Best third party candidate?

[ncjake]

I dont know if this has been done recently. I did a best candidate not to win thread, now I want to know who you think was the best third party candidate ever.

[dunn]

tr - 1912 if ex prez count
if not - Anderson 1980 and debs  2nd

[Michael Z]

Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

[© tweed]

JOHN ANDERSON 1980.

[ilikeverin]

Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

I agree with that.

And Ralph Nader, of course  Then again, he's the only 3rd party person I remember getting any attention.  I don't remember Ross Perot... I was only 2

[Michael Z]

JOHN ANDERSON 1980.

You're so predictable.

[Nation]

Nader. And I don't know if TR should count, especially when he got more EVs than the Republican (if I remember my history correctly)

[Brutus]

Robert LaFollette

[© tweed]

Robert LaFollette

Yes, he was a close second to Anderson.  Let us make a list:

1. John Anderson 1980
2. Robert LaFollette 1924
3. Teddy Roosevelt 1912
4. Ross Perot 1992
5. George Wallace 1968

I hate Wallace, but he was an entertaining speaker, so he gets a spot.

"When Ah'm president I;m gonna gather up all them pointy-headed bur-o-crats and send 'em back to washin'ton where they belong and take all their briefcases and sling 'em into the middle of the Potomac!!!!"

[dunn]

Nader. And I don't know if TR should count, especially when he got more EVs than the Republican (if I remember my history correctly)

he was successfull also in ev terms but still 3rd party

[minionofmidas]

I too may be predictable...
DEBS

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I too may be predictable...
DEBS

Agreed

[Filuwaúrdjan]

5. George Wallace 1968

I hate Wallace, but he was an entertaining speaker, so he gets a spot.

"When Ah'm president I;m gonna gather up all them pointy-headed bur-o-crats and send 'em back to washin'ton where they belong and take all their briefcases and sling 'em into the middle of the Potomac!!!!"

I hate the Wallace of 1958-197?

[opebo]

They're all bad.  

[© tweed]

5. George Wallace 1968

I hate Wallace, but he was an entertaining speaker, so he gets a spot.

"When Ah'm president I;m gonna gather up all them pointy-headed bur-o-crats and send 'em back to washin'ton where they belong and take all their briefcases and sling 'em into the middle of the Potomac!!!!"

I hate the Wallace of 1958-197?

What?

[Michael Z]

I too may be predictable...
DEBS

Agreed

My personal top five would be:

1  Teddy Roosevelt 1912
2  Eugene Debs 1920
3  John Anderson 1980
4  Robert LaFollette 1924
5  Norman Thomas 1928

[WalterMitty]

tough question.

in recent history, ross perot was the best third party candidate.  however, there never would have been a perot movement if it wasnt for george wallace setting the stage in 68.  

wallace tapped into the 'reagan democrats'...before reagan.  many of these voters became the perot voters of 92.

wallace was an interesting character.  im glad he apologized before he died, unlike many other segregationists.

[JohnFKennedy]

I always think of Wallace with great irony, he was staunchly anti-desegregation and then when he was shot and left in a wheel chair and had been on the receiving end of discrimination he joined forces with people for desegregation.

[ncjake]

I always think of Wallace with great irony, he was staunchly anti-desegregation and then when he was shot and left in a wheel chair and had been on the receiving end of discrimination he joined forces with people for desegregation.

Yes, but what liberals fail to remember was that Wallace was the most liberal judge in the state of Alabama. When he lost to a pro-segregationist the first time around, he realized he needed to change his desegregation stance to get elected. So he flip flopped on the issues just to gain power. He was an early version of John Kerry

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He actually said something about never being "out-na'ed" again.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

5. George Wallace 1968

I hate Wallace, but he was an entertaining speaker, so he gets a spot.

"When Ah'm president I;m gonna gather up all them pointy-headed bur-o-crats and send 'em back to washin'ton where they belong and take all their briefcases and sling 'em into the middle of the Potomac!!!!"

I hate the Wallace of 1958-197?

What?

I mean I hate him in his Segregationist period. Pre 1958 he was an intergrationist and at some point after he got shot, he became pro-integration again.

[opebo]

Actually Nader's the best because thanks to him we aren't stuck with Al Gore.   Can you imagine?

[TheWildCard]

I have two letters for you

T.R.

[Governor PiT]

Ron Paul & Ross Perot.

[CARLHAYDEN]

John Bell 

Born:  February 18, 1796 
Died:  September 10, 1869 

John Bell is best remembered as the 1860 presidential nominee of the Constitutional Union party, one of four candidates vying to become the nation's chief executive in that critical election.

John Bell was born in Mill Creek, Tennessee, to Margaret Edminston Bell and Samuel Bell, a blacksmith and a farmer. In 1814 he graduated from Cumberland College (Nashville) and two years later began to practice law. In 1817 he was elected to the state senate, then after serving one term he became a prominent attorney in Nashville. In 1827 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he would serve seven consecutive terms.

In the late-1830s Bell began affiliating with the nascent Whig party. In 1841 he was appointed by the first Whig president, William Henry Harrison, to be secretary of war, but served only a few months.

In 1847 Bell was again elected to the state legislature, whose Whig majority promptly promoted him to the first of two terms in the U.S. Senate. He reluctantly supported the Compromise of 1850, which sought to quell the controversy over the expansion of slavery that the war with Mexico had reanimated. Although initially vacillating on the issue, Bell cast the only Southern vote in the Senate against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Democrats took over the Tennessee legislature and denied Bell a third term, ending his Senate career in March 1859.

A remnant of the defunct Whig party reorganized as the Constitutional Union party and held a national convention in Baltimore in May 1860. Delegates nominated Bell for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president. Their strategy was to win enough electoral votes to send the election into the House of Representatives, which, with four parties competing for the presidency, was a distinct possibility. In the final tally, though, Bell carried only three states-Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia-while Lincoln swept the north to win an electoral college majority.

During "secession winter," Bell at first remained silent, then issued a letter tepidly disavowing the legitimacy and value of secession. In late January Bell denounced secession before a large Nashville audience, then traveled to Washington to meet with President Lincoln. Tennessee voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum on secession, but the state finally left the Union after the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops. At that point, Bell endorsed secession unenthusiastically and removed himself from public life. The war did substantial damage to his mines and mills, and he died in 1869.