Breitbart: Rand Paul is Holding Together the Republican Party

From an interesting series over at Breitbart.com on the possibility of a third party:

So could Paul buck the system again in a 2016 presidential bid? In particular, could he run as a "party-busting independent," as reporter Fournier hinted?  It doesn't seem likely. Paul makes no bones about his desire to move to the White House, but he doesn't seem eager to repeat the electoral fate of his father, who won less half a percent of the vote on the LP line back in 1988; the younger Paul seems to have cast his lot with the GOP. As Rand Paul said on the February 17 edition of "Fox News Sunday," "I would absolutely not run unless it were to win."  So that seems to rule out a symbolic protest run. Indeed, he added, "I think the country is really ready for the narrative coming--the Libertarian Republican narrative."  

Paul's words seem to suggest that he is planning to run for president--if, in fact, he runs--as a Republican.  Indeed, the Kentuckian has been sounding less libertarian and more conservative lately. For example, he still has major foreign-policy differences with Republican neoconservatives, but he has joined with them on the filibuster against the nomination of Chuck Hagel. Paul will never be anyone's idea of a good neocon, but he also doesn't seem to want to be an outright enemy. And that suggests that the libertarians and neoconservatives might yet find a way to fuse together.   

As we have seen, third parties form when a voiceless group wants a voice. And they fizzle when one of the two parties starts speaking with that previously unacknowledged voice. Today, as we have seen, the tea party, as well as the libertarians, seem to have been mostly absorbed by the Republican Party, and that will likely continue for as long as Rand Paul is a Republican Senator. Indeed, Paul is doing his best to nominate and elect like-minded candidates as Republicans--and only as Republicans. The tea party never has gone rogue, and now it likely never will.  

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Thus we can conclude, at least for now, that there's not much room on the right for a third party. As long as Rand Paul, and his passionate supporters, stay within the GOP, all will be quiet on the rightward front.