On Voting for Third Parties

On purists, politics and pointless voting:

There are always disaffected voters and politicians who are unhappy with the traditional two-party system in places like America and Australia. I understand the concerns of these folks. I too can feel that sense of unhappiness and discontent. Too often the two main parties are just too much alike, and real conservatives and Christians can feel left out, and that their concerns are not being addressed.

I get all that. I wish things were different. But I also realise that we live in a real world, and not a make-believe one. Sadly, for now, we basically have to make do with what we have, and not pine for some chimera which does not exist, or will have zero impact, at least for many decades to come.

But we always end up with some disgruntled voters voting for independents or third parties, in the hopes that somehow things might change. Well, things might change to some extent, but almost always for the worse. Unless a major conservative candidate is so utterly bad and useless, and completely indistinguishable from a lefty candidate, all that a third-party vote does is drag away votes from the conservatives. In other words, it simply helps the leftists to win. A lot of good that does!

Examples abound. Consider the failed independent candidate Ross Perot who made a go of it in the 1992 and 1996 American presidential races. While he took votes from various camps, it was mainly conservatives who ran with him. While he did somewhat OK in ’92 in terms of votes, he did not win one American state. He did worse in ’96.

Or consider the current US election. I get emails from Randall Terry and Pastor Stephen Broden who are running a pro-life campaign for the Constitution Party (formerly the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party). Terry of course had formed Operation Rescue back in 1987. While I am certainly thankful for pro-life activism, there is no chance this party will make any positive impact in the election, other than being another spoiler party. (See more on this matter below.)

I am writing this piece because a fellow conservative just sent in a comment to a recent article of mine in which I spoke of ten things Christians need to keep in mind about this current US election and other elections. That piece is found here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/11/01/ten-truths-on-christians-and-the-us-elections/

In his comment he told me why he differed with me about Trump. He said things like Trump did not do all that much good the first time around; he did not really drain the swamp; he was not a real conservative in many respects; that things like abortion are just as bad with Trump as with Kamala and Co; and that he was going to vote for a third party (the Constitution Party).

As can sometimes be the case, when I started my reply to his comment, a lot of issues and thoughts arose that I felt needed to be said. So a comment-length reply soon mushroomed into an article-length reply – thus this article. I trust that given he was happy to have his comment posted and discussed, he will not mind that I have put my response into article form. All that follows is my response:

Thanks for that ****. I can say I too respect your past comments here, but in this case I must disagree. Let me count the ways.

One. If you had read my articles on the US elections from 8 and 9 years ago, you will have seen that I said much the same things about Trump. He was NOT my choice. I preferred other more genuine constitutional and Christian conservatives, such as Ted Cruz. For sharing those many articles and comments, I lost a lot of friends along the way. They were incensed that I did not fully endorse Trump, even though I certainly had zero interest in Hillary, or Joe four years later.

But both I and Trump have hopefully grown and matured over the years. People CAN change you know. For example, just the other day in fact Trump said he regretted a number of the people he had appointed and surrounded himself with in his first term. He too sees some of the mistakes and failures he had made back then.

Two. It is of course hard to drain any swamp in just one term, especially one as deep, entrenched and seemingly immovable as the one in Washington DC, the media, and so on. And when you have so many political enemies arrayed against you, trying to block you and stop you every step of the way, the job becomes very difficult indeed.

It is foolish in the extreme to expect to have fully drained the swamp in his first four years and ushered in nirvana. To expect Trump to have brought in the millennium in just one four-year term is wishful thing at best and living in a fantasy world at worst. Such a massive task will take years if not decades to properly accomplish.

Three. If you really think Trump delivered no actual results in his first term, then you see things in a far different light than I and other conservatives do. His term, while imperfect (as my article insisted it must always be) delivered some of the best results America has seen, whether in terms of the economy, border security, international relations, and so on. To pretend he did nothing and was just as bad as Sleepy Joe and Cacklin’ Kamala betrays a deficiency in how one views the world.

Four. As to the abortion issue, there are still major differences between Trump and the Dems. Trump rightly wanted the states to be able to decide on this matter, not the Federal government, or worse yet, a handful of unelected Supreme Court justices. So to see Roe v. Wade overturned was a very good and vital thing indeed. To see Trump appointing a handful of conservative judges to SCOTUS was also very important, and led to this bad decision being overturned.

Abortion rates are now down in many states. That is a good thing. They will never be fully eliminated in a fallen world, but having fewer babies being killed is far more morally superior than having more babies killed. Thus the question you ask– “Trump differs from Harris, Biden, Obama, how?” – indicates some rather faulty thinking here. Mental and moral clarity demands that we DO see very real differences when they do exist, even if perfection will never be achieved in this world.

Five. A major problem I have with what you say here I have already covered in some detail in points 3, 4 and 5 of my article. Perhaps you might need to reread them, and especially look at the three links I offered for further reading. But to reiterate and summarise, here is how I see it:

-People might feel good about themselves (pure, undefiled, and so on) by refusing to vote for the ONLY candidate who has a chance to stop Kamala from utterly destroying America. They sense they are making the only right choice here. I am far from sure about this.

-There is not a person in America who really believes that one of these third parties or independents has the slightest chance of winning the presidency on November 5. It is all the stuff of dreams. Again, it might make us feel virtuous, but there is only one result: every time a conservative – and conservative Christian – refuses to vote for the only man standing in Kamala’s way, they are really voting for Kamala. It is that simple and that real.

-For the time being, a third-party vote is a totally wasted vote, and NOT a “responsible vote”. Sure, perhaps in 40 or 70 years from now enough people will be disaffected with the two main parties to see another party standing some sort of chance of winning.

But we may never get to that place, if we foolishly hand Harris and Walz the keys to the White House this week. Independent and conservative parties may soon be driven to extinction under their reign of terror, so hoping that SOME DAY things will be different is again to live in unreality.

-If folks like Terry had a realistic chance of winning a number of states and making a real challenge to the status quo, that would be one thing. But right now these parties and independents have zero chance of winning, and really do act as spoilers.

So again, we might feel good about being a purist, but it is a waste, and it just ensures that the most radical hyper left, anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-family ticket America has ever seen will win. I fail to see how anyone claiming to be a conservative or a Christian can live with that sort of diabolical outcome.

In sum, it might make people feel good – even virtuous – when they wipe their hands of either candidate and of either major party. But if that simply results in the final nail in America’s coffin, then just what is the value in that? We need something more constructive than simply feeling good about oneself, and remaining “pure” in one’s political convictions. We need some hard-headed – and biblical-based – realism in fact.

Thanks for your thoughts however, and keep writing in. But on this issue at least I am afraid we will have to differ rather substantially! Blessings.

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