WorldNetDaily: Poll: 3rd party scores with border backlash

This is from the Rasmussen organization. Their latest poll shows that a third-party candidate who emphasized border security and pledged to build a fence would tie a Democrat and trounce a Republican.

Some historical perspective is in order, and the Republicans ignore this at their extreme peril. The Republican Party began as a third party! Back in the days of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, the two major political parties were the Democrats (the same Democrats as today) and the Whigs. Then along came the wedge issue of slavery. Guess what: the Whigs ignored it, and the Democrats at the time were the party of slave-owning planters. Result: nothing got done, and the issue simmered.

Then came the US Supreme Court's God-awful decision in Scott v. Sandford--the "Dred Scott Case." Dred Scott tried to show that, since his master had taken him to travel in "free territory," he became a free man under the terms of the Missouri Compromise. The Supremes responded by throwing out the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional. CJ Roger B. Taney had the execrably bad sense to declare that a man born a slave would always be a slave.

Well, that did it. A young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln declared, "A house divided against itself cannot stand!" He ran for President as a Republican and got elected. Republicans have been a major party ever since; the Whigs disappeared, not even waiting for legions in blue and gray to grind them into the dust.

Today, the spectacle of unlawful entrants into this country trying to re-fight a war and reconquer territory they consider lost to them is the Dred Scott/Missouri Compromise issue. Neither party wants to address illegal immigration. Democrats want extra voters; Republican-friendly businessmen want cheap workers. (I still say that you get what you pay for along that line--but that's another topic.) And while private landowners might possibly take border fencing matters into their own hands, Scott Rasmussen has asked the salient question: might a third party supplant the Republicans while campaigning on dealing with illegal immigration as it ought to be dealt with? The answer is yes.

Republicans, take heed. You were a creation of the spectacle of voters fed up with two major parties ignoring their issues. That force can destroy you just as readily.