2016 presidential primaries

Is Donald Trump trying to win my vote? I ask because the Orange One has been making some statements lately that are almost, well, progressive. Most notable was his recent attack on the most holy of Republican shibboleths, that “George W. Bush kept us safe” from terrorism during his presidency.

Trump contended, as have many Democrats and liberals since 2001, that Bush shouldn’t get a pass on the 9/11 attacks, because he was warned repeatedly about Osama bin Laden’s plans to strike the U.S. and ignored them. As Trump put it: “That’s [like saying] the other team scored 19 runs in the first inning, but after that, we played well. I don’t think so.” Zing.

In last Saturday night’s debate, Trump also defended Planned Parenthood, saying that the organization does some “good things for women’s health.” You could almost see the other GOP candidates’ heads explode. Trump is the honey badger candidate. He really doesn’t give a sh*t. And therein lies his power, as the GOP party establishment is discovering, much to its horror. A lot of folks aren’t buying the usual party lines this year.

Things aren’t much different on the Democratic side, as maverick “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders continues to disrupt Hillary Clinton’s second preordained waltz to that party’s nomination. The feisty septuagenarian is winning votes from a coalition of old hippies, social leftists, and perhaps most surprisingly, young people.

But it really isn’t that surprising when you remember that a major plank in Bernie’s platform is free tuition at public universities. This message resonates powerfully for the millions of twenty-somethings who’ve left college with a massive tuition-loan debt hanging over their lives.

It remains to be seen whether Trump and Sanders can sustain momentum through the eight-month slog of primaries ahead, but it’s not unprecedented for a candidate from the far wings of either party to grab the nomination. Barry Goldwater carried the flag for GOP ultra-conservatives in 1964 and got trounced by Lyndon Johnson. The pendulum swung the other way in 1972, as left-wing Democrats threw the nomination to George McGovern, who got destroyed by Richard Nixon. The American electorate usually breaks to the center.

But there could be another dynamic in play. Trump flirted again this week with running as a third-party candidate if the GOP didn’t “treat him fairly.” You don’t have to go too far back in history to see how that development can alter a presidential election: See Ross Perot, circa 1992, or Ralph Nader, circa 2000. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were the beneficiaries of those quixotic ego trips.

It’s still possible, of course, that both parties will eventually pick a “safe” candidate, which could lead to another Bush vs. Clinton race. (Please, no.) But it’s also possible that we could get a contest between Sanders and Trump, which would be equal parts mind-boggling, entertaining, and terrifying.

Super Tuesday is only two weeks away. If you want to have a say in the electoral process, please vote. The stakes have seldom been higher. Or weirder.

History is a funny thing. When you have an understanding of it, you can spot it rattling down the street like a steam roller and you can leap out of the way in time. When you’re oblivious to history, you never see itcoming until it rolls you over and transforms you into road pizza.

If you are a political actor in the current tragicomedy taking place in the U.S. Congress, and also ignorant of history, you can depend upon the past sneaking up and biting you in your collective dumb asses. So it is with the Tea Party suckers who have been bamboozled by the 1 percent’s agenda. Senate Republicans propose bill after bill to cut the top income tax rate and abolish the estate tax, or now that it has been Frank Luntz-ified, the “death tax.” Their agenda has nothing to do with helping the middle class; they know there is a grass-roots movement behind them that is antigovernment and hates Obama. As long as the plutocrats make nice, the plebeians will do their dirty work for them. Mainstream Republicans have made an unholy alliance with radicals and racists, and if history is a harbinger of things to come, the Tea Party will either devour the GOP from within or become a fringe third party.

As the Republicans look toward 2016, their best chance to win the presidency is with the conservative governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. But he’s not right-wing enough for the clueless caucus of the GOP, which seems to prefer the plagiarist senator Rand Paul as their candidate. (If I may just make an aside here, I realize that having sport with someone’s looks is the lowest form of criticism. Having said that, am I the only one who thinks Rand Paul looks like Lee Harvey Oswald? They have the same pinched, weasel face and an expression of combative, smug assurance.)

Paul is the perfect Tea Party candidate. He’s a libertarian one moment and a right-wing flame thrower the next. He has said, “I have a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We’ve come to take our government back.” Paul has also expressed reservations about provisions of the Civil Rights Act and had an aide on his staff who was forced to resign when it became known that he was a former shock-jock and neo-Confederate activist known as the “Southern Avenger.”

The Tea Party is thought to be made up of ordinary angry citizens, but a current Pew Poll shows the typical member to be older, whiter, and wealthier than your average yahoo. The same poll found that 49 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party. But that ain’t gonna stop them, and they will continue to be a tapeworm in the GOP’s small intestine. The parallel universe in which the Tea Party exists is the same one that once enraptured the Dixiecrats. They were also a party that favored home rule and opposition to the federal government. But before that, they were part of a post-war Democratic coalition that included the “Solid South.”

The South could be depended upon to vote Democratic because of a poisonous political bargain to accommodate racists and white supremacists within the party. When Harry Truman established a Presidential Commission on Civil Rights, there was a rebellion in the party among the far right. At the 1948 Democratic Convention, when the platform committee adopted a Hubert Humphrey plank calling for civil rights, the right flank bolted and formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party, better known as the Dixiecrats, and nominated a presidential candidate of their own, J. Strom Thurmond, the miscegenating governor of the great state of South Carolina. Their platform was to protect the Southern way of life, beset by an oppressive federal government, and to uphold Jim Crow laws concerning voter suppression and white supremacy. Even after an ignominious defeat, the segregationists were welcomed back into the party and remained there well into the 1960s.

When the Democratic-sponsored Voting Rights Act of 1964 and Civil Rights Act of 1965 were signed into law, Lyndon Johnson said that the Democrats had probably lost the South for a generation. But LBJ underestimated the right-wing resentment that animates the opposition nearly 50 years later and manifests itself in the Tea Party.

Richard Nixon made all the pigeons flock to him with the cynical “Southern Strategy” of 1968. The GOP started whistling “Dixie,” and all the goobers converted to Republicanism. Tricky Dick won 70 percent of the popular vote in the Deep South but lost 90 percent of the black vote. And so it stands today. Democrats didn’t win a lot of elections in the South after 1968. Even Jimmy Carter lost the South when running for a second term. The Dems paid dearly for their embrace of right-wing radicals and segregationist Southern politicians, but the obstructionists had to be purged in order to construct a progressive agenda.

The radicals are still on the right-wing, railing over Obamacare now just like they did over civil rights in the past. But just as they once were a problem for the Democrats, they are now the asp in the bosom of the Republican Party. And if they don’t get their way come convention time, history says they’re gonna bite again.

Randy Haspel writes the “Born-Again Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.