THIRD PARTY ON THE RIGHT

WOODBRIDGE, Va. - The decision this week by John Thune, the Republican
candidate for senator from South Dakota, to concede to his rival, Tim
Johnson, the Democratic incumbent, virtually guarantees that Mr.
Thune's narrow defeat will go down in conservative lore as the one
lost to voter fraud on an Indian reservation. This charge probably
won't ever be proved, but people on the right will continue to believe
it - just as many people on the left think corruption in Florida cost
Al Gore the presidency.

In both cases, however, there's a better explanation for what
happened. George W. Bush is president today because of Ralph Nader,
the Green Party candidate, whose liberal supporters almost certainly
would have preferred Mr. Gore in a two-way race. In Florida, Mr. Nader
attracted some 97,000 votes, dwarfing the 537-vote margin separating
Mr. Bush from Mr. Gore.

There's a similar explanation for Mr. Thune's 524-vote loss: a
Libertarian Party candidate, Kurt Evans, drew more than 3,000 votes.
It marks the third consecutive election in which a Libertarian has
cost the Republican Party a Senate seat. If there had been no
Libertarian Senate candidates in recent years, Republicans would not
have lost control of the chamber in 2001, and a filibuster-proof,
60-seat majority would likely be within reach.

The Republicans' Libertarian problem became apparent in a race than
ended in victory. A decade ago, Paul Coverdell, Republican of Georgia,
nipped the incumbent Democratic senator, Wyche Fowler, 49 percent to
48 percent. A Libertarian candidate, Jim Hudson, took 3 percent of the
vote. Under Georgia law the winner must achieve a majority, so Mr.
Coverdell and Senator Fowler were thrown into a runoff without Mr.
Hudson. Virtually all the Libertarian's votes transferred to the
Republican, and Mr. Coverdell won, 51 percent to 48 percent.

The maddening defeats began in 1998, when John Ensign, Republican of
Nevada, came 428 votes shy of ousting the Democrat, Senator Harry
Reid. Michael Cloud, a Libertarian, collected more than 8,000 votes in
the same contest. (Two years later, Mr. Ensign won election to
Nevada's other Senate seat.) In 2000, Senator Slade Gorton, a
Republican from Washington, lost to the Democrat, Maria Cantwell, by
2,228 votes. Jeff Jared, a Libertarian, gathered nearly 65,000 votes.
If these elections had gone a different way, Senator Jim Jeffords of
Vermont would not have switched control of the Senate when he bolted
the Republican Party.

The problem also affects gubernatorial races. Jim Doyle, the incoming
Democratic governor of Wisconsin, probably owes his 68,000-vote
victory to the 185,000 votes cast for Ed Thompson, a Libertarian and
brother of Tommy Thompson, the former Republican governor. In Oregon,
Ted Kulongoski, the Democrat, won by 33,000 votes as Tom Cox, the
Libertarian, pulled in 56,000 votes. The only reason the governor's
race in Alabama was so close this year as to be disputed beyond
election night was that the Libertarian candidate, John Sophocleus,
attracted 23,000 votes.

It's important to appreciate that Libertarian voters are not merely
Republicans with an eccentric streak. Libertarians tend to support gay
rights and open borders; they tend to oppose the drug war and hawkish
foreign policies. Some of them wouldn't vote if they didn't have the
Libertarian option.

But Libertarians are also free-market devotees who are generally
closer to Republicans than to the Democrats. "Exit polling shows that
we take twice as many votes from Republicans as from Democrats," said
George Getz, a spokesman for the Libertarian Party.

Yet Libertarians are now serving, in effect, as Democratic Party
operatives. The next time they wonder why the Bush tax cuts aren't
permanent, why Social Security isn't personalized and why there aren't
more school-choice pilot programs for low-income kids, all they have
to do is look in the mirror.