Third Party Myths; or, Why You'd Be Nuts to Leave the GOP
Dividing efforts just keeps the RINOs, and Democrats, in power.
This essay is free, but with Premium Membership you get MORE. Join today.
NOTE: I will have more comprehensive analysis of Elon Musk’s new America Party out later this week, possibly tomorrow. But in the meantime, I think this article from 2002 — written in opposition to the then-ascendant (Ha!) Constitution Party — is important background. The American system is simply not designed for third parties. In modern times, they all fail, including the incredibly well-funded ones. There’s a reason. — RDM
by Rod D. Martin
April 19, 2002, UPDATED July 8, 2025
Every so often, someone decides that the world is too corrupt to reform. And they start a political party.
Sometimes this makes sense. More often, though, it’s just foolishness, and bad stewardship to boot. And for conservatives today, that’s exactly where things stand.
Third-party advocates will sputter and fume at this. They’ll talk about conscience, as though there are no issues of conscience concerning the second-order consequences of their actions when they help a leftist win. They’ll pontificate about how God could sovereignly raise up an army of believers for their new party, as if He can’t do the same thing in the Republican primary. They’ll claim we are advocating power politics, while they advocate the exact same things, just under their own control.
Like most things which ought not be done, this is all very well-intentioned. The advocates of this are fed up with the compromises of many leaders in the Republican Party, can’t stand the outright wickedness they see in their government, and want to do something now. This is all admirable, and correct.
What is not correct is the set of myths which swirl about third parties, myths without which those parties could not attract even the handful of followers they have.
Here are a few of them.
1. The Republican Party is a monolithic entity, controlled by Washington “insiders”. The exact opposite is true. In fact, the Republican Party (like the Democrat Party), is made up of literally thousands of legally independent entities, none of which have any power to tell each other what to do, expel each other from the party, or meddle (much) in each other’s affairs. That’s all the county parties, all the state parties, all the regional groupings, even the various national entities (yes, the National Republican Congressional Committee is completely separate from its Senatorial counterpart and even from the Republican National Committee). That’s not even counting the support groups, like the Republican Women and the College Republicans; and the support groups are as independent of each other as they are of the party, and the national, state, and local levels of each of these are independent as well.
In fact, there are only two ways in which any of these bodies are joined together: (1) in most (but not all) states, campaign finance laws lump them together for the purpose of limiting total contributions (a huge impediment for any third party trying to recreate them); and (2) in most cases, the lower bodies elect the levels immediately above them. That’s it; that’s all. And for the most part, this isn’t a choice: it’s the law. If a third party ever grew large enough to be subject to those laws, it would have to be “organized” the very same way.
In any case, Ronald Reagan [and now even more so, Donald Trump — RDM] proves that a determined effort in the party primary can change the leadership of that party wholesale. Will that change be enough? Will it last? That’s actually up to you.
But “you can’t win if you don’t play”.
2. Okay, but none of that matters, because the “big boys” keep control by disbursing the money. Pardon me while every activist in America laughs. Each party organ just mentioned has the joy of raising its own money. That’s why, once you get on their phone lists, you get constant telemarketing calls and texts from the NRCC and the NRSC and the RNC and your state Republican Party, plus any number of other groups. And since they have to raise their own money, they’re loath to share it: they each have their own kingdoms to build. This is why the majority of county Republican parties in America have an annual budget of less than $1,000. That’s not being “bought”; it’s not even getting taken to dinner.
But what if a party has a wealthy patron, you may ask? A Ross Perot or someone similar? Well, they’re going to discover that campaign finance law is a bit of a minefield, not least in that it’s almost entirely designed to thwart them. There are strict, low limits on how much a single donor can give to a political party. There are also strict limits on how much a political party can give its state and local affiliates, not to mention its cash-starved support groups (Republican Women, College Republicans, etc.). All of this is designed to force every level of a party to raise its own money, in whole or in part, which is another way of saying, force it to have its own separate grassroots support. A party should not be just one rich guy, after all.
