Third parties have a dreadful track record in US political history. There are huge formal and informal obstacles to their success. That doesn’t mean a tea party could not emerge. First, I’m not a statistician, however, my hunch is there are not enough prior instances, say, in the last 100 years, to “prove” a third party cannot win. (Perot was leading the polls before he self-destructed.) Further, the best route for a third party is not to “join the crowd,” but to wholly replace one of the two parties. That is in my view the most likely approach for a tea party. That is what happened from 1856-1860: in just four years, the Whigs disappeared and outside the South were replaced by the Republicans. If you take the current Republican Party and subtract the grassroots tea party folks, there isn’t much left other than hacks and the country club Republicans. Thus, in principle, a tea party could simply replace the GOP and thereby obviate concerns over splitting the anti-Democratic vote. If a tea party did emerge, we could once again have an anti-statist party in America.

Update:

James,

Yes, the Whig name disappeared in 1856, but the Whigs themselves did not. They crawled out as the Republican Party. A regional political party with a strategy to win the Presidency by capturing key populous states in the Northeast and Midwest. They were wildly successful and the ramifications of their success is the social/economic abyss we face today. From Whig to Republican is like the song, “Meet the new boss, Same as old Boss”. The truly principled men and women of the Tea Party in order to effectively replace the modern GOP would have to acknowledge the nefarious origins and insidious goals of the 1856 Republicans.

Bryan Fox

Houston, Texas

The Best of James Ostrowski