As one considers the minor arcana of dogma that separates these groups from one another, it’s easy to recall this scene from Monty Python’s Christ parody, “Life of Brian.”

REG: Right. You’re in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judean People’s Front.
PEOPLE’S FRONT OF JUDEA (a grand total of five people, including the new member): Yeah… Splitters!
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People’s Front.
PFJ: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
LORETTA: And the People’s Front of Judea.
PFJ: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
REG: What?
LORETTA: The People’s Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG: WE’RE the People’s Front of Judea!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: PEOPLE’S Front!
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG: He’s over there (indicates one man sitting alone).
PFJ: SPLITTER!

It’s a lot like academic politics or student government. The bitterness of the disputes are inversely proportional to the stakes.

The same dynamic occurs on both ends of the spectrum, as Erich Hoffer noted in his 1951 classic, The True Believer. Hoffer argues that movements are interchangeable, that fanatics will often flip from one movement to another, and movements resemble each other in style and method, even when their stated view are diametrically opposed.

This was evident last month as Congressman Ron Paul, erstwhile Republican presidential candidate and the internet phenom of November-December 2007, made his endorsement. Paul remains a sitting member of the House GOP caucus, but has explicitly NOT endorsed John McCain.

A few weeks ago, Paul hosted a press conference of several third party contenders and endorsed a generic, vote for any third party stance. But Paul’s presumed favorite, Libertarian nominee Bob Barr skipped the event and held his own event instead. Paul, who was himself the Libertarian candidate in 1988, retaliated by endorsing Chuck Baldwin of the relatively obscure Constitution Party instead.

By third party standards, Libertarian nominee Barr is a relative celebrity, a former member of Congress who had a high media profile back in the Clinton impeachment era. In contrast, Baldwin is a classic third party contender–an leading activist in a tiny movement with no profile among the broader voting public. Third parties are often torn between nominating a longtime loyalist like Baldwin or a celebrity newcomer like Barr.

Electorally, they’ve done better with the big names, like Jesse Ventura, who went through some party splintering himself. He was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998 on Ross Perot’s Reform Party ticket, then split after Pat Buchanan’s hard-right hostile takeover. Ventura started his own Minnesota Independence Party, which has lived on past his governorship. No, it’s not advocating that Minnesota become a country, like the Alaska Independence Party that First Dude Todd Palin affiliated with for a while.

Back over on the left, the strained relationship between Ralph Nader and the Green Party has led to electoral results less than the sum of the parts. Ralph Nader did much better running with the Greens in 2000 than he did running against the Greens, and their obscure party activist nominee, in 2004. Of course, there were other factors, like the Florida results of 2000. But the resources of the left, and the willingness of the media to cover lesser-known candidates, hurts both Nader and 2008 Green nominee Cynthia McKinney.

The candidates of the libertarian and right spectrum are likely to have a bigger impact than the left, as Barr may be a factor in several close states. Perhaps not so much Iowa, which is looking stronger for Barack Obama by the week. But Barr could be significant in some of the Rocky Mountain states, where Libertarians have run well, and in his native Georgia, which Obama is trying to put into play. (McKinney is also a Georgia native, but her African American base seems solid for Obama.)

But Paul’s decision to back the obscure Baldwin, rather than the better-known Barr, is a classic case of the third party movement crumbling late in the game. It probably gives McCain a small boost in a few close states, but one would need special scientific instruments to measure it.

Most of the Old Media were caught up in Lipstick On A Pig, Day Two, trying to decide if Barack Obama had insulted Sarah Palin, and occasionaly noting that John McCain had used the same phrase describing Hillary Clinton’s health care plan. Obama decried the Same Old Rove Politics by repeating (at 2:42 into the clip below) the emphasized “Enough!” from his Democratic National Convention stadium acceptance speech, but then concluded the clause with “Enough Is Enough!“…

…and fans of internet memes all know what follows THAT exclamation.

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Democrats looking for a surrogate to go on the attack could do worse than Samuel L. Jackson and his NSFW anti-snake rhetoric.

Jackson is also anti-pork — eating, not spending — in “Pulp Fiction,” memorably noting, “I don’t wanna eat nothin’ that ain’t got enough sense to disregard its own feces.” But lipstick on a pig may actually help here in the hog state, provided this independent candidate doesn’t split the votes.

