Elephant Dung #11: The Tea Party prepares for 2012 takeover of GOP

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

To an extent, the Republican Party and the Tea Party are the same thing.

The latter isn't politically independent, even if a small minority of its members are, it's solidly Republican. And the Tea Party has become such a major part of the Republican Party that it's hard to tell the two apart.

To be sure, there are a number of Republicans, mostly in what has been the party "establishment," who aren't Teabaggers, but that number, and their power, appears to be in decline.

To put it another way, the Republican Party and the Tea Party (which, again, is mostly Republican anyway) have embraced each other. Now, another word for "embrace," in this context, is "co-opt," as each sees the other as its vehicle for electoral success. The Tea Party needs the Republican Party, and vice versa.

But, hugging notwithstanding, the relationship is not always amicable, not least with the Tea Party trying not just to co-opt the Republican Party but to take it over and control it. The Tea Party doesn't just want to be one of the Republican Party's main components but its dominant force. It doesn't want the Republican Party to be an umbrella party (like the Democratic Party) with multiple perspectives and policy positions within it, but a rigid ideological party of Tea Party dogma.

It wants the Republican Party, that is, to be the party of Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and the rest of the Teabaggers who ran last year to varying success. And, to that end, and drunk on delusion, it's gearing up for 2012:

Leaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican who has represented the state since 1977.

They are organizing early, they say, to prevent what happened last year, when several Tea Party candidates split the vote in Republican Senate primaries, allowing the most establishment of the candidates to win with less than 40 percent.

The meeting in Sharpsville was hardly the exception. Just three months after the midterm elections, Tea Party organizers are preparing to challenge some of the longest-serving Republican incumbents in 2012.

In Maine, there is already one candidate running on a Tea Party platform against Senator Olympia J. Snowe. Supporters there are seeking others to run, declaring that they, too, will back the person they view as the strongest candidate to avoid splitting their vote. In Utah, the same people who ousted Senator Robert F. Bennett at the state’s Republican convention last spring are now looking at a challenge to Senator Orrin G. Hatch.

The early moves suggest that the pattern of the last elections, in which primaries were more fiercely contested than the general election in several states, may be repeated.

They also show how much the Tea Party has changed the definition of who qualifies as a conservative. While Ms. Snowe is widely considered a moderate Republican, Mr. Hatch is not. Mr. Lugar, similarly, defines himself as a conservative.

Ah, but that's not good enough anymore.

You can't just be a "conservative," you have to be a Tea Party conservative, a right-wing extremist like Rand, Angle, and O'Donnell, predominantly on economic issues (where the insane views of Ayn Rand are standard fare) but also on social ones (the Tea Party may be known best for its views on "limited" government, but it's extremely conservative, if not generally theocratic, on social issues as well, even allowing for hyper-libertarian exceptions like Rand).

And if even an Orrin Hatch isn't good enough, well, you know just how far to the right the Tea Party is -- and would like the Republican Party to be.

So are we headed for an ugly, internally divisive Republican primary season, with Teabaggers challenging any and all Republicans who don't meet their far-right standards, including established conservatives like Hatch?

Hopefully. Let's see what these Teabaggers are made off -- and let's watch the Republican Party reap what it has sown. 

Bring it on.

Elephant Dung #10: Tea Party slams Reince Priebus, RNC

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Reince Priebus has only been RNC chair for a few days and already the Tea Party is trying to knock him down: 

While Priebus boasted, during his campaign for RNC chairman, of his good relations with Wisconsin tea party groups, the leaders of those groups give his tenure mixed reviews, with some accusing him of giving only lip service to the movement while stacking the deck against its candidates, shutting them out of the process or working to absorb them into the GOP.

"Priebus will do whatever it takes to co-opt the tea party movement," said Mike Murphy, chairman of a tea party-allied 527 group called The Republican Liberty Caucus of Wisconsin, founded in late 2009.

In the midterm elections, Murphy's group supported tea party candidates, including some who were undercut by the state GOP, which largely ignored long-shot tea party candidates and endorsed the primary rivals of others at its May convention — months before the primary election.

