Weak Tea

Posted on October 12, 2011 by nsullivan12

The success Mitt Romney has thus far enjoyed seems, as far as I can see, to raise serious questions about the effectiveness of The Tea Party. Amidst all the attention paid to The Tea Party (understandable given the last national election) it’s difficult not to notice that The Tea Party does not, at the moment at least, seem poised to deliver the Republican nomination to a Tea Party Candidate.
Worse still, The Tea Party hasn’t even given us a credible candidate for the nomination.
One could, I think, be forgiven for not being willing to take The Tea Party all that seriously.

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8 Responses

  1. Unknown's avatar
    kevinwillis.net, on October 12, 2011 at 5:19 pm said:

    The Tea Party was, to some extent, an amorphous (or big tent, if you prefer) movement that coalesced around a very "throw the bums out" sort of vibe. Hard to do that in the primaries, before there have been actual votes. Straw polls have gone repeatedly for oddballs–Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul. That may be the only place you're really seeing the Tea Party influence right now. The only other place you have to see it is in polling data, and maybe that's not where the Tea Party will exert real force. If Romney wins the first few primaries, then, yes, it will be true that the Tea Party isn't really a factor in the primary season. If some dark horses take the prize, then it will turn out that the primaries is where you see the Tea Party actually exerting force.That having been said, big partisan wins (like 2010) don't often translate to ongoing excitement, especially as everybody is excited about potential but rarely is everybody similarly enthused by what is actually happening. Thus, momentum is lost. Practical issues make 2012 likely to be a fair year for Republicans in the house and may well lead to Republicans taking the senate in 2012. But I don't think that's likely to be a Tea-related as some 2010 victories (especially primary victories over RINOs) were.

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  2. Unknown's avatar
    kevinwillis.net, on October 12, 2011 at 5:27 pm said:

    "Worse still, The Tea Party hasn't even given us a credible candidate for the nomination."The Tea Party does not have a great record of credible candidates. Even in 2010, some big Tea Party primary victories led to election night losses. Even my favorite Tea Party candidate, Ruth McClung, lost against a guy who advocated that companies boycott his own state, and Arizona was already suffering higher unemployment than the national average. Sharron Angle lost to Harry Reid, and, of course, Christine O'Donnell lost to Christopher Coons. Joe Miller, the Tea Party choice, lost to Lisa Murkowski who ran as a write-in candidate!Which doesn't mean they didn't accomplish things and weren't fine people exercising their constitutional rights, but I don't think they are a transformational force in politics. But there was some awesome Tea Parties! And there's a reason they called them "parties".

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  3. Unknown's avatar
    nathaniel sullivan, on October 12, 2011 at 5:38 pm said:

    I don't know the number of credible Tea Party candidates running for nominations down ballot. That would probably also be a good indication. I haven't seen serious primary challenges materializing at any level, but I could be wrong.

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  5. Unknown's avatar
    kevinwillis.net, on October 12, 2011 at 8:12 pm said:

    Thanks, Mark. That was funny. However, it did nothing to improve my work ethic, which has been lacking 8after about 9:30 this morning.

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  6. Unknown's avatar
    tao9, on October 12, 2011 at 8:59 pm said:

    There will, more than quite possibly, be a Tea Party Vice-President.Yesterday's vote (50-49) on the jobs bill would have picked off some Republican Senators plus Tester and Nelson, if there were no TP.

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  7. Unknown's avatar
    lmsinca, on October 12, 2011 at 9:37 pm said:

    I agree tao on the TP VP pick. And I was just saying the other day that the TP has been quite successful in the House, much to my chagrin of course. I keep wondering if it's Romney though if he might pick Christie, who is decidedly not TP, what do you think?

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  8. Unknown's avatar
    kevinwillis.net, on October 12, 2011 at 10:11 pm said:

    "TP has been quite successful in the House"Which, for the most part, would seem to make it more of a district-by-district phenom, with trouble carrying whole states. But we will see.

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