Arnold Ziffel guarantees “no pork barrel politics,” so that bridge to nowhere, or rather to Hootervile, is a firm “thanks, but no thanks.”

Independent candidates (perhaps including Ziffel) will split the vote all over the place, if Ron Paul has his way. He endorsed… well, no one in particular on Wednesday, but rather third parties in general and Not McCain in the specific, making a point of saying that he’d gotten a last minute call from the McCain campaign asking for an endorsement and that he’s turned them down. Everyone assumes Paul is really backing Bob Barr, whose running mate this week offered to stand down for Paul. Paul, meanwhile, is coasting to re-election to the house — on the Republican ticket. He may have to eat lunch alone next year.

Or perhaps dine with Joe Lieberman, whose John McCain endorsement got kicked out of the Senate Democrat’s lunch table, but not out of his committee chairmanship. Yet.

As for McCain, he’s fighting the election with the running mate he has, not the running mate he wants. Sarah Palin’s fifteen minutes are continuing, the question being if they will last until Nov. 4. But an analysis of Gallup polling shows that nearly all of McCain’s post-Palin gains are in the South.

In the South, South Carolina Democratic chair Carol Fowler got herself in trouble Wednesday for noting that Palin’s giving birth to her son with Down syndrome was an important part of her public persona. And that’s something I’ve heard Palin’s pro-life/anti-choice (choose your side, even neutral language is near impossible) supporters say as well. Unfortunately, the phrase Fowler chose was that Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

She quickly apologized. But Joe Biden, wiping a little saliva off his shoes, may have been grateful.

Bob Barr was a Republican in Congress, but now he’s the Libertarian presidential nominee. Cynthia McKinney, a former Democrat, is the Green candidate.

Barr is showing up as a 2 to 3 percent blip in national polls, drawing support from disgruntled Republicans and former Ron Paul supporters. Paul, still serving as a Republican congressman, hasn’t endorsed Barr — but he hasn’t endorsed John McCain either, and speaks often and highly of Barr.

First elected in the 1994 Republican landslide, Barr had a high profile role in the 1998 House impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Barr lost his seat in a 2002 primary, when redistricting paired him with another Republican incumbent. He surprised people by working with the American Civil Liberties Union on privacy issues, and left the Republicans last year.

National polls have excluded McKinney, preferring to ask about Ralph Nader instead. McKinney was first elected in 1992, and lost a 2002 primary where she was targeted by pro-Israel groups for her pro-Palestinian views. She won the seat back in 2004, but lost again in 2006 after getting a lot of negative attention over a physical confrontation with a Capitol police officer who failed to recognize her as a House member.

McKinney will compete with Nader, who qualified for the Iowa ballot as the “Peace and Freedom” candidate last week, for a similar group of voters. Nader is the better known name, but the Green Party has more of an organization than Nader’s loose network. The Greens had hoped to increase their support from minority voters by nominating their first African-American candidate, but the Democrats seem to have had the same idea.

Greens and Libertarians earned a place on Iowa’s voter registration forms on Jan. 1 this year as “political organizations,” the new law’s term for third parties. Voters can register as Libertarian or Green, but the parties still have to petition to get their candidates on the ballot. The deadline is Friday.

The Libertarian Party, which has run nearly full slates for state offices in recent years, does not have candidates in the top-tier races this year, other than the presidential race. The Green Party, likewise, does not expect to have down-ballot candidates.

But both parties have more prominent than usual presidential candidates, who could have an impact in a close election.Kevin Litten of Cedar Rapids, the Libertarian Party’s 2006 nominee for governor, says Libertarians are excited about their high-profile presidential candidate, former Georgia congressman Bob Barr. But as for lower-ballot races, Litten said, “As I understand things, we have three people running for state House and possibly two other people running for other local offices” in the November election. Litten also ran for Congress in 2002 and 2004, but is not a candidate for any office this time.

Iowa Libertarian Chair Ed Wright said the legislative candidates are Campbell DeSousa in House District 45 and Eric Cooper in District 46, both based in Ames, and Russ Gibson in District 60 in southwest Polk County. “Our 2008 campaign focus has thus far been on our Presidential and vice presidential candidates Barr and (Wayne) Root,” said Wright.

The Greens are also expected to run a former member of the Georgia congressional delegation, Cynthia McKinney. She won’t be officially nominated until the party’s July 10-13 convention, but, like Barack Obama and John McCain, she’s won enough delegates to clinch the nomination.

