1. Third Parties in American politics

2. TYPE: Splinter Parties
* “Bolter” parties – Parties that broke off from one of the two major parties
* Most important 3rd parties in history!
* Play the “innovator” role *
* Center around a strong personality (fade away with that person)
* EX) "Bull Moose" and the “Dixiecrats"

3. TYPE: Ideological Parties
* Based on a set of beliefs, a comprehensive view of social, economic, and political matters!
* Although they have not won many elections, they have been long-lived…
* EX) Libertarian and Constitution parties

4. TYPE: Economic Protest Parties
* NOT based on a set of beliefs, they are short-lived…
* Parties rooted in periods of economic discontent!

5. TYPE: Single-Issue Parties
* Just like their name says! (concentrate on a single public policy matter)
* Usually fade as major party steals their issue…
* Play the “innovator” role *
* EX) Right-to-Life party and The Rent Is Too Damn High party.

6. Successful Third Party Presidential Candidates
* 1860 – Southern Democrat party, John C. Breckinridge,18.1% (72 electoral votes)
The United States presidential election of 1860 was the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War…
The nation had been divided throughout the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners…
In 1860, these issues finally came to a head. As a result of conflicting regional interests, the Democratic Party broke into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided and dispirited opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured enough electoral votes to put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with very little support from the South…
Within a few months of the election, seven Southern states, led by South Carolina, responded with declarations of secession, which was rejected as illegal by outgoing President James Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln. Four additional Southern states seceded after the Battle of Fort Sumter…

7. Successful Third Party Presidential Candidates
*** 1912 – Progressive “Bull Moose” party, Teddy Roosevelt, 27.5% (88 electoral votes) ***
he United States presidential election of 1912 was a rare four-way contest… Incumbent President William Howard Taft was re-nominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing.
After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party"). It nominated Roosevelt and ran candidates for other offices in major states.
Democrat Woodrow Wilson was finally nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention, thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate who still had a large and loyal following in Eugene V. Debs was the nominee of the Socialist Party of America…
Wilson defeated Taft, Roosevelt, and Debs in the general election, winning a huge majority in the Electoral College and 42% of the popular vote, while his nearest rival, Roosevelt, won only 27%...
This was the last election in which a candidate who was not a Republican or Democrat came second in either the popular vote or the Electoral College and the first election in which all 48 states of the continental United States participated.

8. * Roosevelt played the “Spoiler” *
Teddy Roosevelt

9. Successful Third Party Presidential Candidates
* 1948 – States' Rights party “Dixiecrats,” Strom Thurmond, 2.4% (39 electoral votes)
The United States presidential election of 1948 is considered by most historians as the greatest election upset in American history. Virtually every prediction indicated that incumbent President Harry S. Truman would be defeated by Republican Thomas E. Dewey…
Truman won, overcoming a three-way split in his own party. Truman's surprise victory was the fifth consecutive win for the Democratic Party in a presidential election. As a result of the 1948 congressional election, the Democrats would regain control of both houses of Congress…
Thus, Truman's election confirmed the Democratic Party's status as the nation's majority party, a status it would retain until the conservative realignment in 1968…

10. Thurmond ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes…
Thurmond conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he continued to fight against civil rights legislation.
He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was merely opposed to excessive federal authority…

12. Successful Third Party Presidential Candidates
* 1968 – American Independent party, George Wallace,13.5 % (46 electoral votes)
The United States presidential election of 1968…
On November 5, 1968, the Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon won the election over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation's cities, torn by riots and crime. The election of 1968 was a realigning election that permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years.
The election featured a strong third party effort by former Alabama Governor George Wallace. Because Wallace's campaign opposed federal intervention in the South to end school segregation, he proved to be a formidable candidate in the South; no third-party candidate has won an entire state's electoral votes since…

13. Mr. Cusick
Southern populist, pro-segregation during the American desegregation period, convictions he renounced later in life…

14. Successful Third Party Presidential Candidates
*** 1992 – Reform party, H. Ross Perot, 18.9% (0 electoral votes) ***
The United States presidential election of 1992 had three major candidates: Incumbent Republican President George Bush; Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot…
Bush had alienated much of his conservative base by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against raising taxes, the economy was in a recession, and Bush's perceived greatest strength, foreign policy, was regarded as much less important following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the relatively peaceful climate in the Middle East after the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War…
Clinton won a plurality in the popular vote, and a wide Electoral College margin. The election was a significant realigning election after three consecutive Republican landslides, as the Democratic Party picked up support in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region and California, but only carried four states in Clinton's native South…

15. Perot played the “Spoiler”

17. Successful Third Party Presidential Candidates
*** 2000 – Reform party, Ralph Nader, 2.7% (0 electoral votes) ***
Nader played the “Spoiler”

18. Third Party Governors 1 20
In the Rhode Island 2010 election, independent Lincoln Chafee won the election with 36.1% of the vote. Moderate Party of Rhode Island candidate Ken Block obtained 6.5% in fourth place…

