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Wow. It didn’t even take twenty-four hours for the DC Republicans’ knives to find Teabagger Republicans’ backs.
Check out The Daily Caller, whose proprietor Tucker Carlson is a longtime establishment GOP figure:
But on Tuesday night, both [Nevada Senate candidate Sharron] Angle and [Delaware Senate candidate Christine] O’Donnell lost their races and, as of press time, [Alaska Senate candidate Joe] Miller was trailing write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski in his election. A central argument made during the campaign about both Angle and O’Donnell was that they were considerably less electable in a general election than their primary opponents…
…So it’s hard not to think that had the Tea Party Express not helped Angle and O’Donnell, the GOP would’ve come closer to that majority.
Ouch! And honestly, the Caller was being relatively gentle. Here’s the CBS News take, via Time’s Mark Halperin, describing how Katie Couric tonight described the Tea Party wing’s effect on the races:
.. Couric looks at Palin and Tea Party score following the election. So far, 31 Palin-endorsed candidates have won House seats, while 16 lost their congressional bids. Six Palin-endorsed candidates won Senate races while four lost. Tea Partiers won 36 House races, lost 76. The conservative movement also won three Senate seats and lost three Senate races.
That’s right, gang: Sarah Palin, she who dragged down the McCain ticket, was a better electoral draw than the teabaggers. Tea Party candidates lost twice as many races as they won. . . .
Why the rush among the DC Republican set to puncture the myth of the invincible Tea Party — a myth they helped create? Probably because the teabaggers in general, and Michele Bachmann in particular, are getting a wee bit big for their britches as far as the the establishment GOP’s powerbrokers are concerned:
Speculation has quickly turned into action for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) Wednesday, who announced her intent to run for a leadership position as the GOP Conference Chair, the party’s fourth in command.
Big Government had earlier reported that Bachmann was planning to take advantage of the power vacuum created by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who earlier stepped down as Conference Chair, leaving an opening at the current 3rd most powerful spot, which is set to be downgraded after a GOP member is named Speaker of the House.
The response of Bachmann’s fellow Republicans was swift in coming. Politico reported that Jason Chaffetz [R-Utah] has suddenly dropped his own bid for that spot and threw his support behind his main rival, Texas’ Jeb Hensarling, after Hensarling got the official anointment from Eric Cantor. English translation: Shaddup and siddown, Shelly!
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I have never really felt that I entirely understood just what the deal with the teabaggers is. Some of them are kooks, but there’s also some money and power involved. The best I can make out it is an internal power struggle within the Republican party. It looks like just enough teabaggers won elections to make it impossible to completely dismiss them.
One thing is definitely true. Of the many many predictions made at Daily Kos, the one about the teabaggers being a guarantee that the Republicans would go down the toilet turned out to be one of the many many predictions that were utter crocks.
The teabaggers got their start as an actual third party, the Boston Tea Party, back in the mid-’00s. They had a libertarian bent to them and were a real threat to siphon votes from the GOP much as the Greens do from the Dems — so much so that the Koch brothers and Dick Armey were tasked with co-opting them (and in the process stripped out the libertarianism and replaced it with religious-right-ism), a move that eventually succeeded, but at the cost of hurting the Republicans in the general this year. As bad as the 2010 wave was, we have the teabaggers to thank for keeping it from being even worse.
Trent Lott was asked about the Baggers and he said that the party would “absorb” them. This may not please some Baggers as they are very independent minded and think their way is the only way. Popcorn will be served.
I had never heard of them until after the 2008 election. That background is interesting.
I could see Nevada as one place they may have cost the GOP a win, but I can’t think of many others. With the present crop of Democrats to run against the teabaggers don’t seem to have done all that much damage. If there were ever any question that the Republicans sold their souls to the devil, the repeated trail of Democrats snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is proof enough on the bargain.
Both parties are heading toward Civil War. The time for true change might be closer than we think.
Rand Paul has already had one “put a sock in it” lesson from McConnell following his primary win. Paul’s rhetorical high water mark, as libertarian rhetorical flourishes go, was in his victory speech.
The only Tea Party darling that won’t be touched is Rubio. But they won’t need to. He knows the dynamics and he’ll be a good soldier for the time being.
How much longer the Tea Party is of use to the Republican party machine is directly correlated with the amount of populist rage that is fueled by desperate economic circumstances.
If the economy stays poor and Obama is weakened enough to be beaten, the Republicans will be faced with a quandary. Nominate Palin or risk alienating a part of the base they need to take a veto proof majority in the Senate.
That is where Rubio will step in. After that, Palin will be irrelevant. I wonder if she will tweet the phrase: “Sic transit gloria mundi.”
Yes, the tea party sucked. So did the progressives. I guess this election was not for the extremists.
I have been “arguing” for quite some time that we, the Native Americans and Chicanos, are going to “own” the Republican Party, along with the Democratic Party, and all accomplished within the next two generations or for an approximate 40 years, given the existing demographic trends. Thus, my “Forty-Year” Plan! How’s that for a refutation of Stalinism on the Center-Left? Okay, some snark is required for this early morning post.
However, not to be outdone, I now find that the “power” behind these Non-Java Drinking political outfit, understands the Forces of the Future, and they too, although not announced loudly, has crafted their own and particularized “Forty-Year” Plan and done in order to deliver the political combat necessary for their political survival, and well into the future.
And here in the Sonoran Desert, a Democratic pundit went on television and stipulated that the “conservatives, Republicans, and Tea Party Activists” have to be considered separate and distinct political entities” in order to accurately perceive politics on the Right. Not so, of course, since “we” see all three elements as being arch-conservatives and these labels are simply camouflage for hiding in plain sight.
Consequently, when “we” achieve ownership of both major political parties, the Non-Java Drinkers will publicly announce that they are no longer part and parcel to the Republican Party, and thereby, the Arch-Conservative Party becomes an accepted fact of life for the political establishment. Thus, a new Party, crafted in 2000, will have three consistent and constant elements. 1) Politics, 2) Culture, and 3) Economics. Therefore, the Koch Brothers and the assorted money sources will have “invested” and actually “purchased” a political party at a minimalist cost and which is beholden to the money sources.
Ain’t America Great!
Jaango
That was a truly stupid thing to say.
They may have “sucked,” but they won a few seats. As Robert Scheer wrote at Truthdig:
Yes, the tea party victors are a mixed bag espousing often contradictory and at times weird positions, the source of their funding is questionable and their proposed solutions are vague and at times downright nutty. But they represent the most significant political response to the economic pain that has traumatized swaths of the nation at a time when so-called progressives have been reduced to abject impotence by their deference to a Democratic president.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/payback_at_the_polls_20101103/
Sorry, EvilDrPuma. I didn’t mean to reply to you. I meant it as a stand-alone post.
I see Ben Shelly beat Linda Lovejoy to be Tribal President of the Navajo Nation. But there were some irregularities with the vote, including not enough ballots in some precincts. Any “word on the street” about this historic Dineh election?
Kind of reminds me of the struggle between the SA and the SS. It’s now time for the “night of the long knives” sans Adolf this time.