Nate Jackson: No Third Party for Trump

The former president vows instead to help Republicans win back Congress in 2022.

A lot of conservatives — and we do mean a lot of conservatives — have had it with the Republican Party. The ineptitude, the infighting, and the ideological wishy-washiness are longstanding problems in the GOP. The Tea Party’s rise a decade ago was as much a response to this Republican fecklessness as it was to Barack Obama and the Democrats’ spendthrift socialist bonanza. And for decades now there have been not just rumblings but occasional attempts to get a viable third party going. The 2020 election fiasco, which many conservative voters see as the GOP’s woefully insufficient effort to stop a stolen election, is driving talk of a third party yet again with Donald Trump at its head.

Trump reportedly considered the idea of a third party, though he has since done the math and concluded it’s not the right play.

Gary Bauer, who has done a lot of close work with Trump over the last four years and is as pro-Trump as anyone, put it this way: “With the conservative vote divided, the Democrat Party easily dominates. If the country is divided 50/50 and you split the conservative vote, we lose. And that does nothing to advance the conservative cause.”

In fact, Team Trump distanced itself and him personally from the newly organized Patriot Party. “[Donald J. Trump for President Inc.] did not authorize the filing of this Form 1, has not entered into any joint fundraising agreement to fundraise through Patriot Party, and has no knowledge of Patriot Party’s activities whatsoever.”

Moreover, an adviser said Trump’s goal “is to win back the House and Senate for Republicans in 2022.”

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