Word: reforms
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Ventura's departure from Reform's ranks is only the latest chapter in the predictable tale of fruitless fights for respect by third parties. Reform earned an astonishing 19% of the vote in the 1992 presidential race. But after founder ROSS PEROT's far worse finish in the 1996 presidential contest, the party seemed doomed--an antideficit party in a budget-surplus world. Ventura's 1998 gubernatorial win gave Reform new life and its first major officeholder, but there was no honeymoon. Ventura and Perot eyed each other with suspicion; the two have spoken only twice in their lives. Ventura...
...fighting hasn't helped anyone. In Minnesota the Reform antics have been a distraction for a Governor with an ambitious agenda and evanescent support in the statehouse. Nationally the party has been fractured, with members going to court over such issues as whether to hold the national convention in Long Beach, Calif., or St. Paul...
...Donald Trump to seek the party's nomination, clearing the way for Pat Buchanan--unless the mercurial Perot should get in. A Buchanan candidacy could drain votes from the G.O.P. in the fall, especially if the Republicans nominate JOHN MCCAIN, whom many on the right may find unacceptable. Reform still comes with a prize of ballot access and $12.6 million in federal matching funds...
...strength of the two-party system and the bane of third parties is this: the big parties co-opt the little parties' ideas. REAGAN adopted the anti-Beltway resentments of populist GEORGE WALLACE as surely as F.D.R. waylaid the assaults of socialist NORMAN THOMAS. This year, reform belongs not to Reform but to McCain, whom Ventura might even endorse. It certainly means less theater. And while that's less...
...read somewhere that Jesse Ventura and Donald Trump knew each other long before they banded together to form a Loudmouth Caucus in the Reform Party. Is that true...