A lot of press is being given to the primary victories of Tea Party-endorsed candidates in states like New York and Delaware. Somehow, the exponential surge of the Tea Party is being painted as a serious threat to the Democrats' congressional majorities in this mid-term election cycle. Say what?
Personally, I think this is a spin job being perpetrated by a desperate Republican Party, which is trying to hold itself together at the seams as the Tea Party tears the ultra-right-wing ideologues away from it. Those same ultra-right-wingers who were nodded and winked and placated for eight years by the Bush/Cheney/Rove political machine. The machine that understood it needed the votes of the ultra-conservative nutjobs to keep its stranglehold on the political power in this country. The power that was going to allow them to advance their "build wealth, protect wealth" agenda. The agenda that, in the end, didn't effectively accomplish either of those things. Which is why they are no longer in power.
So tell me: How is the rending asunder of the Republican Party going to threaten the Democrats? Isn't it traditionally so that when an independent party splinters away from one of the two major ones, the party from which that upstart splinters becomes weakened? These Tea-Partiers, with their ultra-conservative agenda, their "birthers" and their altered definitions of socialism, are not the folks who put Barack Obama in office. They are not the folks who threw the bums who had spent eight years leading this country to the brink of economic, intellectual and moral collapse, out on their ears.
THEY are the ones who fell in love with Sarah Palin.
And in case you hadn't noticed…Palin lost.
It's indeed a pity that she hasn't gone away into Losing Candidate Oblivion. But still. Ubiquitous and strident and seemingly popular as she is—she's a loser.
And it's unfortunate that she has become the mouthpiece for a group of discontented loud-mouths who, in my humble opinion, gave up the best thing they ever had when they ripped themselves away from the mainstream Republican Party. Because I think they are going to find that they need the Republicans as much as the Republicans needed them. Together, they are a block to be reckoned with.
Apart…not so much.
2 comments:
So, uh huh, you ARE still a voice in the wilderness, no matter how nuts the wilderness makes you, me, all of us. My partner, Gail, believes just this, what you have written in this post, saying many of these same things to try to cheer me up when Mike Castle (a Republican for whom I have even voted) lost the primary - me, I'm not so sure. I can hope, but I always tend to believe the worst. The Teanuts becoming the majority Other Party would be The Worst.
Even ultra right wing columnist Charles Krauthamer is pointing out that Bill Buckley's dictum of nominate "the most conservative candidate that you can elect." Here's hoping.
O'Donnell from Delaware is now faced with explaining that she "dabbled" with Wicca in the nineties. This from someone who claims to be a Christian conservative. "WTF" Makes me wonder what the RNC knew and when they knew it because they aren't sending her any party money.
Now they have to convince the rest of us that what they stand for is worth voting for.
Which regulations do you want to repeal? Some folks who support abolishing the department of education might jib at getting rid of the FDA or the USDA in light of ever larger food recalls.
Folks in favor of trimming the defense budget never want it trimmed in their districts; and so on.
What's scary is the thought that at least some of these folks only believe in tearing down. Not building and frankly don't give a damn if the country becomes even more ungovernable because that appears to be just exactly what they want.
Post a Comment