The Fifth Largest Party
By Bob Small
The Constitution Party is the fifth largest political party in the United States.
It began life as the US Taxpayer Party in 1992. Its chairman is James M. Clymer of Pennsylvania.
As of November, the Constitution Party had 20 members elected to municipal offices throughout the United States. Clymer was its vice-presidential candidate in 2012.
The Constitution Party refuses to take any federal funds for its presidential campaign.
Its mission statement includes this paragraph:
“The mission of the Constitution Party is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity through the election, at all levels of government, of Constitution Party candidates who will uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights. It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions.”
In an email discussion, Troy Bowman, the Southeast Region Chair for Pennsylvania, stated that the party’s outreach efforts consist largely of mailing flyers, newspaper ads, social media posts, and phone calls.
Speaking of the Constitution Party as a party with a strong Christian backbone, Bowman went on to say, “it is not debatable that this country was founded on Christian principles which are deeply rooted in the Bible.” However, the party welcomes anyone “who believes what the original intent for the Constitution was.”
In Pennsylvania, the party has six elected members in municipal offices and hopes to have more after next November.
Lastly, he added, “what I have learned in the last 14 years is that the Republican Party can not and will not (emphasis mine) ever fix itself or rehabilitate itself.”
Change a word or two, and this could be the Greens talking about the Democrats.
Though I don’t share all the party’s values, I have not hesitated to vote for a Constitution Party candidate when a Green Party candidate was not available.
Hopefully, the Constitution Party will be on a plethora of municipal ballots this election year.
Being from Canada I have a very differing opinion of our Green Party, as it is part of a world Party involved with and supporting our what was a Liberal Party now very taken over and with the help of this and our NDP Party are corrupting and making Canada into a post national state, a globalist state no borders no longer Canada and as we know and watch this unfolding here. Very corrupt Puppet PM Truedope (Lieberal) uses this environmental UN globalist actual lying nonsense if you understand and really think about it. Years ago I looked into them and the other new party Libratarians? and both were one world parties, but the Liberal/NDP Party an illegal supposedly joining with are Senate involved too and the Conservative Party at the time and it had collapsed with corrupt leadership long story but again foreign involvement (airbus scandal) that Conservative Party was finished and a new one was built by are one really good true Canadian for Canada (in my whole old lifetime) PM Harper but like Pres. Trump he was demonized and still they use their lies to blame him. We are taken over by these UN one worlders corruption. I do not know if the USA Green Party is connected to these others, but reading your columns I do not think you like the kind of corruption taking over our whole world. The USA needs desperately needs to stay strong against this because only you being strong will save the world from this not elected tyranny taking hold and it seems China is winning since they also placed and paid many in our very corrupt government and seemingly after repeated unethical corruptions they stay in power now. Very shortened version of this all and the internet has willingly scrubbed a lot of things we can no longer find.
Thaniks for your comments.
It’s damn difficult to be an independent Political Party in this world!
OK, it’s the fifth largest party, but what does that mean in absolute terms? How many registered members are there? The article doesn’t mention it, and though I followed the link to Ballotpedia, I didn’t see numbers listed there, either. Though I concede, I may have overlooked them.
To illustrate further what I mean about absolute terms, I’ll tell you that I once worked for the second largest provider of student information software in the US, in terms of market share. The market was every school district in the country. When combined with the largest provider of student information software, we accounted for…..five percent of the total market. So to say that we were the second largest gave the audience a very different image, than to say that we had two percent of the market.
This isn’t meant as a knock on the Constitution Party. I’m looking for better clarity and precision.