What just happened? Depending on whose info-tain-alysis you listened to after Election Day, the country was either a) taken over by the Tea Party, or b) realigned along the actual breakdown of the nation’s outlook — which is split down the middle.
The winners usually get to write the history, but in this case the winner has two faces. The Tea Party did create a lot of headlines for the Obama critique over the past year, but the Republicans were pretty much guaranteed a rebound. I didn’t see a Tea Party candidate anywhere who won a race that the GOP wouldn’t have won anyway. But there were some key races — statewide races for the U.S. Senate — that Tea Party candidates lost where the mainstream Republican could have won.
Low-turnout primary elections are easily swayed by the heat of a movement like the Tea Party; statewide races, not so much. So what just happened is a preview: Sarah Palin steamrolls her way through Iowa and New Hampshire with a few thousand true believers and becomes the GOP presidential nominee before the race even starts; then, come November 2012, she’s crushed when the nation’s millions of voters pass judgment, digging the Republican Party into a hole with voters it could take years to climb out of. Karl Rove sees this debacle coming, and the next year will determine how it all plays out.
And he’s looking to history. After its 1994 landslide, the GOP was focused; this time around, Republicans are split. Newt Gingrich was a great insurgent — storming the walls with his pseudo-academic bluster. But he was terrible at governing. Once he was forced to walk the plank by his own party, the GOP got to work on its legislative agenda and made some real progress on it. Of course, the party kind of went nuts after that, with impeachment and wars and expanding the bureaucracy, finally getting tossed for running the nation into a ditch.
So which voice inside the GOP’s head will win? Will the new GOP want to actually govern? (The smart ones know they have to try.) Or will we get two more years of standing on the sidelines, waving dubiously spelled signs and booing their own nation’s quarterback?
Yes, it will be good sport to watch — but it’s serious, too. The good of the country is at stake. Oddly enough, it has me rooting for Mitt Romney.
Ted S. McGregor Jr. is the Editor and Publisher of The Inlander.
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Substance=Mitt Romney
Style/Sexy = Sarah palin
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Now that the tea party has had their moment in the sun, will they join the fold or will they create their own nightmare and divide the republicans?
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Herein lies the rub. America has a longstanding love affair with style. Just pure fame for fame´s sake. Sarah Palin is a political version of Paris Hilton. Easy on the eyes, but very little actual credibility. She makes a ton of money giving vacuous speeches to cheering throngs of thongs. WHY?
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Will Mike Pence and Huckabee have an impact? Maybe. I can tell you this, nobody has the organization Romney has. For quite some time a very large group of "MITTsters" has been waiting for the "GO" signal.
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If the idiot electorate favors Palin over Romney, it will take the GOP a decade to recover. The new litmus test for politics should be survival of a tough interview with Caty Couric and Matt Lauer. Palin already proved herself an empty vessel with Couric. Lauer had Kanye West for lunch the other day. This is where you, TED, the media...you can provide a valuable service. Explaining and communicating to the public which of the candidates are worthy.... and why. For example, the blind voters of Spokane just re-elected a prosecutor with a horrendous record on non-action and incompetence. Many voters do not read the paper or have any semblance of a clue. This is the recipe for disaster which elects people like Palin and Tucker.
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David Elton
- Nov 12, 2010 | Reply to this comment
If progressives and liberals continue to underestimate and misunderstand the tea party, they won´t anticipate their next ass kicking in 2012. Nov 13, 2010 | Reply to this comment