| The whole Tea Party thing seemed like a good idea, they think, at first. A lot of energy, and press, and anti-Obama narrative. But then it got out of hand.
Early on, they lost Specter. Not a great loss, they said; he wasn't a true-red Republican. Then, Crist in Florida. I'm guessing some of them weren't concerned about that-- they suspect he's gay and they aren't really comfortable with that and maybe he wasn't really conservative, anyway.
But Bob Bennett and Bob Inglis: them, they're true Republicans. So is Lisa Murkowski, even though "some" thought she was a moderate-- they all toed the Party line when it really mattered. Uneasy, they felt; but in the end their replacements are likely to keep the seats in the red column. Maybe not sure about Joe Miller; he might lose; but probably not.
Rand Paul in Kentucky probably keeps the seat Republican, even though Conway was the better candidate. What really pisses them-- well, McConnell-- off, though, is that it was a thoroughly disrespectful act to go up against their-- well, his-- preferred candidate.
Nobody is going to shed tears over Lazio. He's kind of the Chicago Cubs of NY politics: might look good on paper, might even hit a couple runs. But in the end, can't win the big thing.
But Castle is a different deal. And really, so is Murkowski. Add to that Agle in Nevada-- who has taken a likely Republican defeat of the King of the Senate Democrats and turned it into a horse race with a real possibility of Reid surviving-- and Linda McMahon-- who has made Connecticut go from "possible flip" to "probably Democrat retention-- and now they are realizing that there's a good chance that the Tea Party just cost them control of the Senate.
Looking forward, let's guess that the Republicans come out of this with, say, 45 seats in November-- less than the 50 they claim they "deserve" and less than the 47 or 48 that they were likely to have.
Of those 45, a couple (Paul? Miller? Angle? DeMint) are "Tea Partiers". A couple, though, are "old-style" Republicans: rational, fact driven, pro-business. You two up in Maine know we're talking about you now.
In the Senate is also Charlie Crist as an "Independent". Slowly, a new force emerges-- not the Tea Party, but the "centrist/moderates". It's Lieberman, Crist but also Snowe and Collins, who "pull a Jeffords".
Who else joins them? Could also be Max Baucus, Byron Dorgan, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson. Now, we have a Senate that has R's in the low 40s, D's in the low 50s and five or ten "Independents".
At this point, the "Tea Partiers" in the Republican caucus have an outsized voice: they make up a larger fraction of a smaller caucus; they are loud; and they are interesting, so the media covers them. A lot. Even more than they do before the election (which is to say "today", already a lot) because they've actually won office.
That's a problem. Whatever passes for leadership in the Republican party remembers Pat Robertson and his party convention speeches that helped brand the Republican party as the party of intolerance. And these new Tea Partiers-- they make Robertson look like a voice of reason.
So for the next two years, the independent voters-- the ones whom Robertson pushed away two decades ago and gave Clinton his victory-- hear a steady stream of "destroy social security, criminalize gay acts, deny equal religious rights to Muslims, and treat illegal aliens as inhumans".
That all but assures both an Obama victory in 2012 and a return to Democratic majorities. It also-- interestingly-- helps set the stage for the 2016 election, when whomever is elected this year is back up for election. 2016 is, after all, the "natural" year for the White House to revert to Republican control.
Now, normally, the head of the RNC would wake up this morning and realize he has to figure out how to get the genie back in the bottle. But Michael Steele has shown himself interested mostly in Michael Steele; and he doesn't have the clout to do it, anyway.
Who else is "Republican leadership"? This is Sarah Palin's chosen path and she doesn't have enough strategic insight to realize that it's going to hurt the party in the long run. And probably doesn't care. Rush is happy to see it play out as long as his advertisement revenues stay high.
So at some point this morning, Haley Barbour calls Mitch McConnell and says something along the lines of "we have to take care of this now". Later this week, McConnell takes McCain aside and says, "you created this dragon-- now you have to kill her". McCain nods gravely.
See, there are three keys to the ascendency of the Tea Party: Sarah Palin's personal charisma, the Fox news rah-rah chorus, and the Dick Armey slush fund money. But the last two have always been there; it's really the Sarah Palin rallying point that was critical.
So McCain needs to disown Palin. But that won't be enough. Good thing that the Republican oppo research is better than the Democratic one. Whatever you suspect about Palin, the folder that Barbour or Cheney or McConnell has on her has a lot of worse stuff. And they'll start slowly leaking that out.
At the same time, they'll take Richard Murdoch for a talk. Fox News will start covering the "intolerant" aspect of the Tea Party, to discredit it.
The Koch money channeled through Armey they probably can't do much about.
Here's the question: do you do it now or do you wait until after the election? If you wait, then you've at least got the chance of expanding your caucus and claiming some wins and putting the President in a bad political spot.
If you do it now, then you've secured your own position (after Murkowski, Bennett, and Castle, nobody is safe in the party) and probably done the strategically right thing for the Party.
But it's easier to wait, and see, and figure out if they really have to. So they'll probably wait until early next year.
Helluvit is, they could have seen this coming. "Castle" is the Delaware spelling of "Scozzafava", after all.
What does this mean for Democrats? Likely, fewer losses in November. A couple fewer, if the Republicans don't disown the Tea Party; more if they do. Probably a narrative to run on-- the intolerant tea stains on the Republican party.
Possibly, the loss of the Senate Conservadems and the House Blue Dogs to a new "middle" caucus. But maybe, in practice, those groups end up voting with Democrats (even if a little uneasily) on most things-- despite the cries of "MOST RADICAL PRESIDENT EVER", the Obama proposals have been very middle of the road-- even center-right, more than left.
In either case, sit back, pop some popcorn, and enjoy the show. |
