LATEST POLL NUMBERS
Donald Trmp 23.5
Ben Carson 10.3
Jeb Bush 9.8
marco Rubio 7.3
Ted Cruz 7.3
Scott Walker 7.3
Carley Fiorina 6.0
John Kasich 4.5
Mike Huckabee 4.0
Rand Paul 3.8
Chris Christie 3.5
Rick Perry 1.3
Rick Santorum 1.0
Bobby Jindal 0.5
Lindsey Graham 0.3
Source: Aug. 25 Quinnipiac University Poll
SOME PAST ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATES
Some past anti-establishment candidates:
1948
Henry Wallace
Background — Former Democratic vice president of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Party — Progressive Party
Result — Won 2.37 percent of the vote and did not carry a state.
Notable quote — “We should make an effort to counteract the irrational fear of Russia which is being systematically built up in the American people by certain individuals and publications,” he wrote President Harry Truman in 1946. “The slogan that communism and capitalism, regimentation and democracy, cannot continue to exist in the same world is, from a historical point of view, pure propaganda.”
1948
Strom Thurmond
Background – Democratic governor of South Carolina
Party — Dixiecrat
Result — Won 2.41 percent of the vote and carried South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Notable quote — “There’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”
1968
George Wallace
Background — Former Democratic governor of Alabama.
Party — American Independent
Result – Won 13.5 percent of the vote and carried Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
Notable quote: “If any of those anarchists lie down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile they ever lie down in front of.”
1992
Ross Perot
Background — Texas billionaire
Party – Independent
Result – Won 18.9 percent of the popular vote but did not carry a state.
Notable quote — “We’ve shipped millions of jobs overseas,” predicting under the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement “there will be a giant sucking sound going south.”
CONTINUING COVERAGE
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In past presidential elections the role was filled by Texas billionaire Ross Perot. At other times it has been former Alabama Gov. George Wallace. This year the part belongs to New York real estate magnate Donald Trump.
They are the blunt sounding candidates who strike a chord with angry and frustrated voters as they offer promises to transform the governing establishment and restore the country’s greatness.
And even though they often turn American politics topsy-turvy and dominate news coverage for months at a time, historically they fade away and become little more than a footnote.
“They come along, they capture a niche, they are famous and light a little fire,” said Curt Steiner, a Columbus public relations consultant who advised former Republican U.S. Senator and Ohio Gov. Gov. George V. Voinovich. “But it stops at a certain point.”
Trump has rocketed to the top of the Republican presidential primary polls taking on political correctness message and dominating the illigal immigration issue. He wants to crack down on foreign trade competitors while simultaneously deporting millions of undocumented immigrants who are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
Like Wallace — who in 1968 said “if one of those anarchists lie down in front of my automobile, it’ll be the last automobile they lie down in front of” — Trump takes no guff, engages in spirited arguments with reporters, denounces political opponents as morons and idiots, and wears a perpetual scowl.
In June 1992, Perot was leading then-President George H.W. Bush and then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in national polls. Perot had 39 percent, Bush had 31 and Clinton was at 25, according to Gallup.
By Election Day, Clinton won the election and Perot ended up with 19 percent of the popular vote and zero electoral votes.
As Perot did in 1992 when he warned that the proposed North America Free Trade Agreement would trigger a “giant sucking sound” of U.S. jobs being sent to Mexico, Trump has played the same protectionist card.
In an appearance this month in Michigan, Trump denounced Ford Motor Co. for planning to build an auto plant in Mexico, snapping he would impose a 35 percent tax on Ford cars and trucks imported from Mexico into the United States.
Trump, Sanders hitting a cord
A year before the 2016 election, the voters are being treated to anti-establishment campaigns from the left and right. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and self-proclaimed socialist, has offered progressive Democrats a double helping of populism by bashing the wealthy and the banks as the source of all that ails the country.
“You have a Trump and Sanders, both appealing to people who are angry and frustrated, although in different ways,” said Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta.
The tough-talking egotistical anti-establishment candidate is a staple not only of American politics but literature and films such as “Citizen Kane,” where flamboyant newspaper publisher Charles Foster Kane runs for governor of New York declaring the “decent, ordinary citizens know that I’ll do everything in my power to protect the under-privileged, the underpaid and the under-fed.”
And in the 1933 MGM film “Gabriel Over the White House,” an angel infiltrates the mind of President Judson Hammond, transforming him from a detached and ineffectual Herbert Hoover-type character into a decisive man of action who declares martial law, ends the Depression through martial law, and executes mobsters by firing squads.
“It’s an interesting story in American movies which means it’s an interesting story in American politics in that we like the dark-horse candidate,” said Jeanine Basinger, a film historian at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. “And if the dark-horse candidate is a bit of an outlaw and says what nobody else wants to say and dares to say … we figure this guy must be honest with us.”
‘Make America great again’
Trump complained to CNN “we have people that are incompetent” in public office, adding “our country’s going to hell. We have a problem. I want to make America great again.”
Americans tend to flirt with such candidates, but the closer the election voters have second thoughts. President Harry Truman seemed doom to lose to Republican Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 because of the presence of two anti-establishment candidates – South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond and former Vice President Henry Wallace.
Because Henry Wallace and Thurmond bolted the Democratic Party, analysts believed they would siphon votes away from Truman. But Thurmond and Wallace combined to win less than 3 million votes compared to 24 million for Truman, who was re-elected.
As late as September 1968, Wallace had the support of more than 30 percent of the traditionally Democratic union vote. Yet his union support slowly drifted away as he won just 13.5 percent of the popular vote, much in the deep South.
Although these anti-establishment candidates have never won the presidency, they can impact the outcome of the election.
Running as the Green Party presidential candidate in 2000, Ralph Nader won just 2.74 percent of the national vote. But the 97,000 votes he won in Florida almost certainly prevented Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore from carrying the state and winning the presidency against Republican George W. Bush.
Third-party candidates fade for a variety of reasons. “The trouble for outsiders is they start big because they are vessels for everyone’s discontent,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California. “As the campaign goes on (voters) realize the outsider cannot be all things to all people.”
The very harshness of their message often frightens voters. In Trump’s case, his pledge to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants not only alienates Hispanic voters, but likely would antagonize white Americans.
“I suspect what would be required to start deporting 11 million undocumented workers would probably turn out to be pretty unpopular when put into practice,” said Gene Healy, a vice president of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute in Washington.
In addition, political outsiders are often in reality consummate insiders, with Pitney saying “we’re not talking about peasants with pitch forks.” Trump is a billionaire who has funneled money to candidates from both parties. Henry Wallace served as vice president under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Everything that appears to be new is not so terribly new,” said Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant in Washington, pointing out “you have had a history” in the United States “of people tapping into the angry vote.”
“Ultimately in most cases,” Fenn said, “the American people get the joke.”
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