Are there ways for individual wealthy people to drop a lot of money into politics? Absolutely. But starting or leading a political party may be the single worst way imaginable.
3. Well okay, but the party bosses in Washington certainly control the elected officials. Nope. Once again, follow the money: the candidates have to raise their own too. And whoever this might or might not come from, precious little of it comes from the party. Quite the contrary: the various party organs depend on the officeholders to raise money for them.
[One important update: the legalization of Super PACs allows wealthy individuals to spend unlimited amounts on politics, but it does not allow those Super PACs to give money to political parties or candidates. In fact, they are prohibited — on penalty of prison — from coordinating with parties or candidates at all. So Elon would have unlimited ability to spend money to support or defeat the candidates of his choosing through such a vehicle. The problem is that now that he’s the leader of a political party, he will either have to forego such vehicles or face jail time. Is this absurd? It doesn’t matter: it’s the law. — RDM]
It gets worse (or better, depending on your perspective): the parties don’t pick the candidates either. They recruit very few of them, they recruit opponents for a lot of the ones they have, and they have no say in who gets nominated. The law, once again, has usurped this traditional party role, once guaranteed by the First Amendment freedom of association: even though a political party is a private organization, its candidates must be chosen (for the most part) by a vote of the people. And in nearly half the states, “the people” don’t even have to identify with the party in whose primary they vote! In states like Michigan and Arkansas, Democrats frequently flood the Republican primary to elect the “Republican” of their choice. In California, no party nominee is selected at all: everyone has to run in one big primary together, with the result that the two general election opponents are usually both Democrats.
This means that parties — and sometimes even their members — have little or no say in the most important thing parties do: pick their party’s nominees. Likewise, candidates, having been turned into lone wolves, have exactly as much loyalty to their party as happens to suit their own personal agenda from day to day. And once again, this is the law: the Constitution and Reform Parties [and today’s America Party] would, if they ever got big enough, have to play by the same rules.
4. Whatever. I’m sticking with my teeny-tiny party because no one could possibly take over that whole, gigantic Republican Party.
I can understand why you would feel that way. But the fact is, all the things I just described mean that the Republican Party is completely open to any movement which can produce the numbers and organizational skill to get the job done. If you show up with enough people, you win all the offices at the county committee. Win enough county committees, and you have a majority of the state committee. Win enough of those, and you have the whole party.
Or just win the primaries, and change the party’s leadership at the top.
The party is porous at the bottom: you just have to know what to do, and have the patience to stick with it. Sure, unorganized grassroots will rubberstamp lots of stuff the higher-ups want, but the power is still below; and if a leader — or leaders — organized them, they could easily and quickly permeate the whole party with their agenda. If.
[Again, Donald Trump’s Republican Party, however imperfect, is radically different from John McCain’s. There’s just no comparison. And that change is ongoing. — RDM]
The problem remains that the party is very big: there are 3,144 counties or county-equivalents in America, and it would require organizing, taking over, and controlling the Republican committee in a majority of the counties in a majority of the states to be able to elect most of the state committees and the national committee. This, to many third-party folk, seems impossible.
But it isn’t. And if it is, they should abandon their third party as well: building a third party that’s vaguely competitive would require organizing at least as many counties as that, but from scratch. And it’s one thing to get people involved in reforming something they’ve heard of and (probably) already belong to; it’s quite another matter to get them to go off with Don Quixote.
5. Well if it’s all so easy, why haven’t we already done it? First, I would contend [in 2025] that we largely have: MAGA has displaced most (though not all) of the RINO establishment. But the answer’s pretty simple, and you’ll have to deal with it no matter which party you pick.
Our problem isn’t mean old bad Republicans preventing us from holding office. In fact, nearly all the faithful, vocal conservative officeholders in America are Republicans. The problem — and this is especially true the more particular you get about what you want believed and done — is that the country really is divided, a party that is overwhelmingly pro-Trump still has pockets of strong opposition capable of electing House members and Senators, and our Congressional majorities are very small.
