http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/has-the-invisible-primary-for-conservative-third-party-candidate-already-begun/article/2584586Has the invisible primary for conservative third party candidate already begun?By PHILIP KLEIN (@PHILIPAKLEIN) • 3/1/16 10:18 AM
As the prospect of a Donald Trump nomination becomes increasingly likely, many conservatives have been floating the idea of a conservative mounting a third party challenge. But then comes the trickier part — figuring out who that challenger should be. Following the conversation on the Right over the past week, I've begun to wonder, are we already at the beginning of the invisible primary for the third party nominee?
The arguments for a third party are quite obvious — many principled conservatives cannot stomach Trump's toxic blend of racism, liberalism and unseriousness, and will not vote for him. I've personally declared that were he the nominee, I would either vote for a third party conservative if available, or stay home. But in addition to the principled reason, many conservatives feel it's important to have somebody at the top of the ticket giving conservatives a reason to go to the voting booths, or else GOP Senate and House candidates would be collateral damage of the anti-Trump protest.
But, given how quickly events are moving, many conservatives have already blown past the idea of the need to have a third party and have now started to consider the how.
The fact that Mitt Romney, who hasn't endorsed anybody, has spent the past week attacking Trump over his failure to release tax returns and his refusal to denounce the KKK and David Duke, has people such as HotAir's Allahpundit more convinced he's gonna run third party.
But Erick Erickson laid down a marker: "I don't think Mitt Romney should be a third party candidate. I think it needs to be someone else." He instead floated Rick Perry, or using the Constitution Party as a vehicle to help with ballot access issues.
It's easy to see the arguments on both sides. In the pro-Romney camp, the argument would be that he's the only person with the national profile and fundraising network to mount a serious third party challenge. Whatever people's reservations about Romney in 2012, staring at the prospect of a Clinton vs. Trump race, he may suddenly look like the second coming of Ronald Reagan. In the con camp, there would be the argument that the whole reason that the Trump candidacy succeeded in the first place was that conservatives were tired of being spoon fed candidates like Romney. If conservatives have reached the point at which they're ready to bolt the Republican Party, they may as well go for broke. Why settle for a "more electable" third party candidate that they have to hold their noses for when any third party candidate will be a long shot anyway? Additionally, Romney's credibility is undermined by having courted Trump's endorsement during the 2012 race, holding an event to accept the endorsement when Trump was promoting birtherism. At the time, I wrote that was the biggest blunder of Romney's candidacy. Little did I know what we'd be staring at four years later.
Even moving past Romney, the argument doesn't end there. If conservatives demand a not-Romney third party candidate, who will it be? Should it be runners up, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio? Or are they out because they already showed they couldn't beat Trump and signed an RNC pledge? Does that also apply to Perry? If none of them are ruled out, doesn't that start to trigger a kind of "what if primary" — essentially, replaying the GOP primary as if Trump never ran.
Does that mean somebody like Sen. Ben Sasse, who was the first GOP senator to declare he would bolt the party if Trump were the nominee, would have to step up? If Sasse, who has a low national profile, jumps in, would that trigger all sorts of conservatives to come out of the woodwork and raise their hands to say they could mount a third party challenge?
As for using the Constitution Party or Libertarian Party as a vehicle, there would be an advantage in terms of ballot access and they already have candidates and have had their own debates. Would their voters reject being hijacked by Republican refugees?
Ultimately, should a third party challenge emerge, it's going to have to happen very quickly. It might just take one candidate who can raise a lot of money quickly and secure enough commitments as soon as possible after Trump becomes the presumptive nominee. But, either way, there won't be much time to litigate these issues. To make this as successful as possible, conservatives will have to do something they haven't proved adept at doing in recent years — come together.
