Quigley: A Palin-Perry Conservative Party Challenge?

On The Hill's Pundits Blog, Bernie Quigley has a suggestion:

Maybe [Rickj] Perry should change his brand to Conservative Party in his race in Texas and leave Kay Bailey Hutchison to the Republican nostalgicos. Dick Cheney is campaigning for Hutchison, and they seem a fairly good match. Palin is stumping for Perry.

[...]

With 43 percent of the voters in a poll not long ago claiming to be independent, it is fully possible today to see a third-party challenge in 2012. Palin would be the perfect candidate.

[...]

Political parties are exclusively about packaging. New ideas and ideals need new packages or they will be beaten back by senior generations demanding the old hat, the old calcified forms and the old orthodoxies. This is still fantasy football, but a Palin/Perry ticket representing the Conservative Party in 2012 would really wake things up.

But there's a problem with Quigley's idea which he completely glosses over. Political parties are about much more than packaging. Three of the most critical of these areas are infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. 

Election laws are very specific: political parties must register, not only with the Federal Election Commission, but also with each of the fifty states individually. State laws governing political parties are not uniform. Some states make the process more difficult than others.

New York is a special case. In the Empire State, the Conservative Party operates less like an independent third party (i.e., the Libertarian Party) than like an unofficial adjunct of the Republican Party. When the GOP fields a candidate for elective office in New York State whom the Conservative Party considers sufficiently conservative, the CP doesn't challenge the Republican, but simply endorses her or him. When the large-C Conservatives think a GOP candidate is too liberal, it will field a challenger, but that challenger is usually also a Republican. Such is the case with Doug Hoffman in the 23rd Congressional District of NY. To be effective nationally, the Conservative Party would have to replicate its New York structure in the other 49 states, but - again - NY is a special case with its unique requirements for political parties. So far, the Conservative Party has been established in a handful of other states, but it has only enjoyed a relative degree of success in New York State.

"Organize" is one of those verbs which has many meanings, and most of them involve a lot of hard work and cold cash. Political parties need county chairmen, precinct captains and many, many boots on the ground. They need voter lists, and voter lists require computer hardware and software. Parties also need brand identification and large sums of money. Brochures, bumper stickers and yard signs don't get printed up for free, and newspapers, radio stations and television outlets expect to get paid for political advertising. Even with his considerable personal wealth, Ross Perot was unable to keep his Reform Party together. Though it made an impact on a national election and managed to put some folks in office down the ticket, the Reform Party quickly disintegrated into insignificance.

All of the way up the line from city council to county commissioner to state representative to the U.S. Congress and the White House, there are obstacles to third parties. This is because Democrats and Republicans control each level of government from municipal on up, and they're the ones who make the rules. They have written the laws to favor the two major political parties, which is the main reason why the U.S. is essentially a two-party nation.

Finally, there are philosophical reasons why the GOP has traditionally been the vehicle of choice for conservatives. Read the Republican Party platform. Then read the platforms of the Democrat Party and the Communist Party USA. The latter two are remarkably similar, while the Republican platform stands apart. The problem for conservatives with the GOP is that Republicans don't always practice what their platform preaches. Conservatives who are frustrated by today's RINOs, must remember that Ronald Reagan faced a similar problem three decades ago, only then RINOs (we prefer the term Vichy Republicans) were known as Country Club Republicans.

In his landmark speech "The New Republican Party" Ronald Reagan told the 4th Annual CPAC Convention in 1977:

I have to say I cannot agree with some of my friends—perhaps including some of you here tonight—who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new political party.

I respect that view and I know that those who have reached it have done so after long hours of study. But I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over.

Rather than a third party, we can have a new first party made up of people who share our principles. I have said before that if a formal change in name proves desirable, then so be it. But tonight, for purpose of discussion, I’m going to refer to it simply as the New Republican Party.

And let me say so there can be no mistakes as to what I mean: The New Republican Party I envision will not be, and cannot, be one limited to the country club-big business image that, for reasons both fair and unfair, it is burdened with today. The New Republican Party I am speaking about is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism. If we are to attract more working men and women of this country, we will do so not by simply “making room” for them, but by making certain they have a say in what goes on in the party. The Democratic Party turned its back on the majority of social conservatives during the 1960s. The New Republican Party of the late ’70s and ’80s must welcome them, seek them out, enlist them, not only as rank-and-file members but as leaders and as candidates.

The time has come for Republicans to say to black voters: “Look, we offer principles that black Americans can, and do, support.” We believe in jobs, real jobs; we believe in education that is really education; we believe in treating all Americans as individuals and not as stereotypes or voting blocs—and we believe that the long-range interest of black Americans lies in looking at what each major party has to offer, and then deciding on the merits. The Democratic Party takes the black vote for granted. Well, it’s time black America and the New Republican Party move toward each other and create a situation in which no black vote can be taken for granted.

The New Republican Party I envision is one that will energetically seek out the best candidates for every elective office, candidates who not only agree with, but understand, and are willing to fight for a sound, honest economy, for the interests of American families and neighborhoods and communities and a strong national defense. And these candidates must be able to communicate those principles to the American people in language they understand. Inflation isn’t a textbook problem. Unemployment isn’t a textbook problem.

They should be discussed in human terms.

Our candidates must be willing to communicate with every level of society, because the principles we espouse are universal and cut across traditional lines. In every Congressional district there should be a search made for young men and women who share these principles and they should be brought into positions of leadership in the local Republican Party groups. We can find attractive, articulate candidates if we look, and when we find them, we will begin to change the sorry state of affairs that has led to a Democratic-controlled Congress for more than 40 years. I need not remind you that you can have the soundest principles in the world, but if you don’t have candidates who can communicate those principles, candidates who are articulate as well as principled, you are going to lose election after election. I refuse to believe that the good Lord divided this world into Republicans who defend basic values and Democrats who win elections. We have to find tough, bright young men and women who are sick and tired of cliches and the pomposity and the mind-numbing economic idiocy of the liberals in Washington.

Quigley is correct that his third party brainstorm is just fantasy football. We live in the real world. Though the planet today is a different world than that which Reagan faced in the 1970s, some things here at home remain the same. The Republican Party still represents the best hope for conservatives to get their message out and to elect candidates who will work to put conservative principles into practice. Member of the Constitution Party will object, but when they do, ask them how many candidates have they managed to get elected to public office, and what have those people accomplished? Thanks to the TEA parties, the town halls and recent events in New York's 23rd congressional District, conservatives are finally beginning to get the attention of the GOP establishment in Washington, D.C. Let's not walk away from the battle at the very moment when we have the target in our sights.

The common metaphor used to describe the GOP is a tent. A big tent means there is room under the canvass for both conservatives and true centrists. We prefer a different analogy. The Republican Party is like a big Greyhound bus. There's plenty of room in the bus for all, but keeping the bus on track really depends on the driver. The so-called "moderates" have had their turn at the wheel, and then some. They have been driving the bus since 1988, and they have managed to get us lost. Within easy reach of the driver's seat is a road map, one which was carefully drawn by Ronald Reagan, and it showed us the way to lopsided victories in 1980 and 1984. Yet it has not been touched in over 20 years because the driver refuses to trust it, even though the routes which are highlighted on the map are still viable. It is long past time for the person at the wheel to step aside and take his place with the rest of the passengers. It's time to put a conservative in the drivers seat who will dust off Reagan's road map and drive the Republican Party back to relevance and on to victory.

- JP