Over at Liberty Pundits my friend Melissa Clouthier points out that the ruling class in Washington of both parties have more in common with each other than they do with us in a piece titled “Us and Them.”  After outlining some of the similarities on both sides she issues this warning:

Worse, the big Republican class sees the Tea Party movement a threat to their power rather than an affirmation of REPUBLICAN PARTY PlANKS. Hello, fiscal sanity used to be the raison d’etre of the Republican party. No more. So why should voters vote for pretenders and poseurs?

The current Republican leadership has very nearly destroyed the Republican brand. Voters interested in one thing, economic discipline, are turning to the Tea Party.

Here is a blunt warning to the smarty pants set in D.C.: If the Republican party does not change their ways, there will be a third party. It will not have the Ross Perot effect. In fact, it will draw from the Democrat base, too, because it will be based on cutting the expansion of the Federal government.

I’m sure that the Republican leadership thinks of Ross Perot and laughs at the idea of a third party. After all, even Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t pull it off. But there’s a difference that they’re overlooking.

Both Perot and Roosevelt founded parties that had the aim of making them president. They invited some others to come along, but in reality the campaign was all about them. Elected officials with good prospects where they were didn’t jump ship, though a relative handful said nice things about the Perot and Roosevelt to hedge their bets. But the fact is that it was a top down structure, and even if Perot or TR had been elected as part of a third party they would have had little support in congress or the state legislatures. The Bull Moose party (officially the Progressive Party) managed to elect a grand total of 17 people.

In contrast, the Free Soil Party elected 14 congressmen and 2 senators in 1848 and was growing in influence as it absorbed Democrats who couldn’t abide slavery. Six years later it merged with anti-slavery elements of the Whig party to form the Republican party. In addition to the candidates the Free Soilers had elected, established Whigs switched to the new party. Lincoln, who later would become the first Republican president, had been elected as a Whig repeatedly since 1834.

What happened when the Republican party was founded was that people from an existing third party, plus people who were part of the major parties of the time found that they held a common set of beliefs so strongly that it transcended the bonds of their earlier political allegiance. Candidates were elected in local elections, then to congress, and it began to snowball. In 1856 Lincoln helped to organize the Republican party in Illinois. A scant four years later he was elected president on the Republican ticket.

Perot and Teddy Roosevelt tried a top down approach and failed. The entrenched powers generally do top down better than anyone else – That’s why they are the entrenched powers. On the other hand, the Republican party grew out of various groups with a common cause and welled up from the grass roots. From the official founding of the Republican party in 1854 to the election of Lincoln was just over six years.

Fish rots from the head, and once the rot sets in things fall apart much faster than most people expect. It doesn’t happen often, but America may be reaching another tipping point as people who want limited government and economic discipline join together.

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