19. Ventura ran for Governor of Minnesota in 1998 as the nominee for the Reform Party of Minnesota (he later joined the Independence Party of Minnesota when the Reform Party broke from its association with the Reform Party of the United States of America)…
His campaign consisted of a combination of aggressive grassroots events and original television spots, designed by quirky adman Bill Hillsman, using the phrase "Don't vote for politics as usual."
He spent considerably less than his opponents ($300,000) and was a pioneer in his using the Internet as a medium of reaching out to voters in a political campaign…

20. Third Parties in Congress
* None in the U.S. House of Representatives!
* Two in the U.S. Senate…
Joe Lieberman (CT)
Bernie Sanders (VT)

21. 129th Ohio General Assembly
* None in the Senate!
* None in the House!

22. Michael Bloomberg, New York City
Third Party Mayors
* Lifelong Democrat, brief stint with the Republican party, Independent since 2007!
Some of the policies Bloomberg advocates parallel those of either the Democratic or the Republican party platform…
He is socially liberal, supporting abortion rights, gay marriage, gun control, and amnesty for illegal immigrants, for example…
On economics, foreign, and domestic issues, Bloomberg tends to be conservative. He opposes a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, and criticizes those who favor one. Economically, he supports government involvement in issues such as public welfare and climate change, while being strongly in favor of free trade, pro-business, and describing himself as a fiscal conservative because he balanced the city's budget…
He also is at odds with many around the United States for not allowing prayer at the ceremony marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks…
Michael Bloomberg, New York City

23. Third Parties and the 2012 Presidential Election

24. * The largest third party in the United States!

26. Colbert and the Libertarian Party
* Laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration across borders, non-interventionism in foreign policy, respect for freedom of trade and freedom of travel to all foreign countries…
The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States. It is also identified by many as the fastest growing political party in the United States… The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects the ideas of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated markets, a less powerful state, strong civil liberties (including support for same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights), the legalization of cannabis, separation of church and state, open immigration, non-interventionism and neutrality in diplomatic relations (i.e., avoiding foreign military or economic entanglements with other nations), freedom of trade and travel to all foreign countries, and a more responsive and direct democracy…
285,000 members nationwide…
Colbert and the Libertarian Party

29. Jill Stein!

30. The Green Party
* A sustainable United States, alternative fuels, environmental protection, opposition to big business, universal health-care…
Green Party members advocate sustainable methods of agriculture, business, and transportation…
They support the use of alternative fuels and laws providing greater environmental protection…
In this way, they stand opposed to “big business” consumption of fossil fuels, deforestation to build houses, destruction or plundering of natural habitats to create products, and any other practices which cause damage to the already fragile environment of Earth.
Moreover, the Green Party is committed to developing universal healthcare…

32. The Constitution Party
“Paleo-Conservative”
Party's goal is "to restore our government to its Constitutional limits and our law to its Biblical foundations.”
The Constitution Party is a conservative political party in the United States. It was founded as the U.S. Taxpayers' Party by Howard Philips in 1991… Phillips was the party's candidate in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections. The party's official name was changed to The Constitution Party in 1999; however, some state affiliate parties are known under different names. The party's platform defines itself as predicated on the principles of the nation's founding documents…
The party puts a large focus on immigration, calling for stricter penalties towards illegal immigrants and a moratorium on legal immigration until all federal subsidies to immigrants are discontinued… The party absorbed the American Independent Party, originally founded for George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign. The American Independent Party of California has been an affiliate of the Constitution Party since its founding; however, current party leadership is disputed and the issue is in court to resolve this conflict. The Constitution Party has some substantial support from the Christian Right and in 2010 achieved major party status in Colorado. The Constitution Party's 2012 presidential nominee is Virgil Goode…
Paleo-Conservatism is a term for a conservative political philosophy found primarily in the United States stressing tradition, limited government, civil society, anti-colonialism, anti-corporatism and anti-federalism, along with religious, regional, national and Western identity…

33. Rocky Anderson on Bill O'Reilly
The party is working for campaign finance reforms and does not accept corporate funding. It wants to abolish corporate personhood. The party and its founder are in favor of a financial transaction tax and want to end the Bush tax cuts. They are against the enlarging of the Keystone Pipeline and want a ban on mountaintop removal mining. They are also proponents for a single payer health system… It describes itself as advocating economic justice through measures such as green jobs and a right to organize, environment justice through enforcing employee safeguards in trade agreements, and social and civic justice through universal health care…

34. The Justice Party
* Social democracy, Social liberalism, Environmentalism, American Progressivism, Populism

35. Vermin Supreme Glitterbombs Randall Terry
And just for FUN…
Vermin Love Supreme
*Anarchy
* Mandatory tooth brushing laws
* Zombie apocalypse awareness
* Zombie-based energy plan
* Time travel research
* A free pony for every American
Vermin Supreme!
Vermin Supreme Glitterbombs Randall Terry