The 'other' presidential debate: Third-party candidates make their cases (+video)

Here are the four third-party candidates – and their issues – that you can expect to see vetted in their lone presidential debate in Campaign 2012. 

2. Virgil Goode (Constitution Party)

As long as Virgil Goode has been in politics, he's played the role of a spoiler.

In 2012, he just might do it again. The Constitution Party candidate for the presidency is on the ballot in some two dozen states, including his home of Virginia.

With spotty polling showing Mr. Goode garnering as much as the high single digits in support in Virginia (but without substantial polling in other states), some analysts wonder if Goode could play the role of a conservative Ralph Nader, siphoning just enough would-be GOP voters away from Mitt Romney to cost the Republican presidential nominee a key battleground state.
 
Goode, for his part, told the Washington Post he believes he'll do "quite well" and is running because he simply isn't impressed with Mr. Romney as a true alternative to President Obama.
 
If that does come to pass, it would be just the last in a long line of contrarian moves by the former six-term US congressman from the Charlottesville, Va., area.

When he was a Democratic state senator from Rocky Mount, Va., in the early 1990s, he broke with his party to give Republicans shared power of the state Senate. That move that helped pave the way for some of then-Gov. George Allen's most ambitious reforms.
 
As a Democratic congressman, Goode – already isolated from his Democratic colleagues for his staunch opposition to abortion and his advocacy of the tobacco industry – voted for three of four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton in 1998. He formally became a Republican soon thereafter.
 
Despite having been a member of both parties, Goode has donated to only one presidential candidate – libertarian superstar Rep. Ron Paul (R) of Texas, to whom he gave $500 in 2007.

Goode sent out a 10-minute video addressing issues that Mr. Obama and Romney discussed in their first presidential debate.
 
Goode's defining issue is his hard line against immigration.

"Unlike President Obama and Governor Romney, I recognize that the US citizen should be first in line for jobs in America," Goode said in the video, arguing for a "near-complete moratorium" on allowing foreign green card holders into the US.
 
And how would Goode, a perpetual defector, solve gridlock in Washington?

"Term limits," Goode says in his debate video. "If we had term limits, the focus of the members of Congress would be on what's best for the country, instead of worrying about going to the next fundraiser and winning the next election."

David Grant, staff writer

2 of 4

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.