So the "extremists" in both parties are ready to take on the two most potent lobbies in Washington: Wall Street, and the Military-Industrial Complex. And that's why considerable fur is about to fly. (Relax, a Republican from Kansas coined the term "Military-Industrial Complex," President Eisenhower.)

Now, in the past, politicians that became a serious threat to Wall Street or the Military-Industrial Complex got the hell kicked out of them by the "powers that be." The "powers that be," or as St. Paul calls them, "the principalities and powers," simply will not be pushed around by any commoner who threatens their way of life.

Eisenhower was right to warn us about the Military-Industrial Complex. I support our troops, and I believe in St. Thomas Aquanis' "Just War" theory. But the truth is, lots of companies depend on wars to make a living. It used to be called "The War Department," but the name was changed to "Department of Defense."

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Colin Powell said: "I'm running out of bogeymen." But it didn't take long until another serious threat surfaced: Al Queda. But people like Rand Paul are right to ask: "Why did we take our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?"

I wish things were different, but both parties in Washington are bought and paid for by corporate behemoths and by the Military-Industrial Complex, i.e., the defense contractors who need wars to survive. And today people on both the left and the right are questioning why the big corporations call the shots on everything, whether they be pharmaceutical companies or bomb builders. The folks on Main Street who didn't go to Harvard or Yale and who are not sharing in this Wall Street resurgence are not amused. People in both parties know they've been had.

The Tea Party is plucking off Wall Street Republicans left and right, and Rand Paul's victory is a classic example. Likewise, Democratic incumbents who have stiffed unions and voted for unnecessary wars abroad are going to start losing Democratic primaries.

Will these forces pull the Republican party to the right, and pull the Democratic party to the left? Maybe, but I think a much more likely outcome is the rise of a third and fourth party, or the rise of the Independent movement. I know it sounds crazy.

In my "American Political Parties" class at KU, Professor Al Cigler explained: "The system is rigged to be a two-party system. The founding fathers rigged it so third parties couldn't succeed." And he was right. For instance, the Electoral College is rigged so that no one can become President without having a majority of electors. So no third party will ever be able to seize the Presidency, because the winner-take-all nature of state presidential elections under the Electoral College, and the majority requirement of the Electoral College preclude a third party ever getting to 51%.

Cigler told me third parties were a lost cause for President. When John B. Anderson bolted the Republican party in 1980 to run as an Independent candidate, it was a lost cause. But when Congressman Anderson campaigned at KU, he packed Hoch Auditorium. I shook his hand, and ended up voting for him. When you are 19, you have time for a few lost causes. But I can now say to a certainty that no third-party candidate or Independent will ever become President of the United States. I'm 50 years old this year, and have no time left for lost causes.

But what about down ballot races? That's a horse of another color. In the past, the two major parties have maintained their monopoly on power by making ballot access difficult for third parties. But lots of court cases have forced Secretaries of State to loosen up on third party ballot access.

You see, the truth is, a mere plurality wins a race for U.S. Senate, Congress, State Representative, State Senator, and so forth. And ballot access is not that difficult, especially for Independents. In Kansas, an independent can get on the general election ballot by collecting signatures.

Jerry D. Rose, a retired professor of sociology from SUNY at Fredonia states bluntly:

I can easily see the possibility that our much-vaunted 2-party system could thus become a 4-party one as a result of the unique conditions of this extraordinary year in our history. In such a system, you don't need 51% of the votes to win an election, you need 26% - a number well within the reach of progressives if we will campaign truly progressively as well as in populist fashion. (Progressive Populist, May 15, 2010, p. 13).

Professor Rose has started a project known as Campaign Corner.(sunstateactivist.org/campaigncorner/). This project is in it's early stages, and most of the action is from Green Party folks, but Rose sees it as an incubator for Independent and non-Green party folks to start talking about ways to "rock the boat" on the left the same way the Tea Party rocks the boat on the right.

Imagine a Ross Perot running for something like U.S. Senator, or Congress, instead of the Presidency. Ross Perot could have never won the Presidency due to the 51% rule. There isn't much point in running third party candidates for President. They can't win unless you amend the Constitution.

But all other offices? Katie Bar the Door, because a mere plurality gets you elected to every other office in the land. The two major parties will get weaker, and our politics will start to look a lot more like Europe.

Wall Street and the Military-Industrial complex won't let this happen without one gut-wrenching fight. So it's still uphill. But it could happen. And I think it will.

Obama could have fixed the Democratic brand if he had taken office and been a Harry Truman, fighting for the little man, the forgotten men and women, blasting Wall Street and the "malefactors of great wealth." But he didn't. He got mixed up with a bunch of Goldman Sachs alums, a bunch of Ivy Leaguers, and he "lost Middle America." And now Middle America is looking elsewhere for answers, both on the right and the left.

And yes, if the Republicans had stuck to "free market" economics, and shunned the Wall Street bailouts, they could have rebranded themselves and ran the political billiard table for years. But they didn't. Middle Americans knows they don't count as much as fat cats on Wall Street, and they aren't ready to turn things back over to the Republicans.