While third parties in U.S. history have historically set themselves apart from the
“established” parties in name and philosophy, they have rarely done so
physically. Exceptions have been the “American” or “Know-Nothing” Party in the
1850s, the “Progressive Party” in the 1920s and the “Green Party” in 2000. But
more often it has been the case that a dissident faction of an established
political party broke away temporarily to make a “statement.”
Such was the case in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt—who
identified himself with the progressive wing of the Republican Party—became
outraged by the reactionary,
pro-business and anti-labor policies of his successor in the White House,
Howard Taft. Roosevelt failed to wrest the Republican nomination from Taft, and
formed the “Bull Moose Party”—called the “Progressive” Party but essentially
comprised of dissident Republicans. The Bull Moose Party split the Republican
vote in half (it was a very different party back then), allowing Woodrow Wilson
to win the presidency.
In 1948, South Carolinian Strom Thurmond led a revolt of
Southern delegates at the Democratic National Convention, opposed to President
Harry Truman’s support of civil rights policies. Thurmond and like-thinkers
formed the “States' Rights Democratic Party,” but more commonly referred to as
the “Dixiecrats.” Another threat to Truman’s reelection was Henry Wallace, who
revived the Progressive Party again. Election watchers were thus confident that
Republican Thomas Dewey would easily defeat Truman, but after a cross-country
“whistle-stop” tour of the country, Truman won by a surprisingly comfortable
margin.
In 1968, Alabama Gov. George Wallace ran for president on the “American Independent
Party” ticket, not surprisingly on a platform opposed to the civil rights laws
enacted in the 1960s, and playing on the paranoia of white Southerners and
white working people elsewhere afraid of losing their jobs to re-enfranchised
blacks. In this case, Wallace’s support did hurt significantly Democratic
nominee Hubert Humphrey’s election bid; Nixon won 43 percent of the vote, just
over 800,000 more than Humphrey. Wallace, technically a Democrat, won nearly 10
million votes, the majority of which
would likely have gone to Humphrey; as an aside, Reagan’s “October Surprise” was
learned by Nixon’s employment of the tactic—the secret diplomatic interference which
derailed Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks proposal just before the election.
Usually, potential third-party voters can be expected to
support one of the major parties as the better of “two evils,” but if given a
chance to “make a statement,” they will hitch their wagon to anyone suitably
“charismatic.” Such was the case in 2000, when Ralph Nader ran on the “Green
Party” ticket. Although Nader has done good work in the past—particularly in
auto safety—he strikes some as a shameless self-promoter. Perhaps no one really
knew just how disastrous a George Bush presidency would be for this
country—among other things, the huge tax cuts for the wealthy translated into 3
million lost manufacturing jobs during
his tenure—but Nader in siphoning off votes in Florida at least cost this
country dear; his claim that there was essentially no difference between the
two established parties was proved wrong time and again. The gridlock today in
Washington, DC painfully proves that again.
But these party “off-shoots” were brief expectorations that
usually lasted one election cycle. The Tea Party, on the other hand, is a quite
different breed. It’s not really a political “party” at all, but just another
name for right-wing extremists who see the world through a racial prism
(especially with a black president), like the Dixiecrats. Regardless of the
claims of these pathetic bigots and the people who vote for them, their
political, economic and social agenda are all tied together by white paranoia.
The Tea Party is not a “third party” movement in the usual
sense, since all of its “members” ran as Republicans, which should be more
revealing than it appears to be. They don’t offer any real “alternative” to the
establishment; they are too cowardly for that. If the Tea Party ran as a true “independent”
party, they would easily be marginalized as any extremist fringe group, as it
should be. But because they have used the Republican Party apparatus to give
themselves “legitimacy,” instead of being a marginal fringe to be ignored,
their two dozen or so number in the House of Representatives gives the
Republicans the majority in that body, and essentially holding the leadership
and other members hostage for fear of a supposed “backlash” from right-wing voters.
For now, the so-called “Tea Party” is having its day,
proving each day that it has no agenda other than obstruction and destruction. It
seems to me that the voters responsible for this will only come to their “senses”
once President Obama leaves office in 2016—because the black “bogeyman” of their
nightmares will not be there to “justify” continuing this insane course.
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