We Americans — and particularly our governing class in Albany and Washington — like to think of ourselves as centrists and middle-of-the-roaders<\/p>\n
Which is why it’s so startling to realize that fringe activists and groups have shaped so much of our politics in the post-War era.<\/p>\n
And the really interesting thing is that these “wing” voters and organizations tend to do as much harm as good to their cherished causes.<\/p>\n
In last month’s elections, the rise of the conservative tea party movement probably cost Republicans control of the US Senate.<\/p>\n
If President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law survives, he may have Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint to thank.<\/p>\n
But this trend goes well beyond this one election cycle.<\/p>\n
In 1964, a fierce cadre of conservative Republicans seized the presidential nomination for Barry Goldwater, shouldering aside centrist New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.<\/p>\n
Goldwater went on to lose the election by nearly 20 million votes to Lyndon Johnson, one of the biggest electoral defeats in our history.<\/p>\n
That gave Johnson time to built support for his landmark Civil Rights Act and to lay the groundwork for his Great Society social programs.<\/p>\n
But in 1968, Johnson’s own fringe rose up against him, with liberals backing Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy against a popular, sitting president.<\/p>\n
A chip-shot win for the Democrats turned into a debacle, as Johnson withdrew and Richard Nixon went on to win 32 states and the presidency.<\/p>\n
If ultra-liberal rebels own a part of the credit for the blighted Nixon era, they also own a big piece of the Reagan years.<\/p>\n
In 1980, Jimmy Carter had a legitimate shot at capturing a second term until progressive icon Ted Kennedy pursued a nasty and divisive primary challenge all the way to the Democratic convention.<\/p>\n
(We forget these days that Carter was viewed by his liberal wing as a stuffy southern conservative.\u00a0 Just as Johnson, the architect of the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society, was viewed as a right-wing war-monger.)<\/p>\n
Reagan went on to win 44 states and set in motion policies that would erode many of the liberal movement’s most cherished New Deal programs.<\/p>\n
But if liberals helped to usher in the Nixon and Reagan eras, conservatives certainly played midwife to Bill Clinton’s presidency.<\/p>\n
In 1992, Texas billionaire Ross Perot launched his self-funded libertarian campaign, peeling away nearly 20 million votes.<\/p>\n
That support, if it had stayed with the GOP, would have given the first President George Bush another term by a handy margin.<\/p>\n
But in 2000, the left was back at it again, with liberal icon Ralph Nader stripping nearly 3 million votes away from the Democrats — including key votes in Florida that would have almost certainly tipped the election to Al Gore.<\/p>\n
It is an unavoidable fact that their quixotic activism had the unintended consequence of giving rise to the Bush-Cheney era.<\/p>\n
Indeed, when you tot up the number of times that these outside-the-mainstream groups have tipped elections — and in every case, tipped it to the “enemy” camp — it’s hard not to daydream about what a truly centrist America might have looked like.<\/p>\n
What if Nelson Rockefeller had been elected president and set a different course for the modern Republican Party, one more urban, cosmopolitan and multi-racial in tone?<\/p>\n
What if Lyndon Johnson had captured a second term, thereby removing Richard Nixon’s stain from American history?<\/p>\n
What if Jimmy Carter had muddled to a second term, erasing Ronald Reagan’s towering figure from the political landscape?<\/p>\n
What if Bill Clinton had never been elected? And what if Al Gore had been at the helm in 2000 when Al Quaeda attacked America?<\/p>\n
It’s astonishing when seen in this light to think how these very small groups have managed to alter the trajectory of our political lives.<\/p>\n
Liberals have once again started talking about this sort of self-immolating rebellion.<\/p>\n
In an interview on NPR, Robert Kuttner — co-founder of the American Prospect — raised the specter of a primary challenge against President Obama in 2012.<\/p>\n