“At this point, it’s not looking like we will be running any candidates this time,” other than McKinney, said Green Party activist Holly Hart, the 2002 nominee for lieutenant governor. “There were a couple mentions of running someone for Congress, but then (incumbent Democrat) Dave Loebsack started voting against the military budgets.”

Barr and McKinney’s candidacies could have a ripple effect through the presidential race. Running as the Green nominee in 2000, Ralph Nader was widely seen as a spoiler who cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency, a wound so deep that Rep. Leonard Boswell repeatedly and successfully hammered primary challenger Ed Fallon with it this spring.

But despite national attention to Nader’s 2008 campaign, he is running on an independent line this year. Green Party activists are more likely to vote for party nominee McKinney.

Barr, who served as a Republican in Congress from 1995 to 2002, is likely to have a bigger impact than Nader or McKinney. The vociferous supporters of the Ron Paul Revolution are unreconciled to John McCain’s candidacy. Paul, himself the Libertarian nominee in 1988, has said he will not endorse McCain because of McCain’s support of the Iraq War. Paul has not formally endorsed Barr, but encouraged him to get into the race.

But some Libertarians have issues with Barr’s record in Congress, particularly his support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage exclusively in heterosexual terms, and the Patriot Act. Barr has since renounced those votes. His highest profile in Congress was in 1998, when he served as one of the House managers of the Bill Clinton impeachment.

McKinney campaigned in Iowa in December, and Barr has an Iowa connection as well: Though he only lived here briefly, he was born in Iowa City. But their impact is likely to be greater in other states. Unlike past Democrats, Barack Obama is making strong efforts in the Rocky Mountain west, where Libertarians have run well in the past. A couple of points shaved off McCain’s vote total by Barr could swing some electoral votes.

Obama has also put Georgia on the map, even though it has trended Republican in the post-Jimmy Carter era. Both Barr and McKinney represented the state. Barr ran statewide in 1992, narrowly losing a U.S. Senate primary. His district lines changed dramatically in 2002, when he lost in a two-incumbent primary.

McKinney’s district lines changed several times during her two non-consecutive trips to Congress, as she represented parts of most of the state’s major media markets. However, most of her media attention has been negative, centering on a physical altercation with a Capitol police officer who failed to recognize her as a member of Congress. She lost a 2002 primary, returned to Congress in 2004 when her successor ran for the Senate, and was defeated in the primary again in 2006. After the last defeat, she moved from Georgia to California.

As an African-American woman, McKinney offers a double whammy of the identity politics that were so prominent in the Democratic nomination fight. She is a plausible protest vote for women still angry about Hillary Clinton’s defeat, but who can’t bring themselves to vote for either McCain or Obama. Her main support, though, is likely to come from anti-war absolutists who want impeachment and immediate zero funding of the war and who feel Obama is too timid on these issues.

In Iowa the courts and Legislature have removed one incentive for a third-party presidential vote. Until this year, running a candidate for president or governor, and then winning more than 2 percent of the vote, was the only way for a group to earn political party status and a place on the voter registration form. The Greens had that status from 2000 to 2002, and the Reform Party had party status from 1996 to 1998.

The Greens and Libertarians, with the support of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, sued then-Secretary of State Chet Culver and challenged the law. In a settlement, Culver’s successor, Mike Mauro, established a new “party organization” status and petition procedure. The state Legislature has since taken that agreement and turned it into law. This achieved the main goal of the Greens and Libertarians: an identity on voter cards and access to lists of their supporters. The small parties still don’t have some of the trappings of the full parties, such as primary elections.

They may be just as happy without primaries. Only 439 voters participated in the Green Party’s one Iowa primary in 2002, compared to 97,000 Democrats and 206,000 Republicans. Small numbers can leave a third party vulnerable to a hostile takeover, as seen in 1999 when Pat Buchanan usurped the remnants of Ross Perot’s Reform Party. That led the party’s only elected official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, to quit the party and start his own Minnesota Independence Party.

Green and Libertarian registration began in Iowa on Jan. 2, but the change was buried in the news one day before the caucuses. As of Tuesday, only 150 Libertarians and 64 Greens were registered statewide, out of more than 1.9 million Iowa voters. At the end of the party’s two-year run of full party status, in January 2003, statewide Green registration peaked at 2,480.