Former Vice President Dan Quayle is cautioning the tea party movement not to go the way of former presidential candidate Ross Perot and form a third party.
In an op-ed published Sunday in the Washington Post, Quayle said the emergence of official tea party candidates "would be very welcome news in the Obama White House."
Quayle added the history of U.S. third-party movements "leads straight to a dead end."
"Speaking on behalf of the Bush-Quayle campaign," Quayle wrote, "to this day we firmly believe that Perot cost the Republican Party the White House. The 1992 election was the best showing for the movement Perot started, and whatever national influence it retained kept working to the benefit of Democrats."
Quayle credited the tea party with putting "the fight back in Republicans" after the 2008 election.
"If the tea party remains an independent political force in 2012, with no partisan ties, so much the better," Quayle writes. "All that Republicans need to do is speak to its issues, compete for its votes and heed its example of a confident and unapologetic challenge to a liberal president and Congress."
Read the rest of Quayle's opinion piece in the Washington Post here.
Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
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