[It is noteworthy that Elon Musk has not articulated a plan for how Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill could have contained the spending cuts Musk wants and also passed in Congress. This is because he doesn’t have such a plan. The votes simply aren’t there. Fewer of them are likely to be there if conservative votes are split while Democrat votes remain united. — RDM]
Until very recently, conservatives have failed to consistently field candidates and win primaries, much less fill party positions. Even now, there are huge chunks of the country where we never run anyone at all.
Now whose fault is that? The left’s? Billy Graham’s? The New World Order’s? I don’t think so.
If we are thin on the ground — and if the officeholders we have are less sound than some might prefer — we have no one to blame but ourselves. It’s our job to persuade, our job to preach, our job to fill the Earth with the things we believe. And for Christians in particular, it seems to me that if we can’t even get our own local churches and denominations running decently, we shouldn’t expect any better success in an endeavor (politics) where people normally have some idea of what they’re doing. Hint: ranting at them won’t work any better than it did in the last three denominations you left.
Winning takes more than ranting. Winning takes a lot of effort, and a lot of time. It takes preparation (ask Moses). It takes setbacks (ask David). It takes enough vision to stick with something which may not be fulfilled as quickly as you’d like (ask Abraham). And it takes a plan, preferably a plan which doesn’t require multiple miracles to have any hope of success.
If people are all you have available, organizing within the party can make enormous sense. If (a lot) of money is available, Super PACs provide a means to move mountains. A third party is the very definition of “doing it the hard way”. And since before the Civil War, no one has been strong enough, smart enough, or rich enough to pull that off.
6. Okay, you’ve convinced me. But after all that stuff about how impotent the party structure is, why would we want it? Why not just run candidates?
For Elon Musk, supporting candidates probably is the right answer. It’s certainly been the tip of the spear for Donald Trump.
But for conservatives more broadly, the answer is simple: the organization and the brand name.
You can’t elect candidates without a tremendous, interested, specialized labor pool. The party has it. Likewise, you can’t do it without raising money, and people don’t like giving money to things they’ve never heard of, much less things they’re convinced can’t win.
Why reinvent the wheel? If all you have is enough activists to organize a county anyway, organize yours. Go to your Republican county committee meeting, get involved, and when it comes time for officer elections, elect some good ones. If you don’t like what the rest of the party’s doing, pass your own platform. Send out press releases. Elect local candidates who will later become statewide candidates. Do whatever you want to do. And like the Apostle Paul, go teach others in other counties to do the same thing.
Somewhere along the way, in your area/state/whatever, the word “Republican” is going to come to mean what you say it means. [I would contend Donald Trump has already made that vastly more true than it’s been in my lifetime. — RDM] And in doing so, you’re going to have a real say in the real world, from the election commission seats which are legally guaranteed to the Republican Party — but not your third party — to the press coverage which comes when a Democrat does something and your newspaper needs to cover “the other side.” Oh, and the donor base: don’t forget the donor base. Because lots of people will vote for and give money to Republicans just because they’re Republicans, and they couldn’t care less what those Republicans believe.
That’s long been the problem. For you and me, it’s the opportunity.
— A slightly different version of this essay originally appeared at WorldNetDaily.
OK...in the image at the top, Ross the Cross Boss and the Rough Rider are easily recognizable. The others are a little bit less so, but I *think* (from left to right) it's Ross Perot, Eugene Debs, Teddy Roosevelt, Bob LaFollette and Ralph Nader. The only one I'm not entirely sure of is Debs, and I don't want to cheat by looking him up.
How'd I do? :-)
Many Many years ago I would attend Libertarian Party meeting. I stopped after 3, because I realized they were not really interested in getting a candidates Elected. Mostly it appeared that they were interested in who was Holier Than Thou. Which candidate was ideologically pure.