Lisa Murkowski

In an age of rancor, a broad consensus of Americans agrees on one thing: They don’t like either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Neither of them.

The political parties race toward the extremes, more dysfunctional than at any time in American history since the Civil War, and that dysfunction results in a profound frustration of solutions to the challenges people most want addressed. The two-party system has stumbled along pretty well for about 150 years; now, it is not working, and the people blame the parties.

Who is to blame? Among others, fingers must be pointed at our Founding Fathers, whom we are glorifying in this 250th year of our nation.

The founders unknowingly, inadvertently, locked the U.S. into a two-party system with no escape. The founders did not even like or want political parties, and they thought they could design a system that would rise above partisanship. As author Lee Drutman explains in his 2020 book “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop,” the founders had scant experience to formulate a democratic government other than England’s concept of “first across the finish line” — the British concept of single-member districts with a plurality election. That system inexorably causes a predictably unsavory binary choice and forces voters to gather in one of two tribes, neither of which perfectly matches a voter’s intent. Most modern democracies have evolved beyond this American system.

That the American democracy is locked in a two-party system is proven by the unending plethora of third parties, a common characteristic of which is losing. The frustration with the system is what keeps third parties coming back, but it is an expensive “fool’s errand.” Protest votes for third parties with no hope of winning only reinforce and empower the duopoly.

The last time a major new (winning) political party was born was 1856, springing from the corpse of the Whig Party. The Whig Party shattered on the issue of slavery and its expansion into new states. The new Republican Party did not win in 1856. It won in 1860 with the former Whig congressman, Abraham Lincoln.

Winning is the problem with third parties. They tend to form at the edges of the political spectrum or gather together a small disaffected or single-interest group, neither of which is a winning combination in this calcified two-party system.

But what if the new third party’s leaders had already won? By all accounts, control of the U.S. Senate is “on the line” in the midterm elections. Some prognosticators have moved predictions from a narrow Republican lead to a toss-up. If the Senate is 50-50, or perhaps if the Republicans have a one- or two-seat majority, a brief window to form a powerful new third party exists, a party formed by a handful of moderate Republican senators.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, perhaps the most concerned Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, if she returns to the Senate, along with Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Todd Young, R-Ind., could form a party at the center, not just a caucus, but a new Senate voting bloc to force a coalition to govern. These senators each have two or four years before running for reelection. By exercising power in the Senate during that time, they are “winning.” They have time to organize a party from a position of strength and raise the money to sustain it. The Reagan Right or Reagan Center Party might be a good name, since Reagan almost looks like a centrist now.

And there is no reason for these senators or the rest of mainstream Republicans to wait for things to get back to normal. Trump has killed the GOP and put in its place the POT (Party of Trump). Very few of the principles the GOP stood for have survived into the MAGA movement. The GOP does not stand for free trade anymore. Trump has introduced state-sponsored capitalism, as Barron’s Joe Light has written, in which the U.S. has taken equity positions in various companies. GOP advocacy for the rule of law and independent courts has been severely tarnished. No clearer proof of Trump’s party abandoning GOP principles exists than the failure to adopt a new party platform in 2020. It certainly has not shown any actions for fiscal responsibility that actually amount to savings. Under President Trump, the GOP is not acting very conservative, not acting very Republican.

Even when Trump is out of office, his MAGA movement will have taken over Republican state organizations across the country, permanently altering what used to be the GOP.

Perhaps the Romneys, Bushes, Cheneys, Flakes, Cornyns, Bill Kristols and other disaffected, dispossessed Reagan Republicans should call for a convention in Ripon, Wisconsin (site of the founding of the GOP), and urge Murkowski and others who agree to look toward Ripon — a new third party, “its hour come round at last,” finally ready to be born.

Jamie Barnett is a former rear admiral in the U.S. Navy and former chief of the Federal Communications Commission Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. He is an adjunct professor at the Ole Miss Center for Intelligence and Security Studies.

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