The Tea Party might not be a flash in the pan.

Charlie Crist’s departure from the Republican Party in Florida has a lot of people wondering just what’s happening to us. It’s a good question. As it turns out, there’s only one time in our (relatively) short history when something like this happened before.

The United States has always had a two-party system. We’re set up so that third parties can safely be ignored. Their only real impact has always been as a “spoiler” – as when Ralph Nader single-handedly elected the idiot Bush in 2000 (to his everlasting shame). But just once in history, it didn’t work that way.

In the 1850’s, our nation was unalterably split over the question of slavery. The Supreme Court had ruled in the Dred Scott case that slaves were still slaves even if they were taken to a free state. It all boiled over with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was essentially a “states rights” law that said states could decide by popular vote whether they would allow slavery or not. (Back then, Democrats were the champions of “states rights”!) Whigs, the opposition to the Democrats at the time, could never figure out where they stood on the issue. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on it:

“The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction successfully prevented the nomination of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott, who was soundly defeated. Its leaders quit politics (as Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The voter base defected to the Republican Party, various coalition parties in some states, and to the Democratic Party. By the 1856 presidential election, the party had lost its ability to maintain a national coalition of effective state parties.”

This is essentially what the Tea Party people want to do – destroy the Republican Party as it now stands and elect the next President, just as Lincoln was elected in 1860, on the ashes. It’s not that far fetched. Today’s Republicans can’t figure out what they stand for either. Grass-roots Republicans believe in balanced budgets, non-interference in foreign wars, and smaller governments. Republican administrations run monsterous budget deficits, start or continue foreign wars, and expand the federal government. (Bush was responsible for the biggest expansion of federal power seen since Roosevelt.) Republican voters tend to vote “against” the other guy rather than “for” their own guy (They are ‘The Party of No’.) but they figure it out eventually.

There is no single, soul wrenching issue that unites them like slavery united the Republicans in 1860, however. Even if the Tea Party people were somehow successful, I’m not sure what they would do.

The key lesson for the Democrats in all this is to avoid the same awful fate. Passing health care was a good first step in actually standing for something. But we need more. Much more.