"He didn't allow for conservative voices that didn't jibe with the establishment view and if he charges down that course (at the RNC), the tea party people will wake up and it may very well split up the Republican Party" coalition that powered the GOP's 2010 landslide, said Murphy.

Interviews with eight other Wisconsin tea party leaders since Priebus's election Friday as RNC chairman revealed similar misgivings about Priebus's handling of the party endorsement process, which they saw as emblematic of the clubby establishment politics that the tea party has railed against since the movement burst onto the scene in April 2009.

Priebus is hardly some wishy-washy moderate. He may be an insider, but his politics are on the far right (and hence well within the mainstream of the GOP).

And yet the Tea Party still doesn't like him? Why?

Well, because he didn't turn the Wisconsin GOP over to the Wisconsin Tea Party, obviously, even if he was more than willing to embrace Tea Party politics.

And that's the key here, you see. The co-opting goes both ways.

The Tea Party accuses the GOP of trying to co-opt it, and, sure, the GOP has very much been trying to do just that, that is to say, to capitalize electorally off Tea Party support, but the Tea Party is also trying to co-opt the GOP, to take control of it and use it to win elected office.

The Tea Party presents itself as against the establishment, but what it really wants is to became establishment itself, specifically within the Republican Party. To put it another way, it wants the counter-establishment to be the establishment. It denies this, of course, but its pursuit of control of the Republican Party, and its pursuit of power generally, would seem to refute its credibility.

Of course, most, if not all, revolutionaries -- and I use the term broadly when referring to Teabaggers, most of whom are either right-wing Republicans or otherwise right-wing anti-government types who are Republican in spirit -- desire power, not merely the overthrow those in power. Simply put, they want what others have, and often want it badly enough to resort to violence. (Read Hannah Arendt.)

I get it. 

But let's stop pretending that the Tea Party is really all that distinct at this point from the GOP. They may not be one and the same, but they need each other and feed off each other, and they're moving closer and closer all the time.

In this case, Priebus is surely more than happy to open the doors of the GOP as wide as possible to the Tea Party. But even that won't be enough. The Tea Party won't be happy until it takes over, until Priebus and the "establishment," however right-wing, bow to its every command.

It's an uneasy relationship, but it's the essence of the Republican Party.

"You can't outsmart crazy"

By Edward Copeland

With those words, Jon Stewart gave another eloquent speech at the beginning of Monday night's Daily Show, dispensing with humor to address Saturday's horrific events in Tucson.

With each passing hour and day since alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, critically injuring her, killing six and wounding 14 others, it becomes clearer that this 22-year-old man was not a political partisan but someone who was severely mentally ill. With Arizona government offices finally open Monday, The Washington Post finally was able to answer one simple question that's not open to debate: his voter registration. The answer turns out to be that he was a registered independent but was considered inactive because he hadn't bothered to vote in such a long time, including in November. Hardly indicative of a Tea Party participant.

I am guilty of jumping to conclusions. With the precursors without body counts such as smashed windows, threats, cut gas lines, it was an easy assumption to make. However, in my horror of the moment I forgot the old line about what happens when you assume: it makes an ass out of u and me. Subconsciously, there probably was part of me as there consciously was in many others who wanted this tragedy to turn out to be that way for political advantage. I may disagree with the Tea Party, believe them to be terribly misinformed and inflamed by the likes of Glenn Beck, but they aren't all homicidal lunatics.

When so many on the left criticized Jon Stewart's rally, claiming he was trying to make both sides equivalent, in the wake of Saturday's events, now he seems more right than ever. Keith Olbermann's Saturday special comment didn't say so explicitly, but if you read between the lines, it was a bit of a mea culpa for his own role. As Sarah Palin rushed to delete her graphic with the gunsight over Giffords' district, Daily Kos also had to delete a post where one of Giffords' constituents said that Giffords was "dead to me" because she voted against Nancy Pelosi for House minority leader.

