Monday, April 29

Tea Partiers & Republicans have tried make the extreme the mainstream—and it's backfiring

Abby Rapoport at The American Prospect highlights three key findings about the relationship of the Tea Party to the GOP, which should prove unsettling to Republicans:
  1. Tea Party activists are not Republicans. The activists providing a huge amount of the labor and enthusiasm for Republican candidates are, at best, lukewarm on the party they’re voting for.
  2. Tea Party activists aren't nearly as concerned about winning as they are about ideological purity. The Tea Party has helped propel several upstart Republican candidacies, only to have that candidate proven too extreme for the general election.
  3. Attempts to bridge the gap between establishment Republicans and the Tea Party are doomed to fail. Tea Party activists dominate the Republican Party, and they're no less willing to compromise with the GOP than they are with Democrats.
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