re: #9 kirkspencer

Taking this as a serious question, the answer is “underground”.

gah, I hate to invoke the MBF, but I need a little “both sides” dust here. There are nutbars who are nominally part of both sides. The thing is, not all the nutbars are in charge.

What happens is that they form microparties - some blatant and official political parties (Green, Constitutional) and others just groups with common interest (PETA, Birchers). All of them will try to influence their respective parties. For many - for pretty much all that support the Democratic party and a very large number supporting the GOP - the balancing act is to influence without being so offensive and/or obvious that the party is forced to openly reject and repudiate.

What’ll happen is that the extremists will spend a little time in the desert. Then the parties will notice they have money and votes, and will offer - again - a little nod of support in return for those votes.

There are a few exceptions to this. There are a few single issue groups that hold positions so objectionable that neither side is willing to chance being associated with them. The best known example is Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church. In a perfect world the most severe of the current GOP extremists would go there as well - personally I”m thinking of the militia/patriot/sovereign citizen types. If history repeats, however, they won’t. But the WBC gives me some hope.

Of course the problem for the white nationalists is that their numbers are shrinking while the number of nonwhites is growing. By 2016 the percentage of the nonwhite electorate is likely to hit 30%, or nearly as high a percentage of voters as identified as Republicans last November. The GOP can’t win presidential elections if it keeps losing 80% of the nonwhite vote, but it can’t improve its performance with nonwhites as long as continues to seek the racist vote. So sooner or later, and I’m not making any predictions as to when, the GOP will have to have its “Sistah Souljah” moment and move back into the mainstream.