Josh Kraushaar penned an article about Virgil Goode and his electoral appeal in 2012 over at The Atlantic. Former Congressman Goode is the Presidential candidate of the Constitution Party.
But it’s that mix of social conservatism with economic populism that doesn’t get much a hearing as it should, based on Americans’ political views. As my colleague Ron Brownstein noted in his column last week “each side’s electoral coalition is now bound together far more by shared cultural values than by common economic interests.”
That means Republicans, increasingly dependent on the support of blue-collar voters, are campaigning on cuts to popular entitlement programs that may rankle some of the GOP rank-and-file. And it means that Democrats can’t effectively win over these voters with populist appeals because the party’s views on litmus test cultural issues, like immigration and abortion, are well out of step with their personal beliefs.
That’s why former Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode’s third-party presidential candidacy should be receiving more attention. The Democrat-turned-Republican congressman is campaigning on a platform of reducing immigration (legal and illegal), protecting Social Security and Medicare and balancing the budget immediately.
Kraushaar predicts we won’t hear much about Goode in this electoral cycle, though, because his views don’t match those in the media or editorial boards.