The results of the Iowa caucuses, the first of many to decide who gets the Democratic and Republican nominations for the 2016 US presidential election, came as something of a surprise to pundits and partakers alike. The inescapable Trump seemed to have convinced everyone he would win through sheer bombast, but the impressive groundwork of Ted Cruz, the putty-faced Senator from Texas, helped him to seize victory with 27.65 per cent of the vote over Trump’s 24.31 per cent. In the blue corner, Hillary Clinton was left sighing with relief as she narrowly defeated the 74-year-old democratic socialist Bernie Sanders by 0.29 per cent of the vote.

The Democratic result is interesting and shows that the anti-political and anti-big-money protest vote so vital to Corbyn’s rise in the UK also has power in the more conservative America. But it is as highly improbable that Sanders will win the Democratic nomination as it is that Corbyn will be our next Prime Minister. When faced with the red states Sanders looks doomed (Clinton is polling at 63.2 per cent in South Carolina), much as Corbyn has failed to gain support from Britain’s centrist voters. For this reason, and for others, it is the Republican race we should be most interested in—or concerned about.

Given the media coverage Trump’s offensive views and comments have been attracting in the last few months, many will be tempted to see his loss in Iowa as a victory over bigotry and prejudice. But to take this view would be to underestimate the intolerance of Ted Cruz’s brand of conservatism. Cruz believes there is no evidence for climate change and he has advocated carpet bombing in Iraq and Syria. He is against gay marriage, in favour of the death penalty and he thinks the US should completely close its borders to Syrian refugees. Cruz claims you can only “stop bad guys by using our own guns”. Problematic as it to conflate Trump’s right-wing populism and Cruz’s hard conservatism, it is clear that they both represent a narrow-minded, reactionary kind of politics.

There is historical precedent which explains the attraction of these views. In the turbulent 1960s, many Americans saw the USSR and the Civil Rights movement in a way comparable to how many view Islam and immigration today: a threat to their way of life. It was Barry Goldwater, the right-wing Senator from Arizona, who profited. Winning the 1964 Republican nomination on a reactionary campaign much as Trump and Cruz seem intent on doing today, Goldwater played on Americans’ insecurities and worries in a way that the Republican field does in 2016. He tapped into paranoia and fear, those hugely powerful forces which throughout history have shaped many US elections, and will no doubt shape again.

It is no coincidence that soon after Goldwater won the Republican nomination in 1964 the Columbia academic Richard J. Hofstadter published a famous essay entitled ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’. Hofstadter suggests a strain of paranoia has always run through US politics, stretching back to fear of the Illuminati. Paranoia is evident in the McCarthyism of the 1950s, and it is clear today. Often it is accompanied by apocalyptic prophesies concerning threats to the USA, such as Reagan’s declaration that “by 1970 the world will be all slave or all free”, which mirrors Trump’s (admittedly less eloquent) “soon we’re not gonna have a country left.”

Barry Goldwater, the right-winger so loathed in the 1960s by many in his own party, voted against the Civil Rights Act. Despite his populism and hard conservatism which make him so comparable to Trump and Cruz today, Goldwater went on to lose the 1964 election, and lose badly. But what he achieved was a reinvention of conservatism in America which eventually paved the way for Richard Nixon to take the White House in 1969, and Ronald Reagan to do the same in 1981. Trump and Cruz’s views mean they too would probably lose a presidential race, given their unpalatability to many swing voters. Yet it cannot be denied that they have also reinvigorated the right-wing movement in America, drawing large crowds and popular support from those tired of the establishment. The danger, then, is quite apparent: a Trump or Cruz loss would nonetheless push intolerant conservatism to the fore and clear the way for a more polished but no less dangerous version of the same kind of politician to take office. A new Nixon or a new Reagan would harness American paranoia and rise to office.

And let’s not forget where their policies left America. Nixon ramped up an immoral and disastrous war in Vietnam and under Reagan the policies of ‘Reaganomics’ and the ‘War on Drugs’ exacerbated social and racial problems, the scars of which can still be felt today. The conservative agenda advocated by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump should, of course, not be confused with Britain’s Conservatives—most of whom are fairly socially liberal but economically right-wing. It is a much more damaging ideology. At its worst it can claim that Mexicans are rapists, that Muslims should be rounded up and put on databases, and that Syrian civilians should be carpet bombed. It is a dangerous worldview which is gathering force by preying on the fears of ordinary people. If Trump or Cruz win the nomination and fail to win the Presidency, their movement will not be finished. So long as the sources of paranoia—problems in the Middle East, Islam, immigration—remain the dominant issues, America will produce bigoted and intolerant politicians, and may end up having one as its President.