Would You Support This Candidate?

American political parties are generally a joke. They don’t contain any substance, are hidebound by large donors or the prospect of appealing to a “big tent,” and always betray their constituents.

Progressives complain loudly about Joe Biden. He isn’t one of “them,” but he wasn’t Donald Trump so the establishment backed his candidacy.

Trump was the outlier. He didn’t seem particularly interested in toeing the GOP line, and they hated him for it.

That didn’t mean he was always right, far from it, and his bombastic approach allowed the political class to portray him as every evil object in society.

The establishment doesn’t want boat rockers, which is partly what made Trump’s rise to power so fun to watch.

He wasn’t the first.

Third parties have rarely generated any type of political momentum, but some have made a substantial impact. Ross Perot did fairly well in 1992, and had he not flaked out during the campaign he might have won the presidency.

There have been others. South Carolina went their own way twice in the nineteenth century, first with John Floyd and then with Hugh White.

Southerners have usually led the way in third parties. The States Rights Democrats of 1948 put pressure on the national party and almost cost Truman the election.

But most Americans today shy away from supporting third parties. They reason that doing so only helps the candidate they hate the most.

But what if a third party platform was really good with one catch: the candidate was universally reviled by the establishment because of his (alleged) views on race or gender? I say alleged because the candidate changed his tune over a few years, but no one let him live his previous statements down.

And what if this candidate ran on a platform that recognized the original Constitution, real federalism, and a sound foreign policy?

This scenario happened, once. In fact, there wouldn’t have been a Donald Trump without it. I discuss the platform in Episode 490 of The Brion McClanahan Show.