The Republicans should be wary of a repeat of Ross Perot, says alexander cockburn |
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Two facts give political traction to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement that he's quitting the Republican Party and registering as an independent and won't convincingly deny that he's planning a presidential bid in 2008.
One, he's a billionaire. Two, in 1992 another billionaire, Ross Perot, ran for the presidency as an independent and it cost George Bush Sr a second term in the White House.
Here in America, running as a third party presidential candidate is like exercising the right to go on strike. It's legal to try but the system just makes it impossible to win.
In 2004, Ralph Nader ran for the second time as a third party challenger against George Bush Jr and John Kerry. The Democrats, probably wrongly, blamed him for Al Gore's loss to Bush in 2000, when Nader got 2.7 per cent of the vote. By September 2004 Nader was fighting enormously
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| Like Perot, Bloomberg is not a conventional politician. He’s also widely regarded as a successful mayor |
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expensive courtroom battles for access to the ballot in over a dozen states. Skilled Democratic lawyers tied him up in litigation and wore him down. He got 0.4 per cent of the vote.
Though Ross Perot was far more obviously a deadly threat to Bush than Nader was to Gore or Kerry, Republicans at the time and in the years thereafter have never evinced the obsessive loathing for Perot that Democrats had and still have for Nader.
The Democrats have always thought, quite simply, that Nader had no right to be a third party challenger, endangering their man. To their credit, Republicans are more relaxed about third party challenges.
Perot got nearly 20m votes in 1992, 19 per cent of the turnout. Clinton got 43 per cent, Bush 37 per cent. Though Democrats claim Clinton would have won the electoral college even if Perot hadn't run, the maths aren't persuasive in their cause.
Perot did well because many Republican and independent voters were mad at Bush for raising taxes despite a pledge to the  |
