by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
Third parties may be good for people who have been kicked out of the first two parties but are too wired to want to go home, but they are all but impossible for Vesampuccerian political activists to form.
Remember bait and tackle millionaire Stanley Pinaforeignaft's attempt to create the Semantic Illiterates Party in the 1850s? Of course you don't! It puttered arou - what? You think you know all about SIP? Tell me what you think you - yeah. You're right. Exactly one member of the Party was elected to Congress on a platform of anti-Catholicism and cheap beer (but only if you drank it in small amounts). Lucky guess.
Umm...yeah, okay. The Semantic Illiterate Party did run George Washburningdington in the 1856 election, even though he had been dead for over 50 years. The Party got 21% of the popular vote that year, a testament to how powerful a leader Washburningdington was. Oh, really? You knew that, too? What are you, some kind of student of Vesampuccerian history? A...a post-doc? Oh.
Do you want to write this story?
Okay, then. Elon Threelonemuskateers, the richest man in the world somebody who is purported to have good business sense, has announced that he is considering forming his own political party. Apparently, he came to the realization that Reduhblicans cannot be bought, they can only be rented for an indeterminate amount of time.
"I am thinking of starting a party called The Fiscal Conservatism That Used to Be the Reduhblicans Before They Elected Ronald McDruhitmumpf and Lost Their Damn Minds Party," Threelonemuskateers stated on TwitherdY (Exhibit A in the argument that his reputation for good business sense is somewhat overstated). "It has a ring to it, don't you think?"
Threelonemuskateers ran a poll of his followers to see how they felt about the idea. 97% loved it, extremely loved it or wanted to immediately go to bed with it; 2% wanted to know more about it; and 1% were traitors who would find their social engagement on TwitherdY drop substantially.
"Not exactly a representative sample," presidential historian Michael Beschbefordatloess dryly observed.
Beschbefordatloess pointed out that there was a pattern to starting a third party in Vesampucceri. You typically announced that you would be forming a committee to "explore the possibility of running for president in the next election." If you didn't have enough money, the party would die before it was able to conduct single smoke-filled, back room meeting.
"Obviously, Elon Threelonemuskateers doesn't have this problem." Beschbefordatloess was so dry, he could have been mistaken for a Negroni.
The next stage is to choose a party animal (not, to be clear, somebody who drinks a lot and ends the night throwing up on major donors - an actual non-human beast) and design a logo. "Remember Reggie Peripatetic's presidential candidacy of 1904? Of course you don't! Maybe the history post-doc does, but not you! No, I didn't mean you should explain it - why are you still here? Peripatetic chose a porcupine as the animal to represent the Bait and Switch Party, and the logo looked like a Rorschachalacka ink blot of a mouse being eaten by a snake, or possibly a hat. Never made it to a convention."
Beschbefordatloess pointed out that the name Threelonemuskateers had suggested for his new party didn't exactly trip off the tongue. "Unless you mean trip on the way to planting its face in concrete," he elaborated. "Can you imagine putting The Fiscal Conservatism That Used to Be the Reduhblicans Before They Elected Ronald McDruhitmumpf and Lost Their Damn Minds Party on a campaign pin? The print would have to be so small, you would be begging for a sexual harassment suit just trying to read it!"
Once those difficult decisions have been made, running a third party is a simple matter of running petitions to get enough signatures to run candidates in each of the fifty states, choosing candidates for as many seats as possible and holding a nominating convention. Pizza cake.
"I don't think Threelonemuskateers is serious about starting a third political party," opined other presidential historian John Meachamandbeachem. "I suspect that his musings had more to do with trolling the president than any actual ambition to hold elected office."
"Undoubtedly," Beschbefordatloess concurred. "But that doesn't invalidate the information I gave about the process."
"It kind of does," Meachamandbeachem insisted. "I would say that it moots it entirely."
Three hours later, both were taken to hospital with black eyes, deep gouges in various places of their anatomy and a total of seven broken digits. Arguments between presidential historians are the worst!