First it was New Hampshire's Sen. Bob Smith, now it is Pat Buchanan who is said to be weighing a third-party run for President.
Those who believe that Gov. George W. "Juggernaut" Bush would march triumphantly into the Republican nomination and then take on Al Gore, mano a mano, in the general election might be a bit premature in that assessment. The 2000 presidential election could be a three-way slugfest.
What's going on here? Why all this speculation about a third party?
Doubtless some of this is being fueled by the Republican establishment's effort to turn the nomination into a coronation. It is obvious to all that the GOP establishment wants to keep the conservative riffraff and populist rabble-rousers well clear of the very proper garden party honoring his royal highness, George II.
Second, the effort to make the Bush succession appear inevitable has pretty much soaked up most of the Republican money. No one wants to back a loser, and with Gov. Bush so far ahead in the polls other candidates are having a devilishly hard time raising money.
But these are merely tactical political equations. They are insufficient to explain the persistence of the third-party phenomenon.
The third-party talk rises from a deep and growing anger on the party's right wing and among independent voters who are pretty much fed up with the two-party system. The success of Jesse Ventura's Reform Party gubernatorial run in Minnesota has been interpreted by some as the first tremors in a coming political earthquake.
Conservative Republicans are frustrated with what they see as their party's unwillingness to fight for the issues dear to them. Their anger is not directed so much at Democrats — right-wingers expect the Dems to pursue liberal fevers — as it is at wobbly Republicans who are too willing to go along rather than fight. With narrow majorities, especially in the House, the defection of a handful of jellyfish Republicans is enough to kill the conservative agenda.
The last successful third-party movement in American politics produced the Republican Party in the 1850s. Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party was not really an attempt to establish a third party so much as it was the personal vehicle for T.R., who ran out of revulsion for his successor in the White House, fellow Republican William Howard Taft.
Is the unrest among conservatives and among alienated independents enough to make a third-party candidacy credible? This is the question that Sen. Smith, Pat Buchanan and others are asking themselves.
GOP graybeards, however, must not underestimate or dismiss the intensity of the anger on the party's right wing. It is real, runs deep and may run to a third party.
