After I said that if we formed a third party we’d never, ever win another presidential election, ever, I received quite a few letters from readers who think differently. Here’s a typical one…

From Stephen R:

You say that you’re against a third party and that we’d never again win an election if that happens. I totally disagree! If we abandon the Republican Party in major numbers with the right candidate, I think we’d stand a better chance rather than having the same old s*** on the menu!

What chance will the Republicans have when most of us are totally fed up with the crap that we’ve listened to for years and nothing changing (excluding President Trump)! The rest of them are just filling a seat and going along with the Democrat BS! They talk a good line when in front of the cameras, but go along with the Dems behind closed doors and to hell with their constituents! What good will the Republican Party be when 2/3 of us will not vote for another Republican candidate? I’ll vote Democrat just to remove these spineless cowards that are in office trying to say that they have our backs!!! I’m done!!!!

From the Gov:

Thanks for writing, Stephen. Obviously, our party has reached a crossroads, and it’s critically important how we decide to go forward from this point. But if I may offer some “famous last words,” I can think of none more appropriate than what you just said: “I’ll vote Democrat just to remove these spineless cowards…”

Vote Democrat? With all due respect, Stephen, I have six words for you:

Are you out of your mind?

The reason we have such a disaster in the U.S. Senate now is that Georgia Republicans, fed up by the November 3 outcome, refused to vote Republican, staying home on the day of the senatorial run-off elections and giving their state two of the most radical left-wing senators ever to be on the ballot, and that’s saying something. We know now that if they had come out for the Republican candidates in numbers comparable to their November 3 turnout, they would have kept the Senate out of the hands of radical leftists. Gosh, I hope all those fed-up conservative Georgia voters are happy now.

The Basic Math

Let’s do some basic math. Right now, the two major parties, in terms of numbers, are pretty evenly split. If the 2/3 of Republicans who, as you say, are thoroughly fed up and refuse to vote for another Republican DO vote for a third party candidate instead, that will give the third party candidate a whopping 2/3 of what the anti-Democrat vote would have been otherwise. The Republican gets the other 1/3. These two parties will split about half the total vote.

But the Democrats get almost all of the other half, which means they WIN, as all they need is a plurality. Obviously, 1/3 of the Republican vote isn’t going to get us squat. But even 2/3 of that vote isn’t going to get us squat, either. One thing about Democrats: they do stick together. And if they stick together and we fragment, with no more than 2/3 of our vote going to any one candidate, guess which party wins?

That’s right, the Democrats, every time. Go to the head of the class.

Lessons from History

When Democrat Party candidate Bill Clinton won in 1992, he got a whopping 43 percent of the popular vote. The other two major candidates, Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush and Independent Party candidate and Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, essentially split the rest; that “giant sucking sound” you heard was Perot sucking up 19 percent of the vote (the most a third party candidate has ever received, but it translated into ZERO electoral votes). So victory went to Clinton, the Democrat. Some analysts said that Clinton would’ve beaten Bush anyway, but we don’t know about that. A huge number of conservative Republicans rejected a second Bush term and voted for Perot, giving us the Democrats.

Let’s go farther back in history, to when former President Teddy Roosevelt tried a comeback with a third party, the Bull Moose Party. In 1912, a group of Republicans dissatisfied with President William Howard Taft formed the Bull Moose Party specifically for TR to run again. (He supposedly had said he was “fit as a bull moose” to run again.) The Bull Moose Party was “progressive” for the time and favored such new-fangled ideas as women’s suffrage, direct election of U.S. senators, and various social reforms. Roosevelt ran on what he called the “Square Deal,” based on fair business competition and more welfare programs for the needy.

Anyway, his candidacy divided the Republican Party, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson easily won. Would you like to hear about Woodrow Wilson and his administration? That’s a topic for another day, but for now let’s just say it would have been much better if TR hadn’t divided the Republican Party and let Wilson and his pals glide into the Oval Office.

A Gift to the Left

Things the left would love to see from us:

1. An uprising. In fact, the Capitol breach played into their hands so well that if it hadn’t happened, they would have had to create it; make of that statement what you will. The Capitol incident gave the left all the excuse they needed to label every one of us a “domestic terrorist” and start taking our rights away. As frustrated as you might be, do not give them any more reason to do that. Believe me, they are just waiting for this.

2. A third party. The left would love this. Aside from the reasons mentioned above, a third party is not going to have the “ground game” of the well-oiled machine that is the Democrat Party. All this will do is split the Republican Party vote and ensure Democrat victories time after time. I know many of you don’t want to hear this, but it’s the hard truth.

3. Giving up. Some conservatives are now saying the fight is over and we have lost. Why bother voting if the elections are rigged? Why bother tweeting if you’ll just be banned? Just stay home and wait for the end. But this would be a gift to the left. When you give up, they push even harder.

Fix Our Party — From the Inside

We have to fix our party, from the inside. We do have a few outstanding incumbents, but for the RINOS, we have to find solid, articulate conservative candidates for primary challenges. That’s what the “progressives” in the Democrat Party did, through organizations such as Justice Democrats, the group that recruited AOC. Democrats organize like mad, and if they aren’t satisfied with their incumbents, they challenge them. This is what we’re going to have to do with our own who fail to represent our views and values. Perhaps Trump could help with this. We must go into every race with the strongest ticket we can find, work like our freedom depends on it (because it does) and be assertive poll watchers!

But, again, the worst thing conservatives can do is split off and form a third party. Don’t even think about it!

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN. 

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.