More akin to when the Reform Party of Canada was formed in dissent to the governing Progressive Conservative Party because of the PC establishment continuing to drift further to the left on numerous policy issues. In the 1993 federal election the PC Party was reduced to 2 seats while the Reform Party took 52. In 1997 it was 20 PC and 60 Reform. In 2000 it was 12 PC and 66 Reform (renamed the Canadian Alliance). The PC party eventually was absorbed into the Canadian Alliance to form a new Conservative Party which has been in power since 2006.
The bottom line is that the conservative/Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is the dominant force within that party. A third party could relegate the Republicans into 3rd party status and keep them there. The cost will be a succession of Democrat victories until the civil war comes to a conclusion, but it may be the only way to effect real change in Washington in the long term.
People still think this can be won without sacrifice. They are determined that magic bullets will save them and someone will ride in on a white horse.
Here or anywhere, the good guys can’t win as long as their own ‘party’ opposes them. There is no victory from within possible when the GOP is accelerating leftward. The solution is and always was, remove the GOP. That is going to hurt in the short term. But this isn’t a short term war.
I have often wondered why the TEA party does not get a few people from a war college out in public to explain this to the ‘troops’.
The Tea Party would do well to do a very thorough analysis of the Canadian experience.
The UKIP has an easier road than either the Canadian Alliance or the Tea Party because the immigration problem, which is the point of the spear for them, is so major, so obvious, that it is simply impossible to obfuscate it, but there would be much to learn from them as well.
Another huge thing the UKIP has going for them of course is one of the most articulate and likeable national politicians we’ve seen in a very long time.