The main reason we did not end up with a conservative candidate in the 2008 presidential election was because there were too many conservative candidates running in the Republican Primary. (For the purposes of this article, please assume that any candidate to the right of McCain was a conservative, even though none of them were “100% conservative”.) In state after state the conservative vote was divided between multiple candidates allowing McCain to win with 30-40% of the vote. For example, in Florida, a major turning point in the primary, McCain won with only 36% of the vote, while 59% was divided among the three remaining conservative candidates. The Republican nominee for the general election does not represent the majority of the people in the Republican Party, who voted for someone more conservative than McCain! The Republican nomination process is seriously flawed and needs to be fixed. 

I’m very doubtful that the Republican Party will resolve this problem by 2012 so I’d like to recommend two things that could be done outside the Party to ensure a conservative candidate in the 2012 presidential election.

One thing that could be done is for the conservative leaders/activists to get together long before the campaign starts and invite any conservative interested in being a presidential candidate to come and make a presentation explaining why they would be the best person to run as a conservative Republican candidate in the 2012 Primary. After evaluating all the candidates, this group could choose to endorse one, and only one, as the preferred conservative Republican candidate for the 2012 Primary. Other conservatives may choose to ignore this endorsement and run against the endorsed candidate, but hopefully, very few conservatives would vote for them, recalling what happened in the 2008 Primary.

A second possibility is to create a third party called the Conservative Party and hope that enough votes could be pulled from the Republicans, the Democrats and the Independents to result in a victory. For this to work, it would be very helpful for any conservative Republican candidates who want to run, to run in the Conservative Party Primary and not in the Republican. Otherwise, the conservative vote would once again be split.

For either of these ideas to work it would take a great deal of effort and time on the part of conservative leaders and activists. My hope in writing this is to encourage them to make the sacrifice.  Also, I would be very interested in hearing of any plans that are being made to ensure a conservative candidate in the 2012 presidential election or any other ideas that anyone has.