[lbo-talk] GOP donors funding Nader

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Mar 27 16:13:45 PST 2004


Seth Ackerman sethia at speakeasy.net, Sat Mar 27 15:24:30 PST 2004:
>>If sophisticated right-wing ideologues could spend only $92,948 on
>>a third-party campaign to the left of the Democratic Party and
>>actually succeed in pushing the country to the right, why wouldn't
>>sophisticated liberal or left-wing ideologues think of spending the
>>same amount of money on a third-party campaign to the right of the
>>Republican Party in order to push the country to the left? :-)
>
>Because no one famous is running.

In 2000, there was one famous right-winger running for president: Pat Buchanan. "While not widely reported, GOP renegade Patrick Buchanan played a similar role [to the one attributed to Ralph Nader]. Bush lost New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin and Oregon by margins so small that Buchanan's votes could have given him victory. If Bush hadn't eked out a court-ordered edge in Florida, Republicans would be denouncing Buchanan just as Democrats do Nader" ("Spoiler-Free Elections," February 5, 2001, <http://www.fairvote.org/op_eds/usatodayeditorial020501.htm>). Should sophisticated liberal or left-wing ideologues have spent $92,948 or more on the Buchanan campaign in order to create the "Buchanan Factor" to offset or outweigh the "Nader Factor"? Would doing so have had an effect of "pushing the country to the left"? Or would only the crazy or the misinformed have come up with such a harebrained scheme? :-)

Seriously, if you really think such a scheme works for one of the duopolists, you had better convince the rich liberals who are given to wasting money on MoveOn and Air America to spend lavishly to manufacture a credible presidential campaign to the right of the Republican Party pronto. :-) -- Yoshie

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