A Tea Party? How Many Lumps do You Want?

Image from source, News Corpse

I know that the whole tea party movement is quite overblown by the media, and by bloggers like me.  The tea partiers are the same 25%-ers who've kept Karl Rovian politics alive for the last ten years, they just have a new name. But there is no question that--given the right circumstances--they can have quite an impact.  We're still in primary season for the mid-term elections, and the tea party's presence has been felt.

Here in Nevada, we have the culmination of tea bag politics with the primary success of Sharron Angle, who beat out more establishment candidates to take on Harry Reid in November.  While we still don't know how that will play out, there is no doubt that Harry Reid will have a greater chance of re-election against Angle than he had against virtually any other candidate.  Reid has a giant target on his back--just as his predecessor Tom Daschle did--simply by virtue of being the Senate Majority Leader.  He's been painted as a villain by Rush Limbaugh, FOX "News" and the rest, so that people who otherwise wouldn't know his name are now rooting for his demise.  But now, Reid gets to fight for his job against an extremist, far-right cartoon character.

That may be the ultimate test of the tea party:  they can get their base to the polls in the primaries, but can their candidates convince mainstream voters to accept their extremist views?  Hoping not, but watching with interest anyway.  And now, an excerpt on the same subject by a far more talented blogger. . .

[Excerpt]

The Many Faces Of The Tea Party

On the cover of the new Weekly Standard is a caricature of two people that the magazine’s cover story regards as the banner carriers of the Tea Party movement. They are Rick Santelli, a correspondent for the cable business network CNBC, and Glenn Beck, a delusional Fox News host with a Messiah complex. The title of the cover story is The Two Faces Of The Tea Party. . .

Read more at: News Corpse