prevalent in such a large population of a party’s constituency that there becomes a possibility of a third party. It happened in the 1860s when the Republican Party formed from anti-slavery progressives within the Whig Party. The question is raised today when there is a core of hard-right conservative evangelicals who see the Republican political leadership making more and more moderate and progressive choices.
The most powerful voting bloc in the country is seeing their party making fewer favorable policy changes to areas such as gay marriage, abortion, and prayer in schools. Furthermore, when the most powerful voting bloc in the country feels that it is not being listened to by its chosen party, it becomes more and more aware that it is capable of making a political move.
Most third parties spend years chasing single-issue causes and being largely ignored by the population at large. This is because most third-parties are started in a local area and must spend enormous energy to get their message and ideology spread to a significant number of likeminded people. The evangelical right has no such problem. There is a ready-made cross-country constituency for this ghost party.
If there will be a third party, is a matter of whether the evangelicals continue with their current policy of sitting out elections and refusing to vote whenever the Republicans do not appease their needs. Sooner or later, the evangelicals are going to realize that this gets them no closer to their goals than voting for a less-than perfect right-wing candidate.
There is no doubt that the evangelical leadership has already considered this option. The only hang up that comes is the reality of vote-splitting. They have to determine if they have enough political juice to overcome not only the Republicans they seek to replace, but also the united Democrats. If and when this split could occur is uncertain. Would they wait until the right-wing is in a stronger position politically, or is a situation like now – where support for the Republicans is low – more feasible?
Conjecture like this may seem far-fetched and counter-productive in a partisan way, but it is important because all Americans need to examine if they feel like their party is representing them to their satisfaction. Even if a group does not have the power to create a complete new third party, the threat of the schism may be just enough to make that square hole a little more comfortable to a bunch of pegs.