The Tea Party Effect Demonstrated
Yesterday was a day of congressional primaries in Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio. While I don’t care to go into details about each and every one (although if you do, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has a good wrap-up), there is an over-riding trend that I do want to take note of. For the past year or so, there has been a lot of talk about what effect the Tea Party movement would have on elections, and more specifically, on Republican establishment candidates. I think most rational people were fairly confident about what this effect might look like, but yesterday, it was largely born out. As Dave Weigel summed it up, “There was a consistent pattern — candidates of or supported by the tea party movement fell short, while keeping the establishment candidates below 50 percent of the vote.”
And there you have it — The Tea Party Effect. These ultra-conservative candidates are, by and large, not even electable in GOP primaries. The vast majority have about zero chance of winning in a general election. What they can do, however, is pull down more moderate, mainstream, electable Republicans with them. The next question becomes, what happens to these defeated Tea Party Republican candidates and their supporters come November?
Their effect on the general election will come in one of two ways. If the Tea Partyer decides to run as a third candidate, they will most certainly, A) come nowhere near winning, and B) siphon valuable votes away from the Republican candidate — maybe enough to affect the outcome of the election.
Even if the defeated Tea Party hopeful does not officially enter the election, their presence may still be felt through the effect they’ve had on the GOP candidate. Quite possibly, an otherwise moderate Republican might have had to tack far to the right in order to counter their Tea Party opponent — think John McCain (but don’t think too long — he doesn’t). Democratic campaigns should be paying close attention to the rhetoric coming from these hotly contested GOP races, because there might be some real good ad fodder there.
In either case, yesterday’s primaries just proved again that the Tea Party movement is not a buoyant balloon, poised to carry the Republican Party to new heights. It really is nothing more than a dead-weight anchor, preventing the GOP from regaining even its previous status as a legitimate, governing party.
Tags: Tea Parties
Did you see this? Tea partiers are not that popular and more likely to turn people off than to turn them on.
shhhh you might offend the bagz!
The teabaggers get offended that we remember they called themselves that first, it hurts their sense of victimhood.
that is THEIR WORD! they call EACH OTHER THAT! (remember… they turned “liberal” into a slur)
Note that there were no teabags at the historic 18th C tea parties that these people try to connect their movement to. From wikipedia:
The first tea bags were made from hand-sewn silk muslin bags and tea bag patents of this sort exist dating as early as 1903. First appearing commercially around 1904, tea bags were successfully marketed by tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan from New York, who shipped his tea bags around the world. The loose tea was intended to be removed from the bags by customers, but they found it easier to prepare tea with the tea enclosed in the bags.[1] Modern tea bags are usually made of paper fiber. The heat-sealed paper fiber tea bag was invented by William Hermanson,[2] one of the founders of Technical Papers Corporation of Boston[citation needed]. Hermanson sold his patent to the Salada Tea Company in 1930[citation needed].
The rectangular tea bag was not invented until 1944. Prior to this they resembled small sacks.
Joe H.
Stevensville, MD
Liberals are soooooo mean:
But, but liberals say “teabaggers!”
From an online chat at the WaPo from Judson Phillips of the Tea Party Nation.
UI – Since their movement is ethically and intellectually bankrupt, they need to claim some ineffable, divine provenance. They call it patriotism. It is nothing Washington or Adams would recognize as patriotism, but it gets them through the night.
“..candidates of or supported by the tea party movement fell short, while keeping the establishment candidates below 50 percent of the vote.”
YES! Keep up the good work Teabaggers!!!