Already, both sides are starting to revert to old habits. Because we on the left rushed to link the act of a madman to the politics of those we oppose, now those on the right revert to defensive mode and attack us. Hopefully, someone can stop this quickly. This is an opportunity for everyone to step back, take a breath and restore civility to the political process. I'm not saying compromise your principles, but it's long past time where both sides stop treating political opponents as the enemy. As it's been said many times, you can disagree without being disagreeable. The political climate probably didn't set Loughner off, but both parties need to look at themselves critically and seriously.

I hope that people take Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Gupnik to heart and start rejecting the Becks and Limbaughs, but the only way that happens is when they get hit where it really hurts: the wallet. Beck has shown those signs with the loss of lots of sponsors, being taken off a big New York radio station and even dropping numbers on Fox News. I wish their listeners realized they were in it for the money, but oh well.

What really needs to be addressed seriously is the fact that this country has a gun problem and it's had a gun problem for a long time. A man rejected by the military, kicked out of college and who worried others around him was still allowed to legally purchase his Glock and, more importantly, his high-volume ammunition clips. He had three clips which had 33 rounds each. These sorts of clips were illegal under the assault weapons ban which was allowed to expire during the Bush Administration. If that law were still in place, he could only have purchased clips that held 10 rounds, meaning he would have to reload more frequently and the bloodshed would have been less. I hope the NRA and their friends in Congress are proud. Right now, Arizona is considering allowing faculty and college students to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

We also have to improve our ability to treat the mentally ill. In a rare moment of a television newsperson saying something profound, Lester Holt did the other day when he said that in the end, the motive doesn't matter. Six people are still dead, including a 9-year-old student council president born on 9/11.

Political rhetoric and political violence: Are conservatives like Palin to blame for the Arizona shooting?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In the wake of yesterday's deadly shooting in Arizona, the assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, with fingers being pointed (justifiably, I think) at the likes of Sarah Palin (and the Tea Party, as well as much of the Republican Party), much of the talk today is about political speech:

Do Palin and others deserve any of the blame for what happened yesterday? More broadly, what is appropriate and what isn't?

At Slate, Jack Shafer defends "inflammatory rhetoric and violent imagery," criticizing those, like Keith Olbermann, who are calling for American political rhetoric to change. Shafer writes:

Only the tiniest handful of people -- most of whom are already behind bars, in psychiatric institutions, or on psycho-meds -- can be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts. Asking us to forever hold our tongues lest we awake their deeper demons infantilizes and neuters us and makes politicians no safer.

At The Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz, another media-focused pundit/apologist, takes a somewhat more balanced approach, noting that such violent rhetoric, while "highly unfortunate," is hardly new. He writes:

Let's be honest: Journalists often use military terminology in describing campaigns. We talk about the air war, the bombshells, targeting politicians, knocking them off, candidates returning fire or being out of ammunition. So we shouldn't act shocked when politicians do the same thing. Obviously, Palin should have used dots or asterisks on her map. But does anyone seriously believe she was trying to incite violence?

To a certain extent, Kurtz is right. And it isn't just in politics. How often do we hear military terminology used in sports? Take the NFL, where winning the war in the trenches is part of every game. But to a certain extent, he is also deeply naive. Palin may not explicitly have been trying to incite violence, but the reality is that words have consequences. This is hardly a new observation, but it bears repeating.

(Update: I realize I'm being way too nice to Kurtz here. His piece, like Shafer's, is appallingly smug. For a sound critique, see Sullivan.)

When you whip up a frenzy and try to mobilize the mobs who follow you unthinkingly, as Palin did during the '08 campaign and again last year, you plant seeds in the minds of those who may not quite get what you're doing, who may not appreciate all the various nuances of political speech. Even if we give Palin and others on the right the benefit of the doubt and allow that all they were doing was trying to rally their "troops" to vote, the possibility, if not the likelihood, remained that one or more of those "troops" would misinterpret the message.

Palin may not have been talking about killing Giffords when she put her in the crosshairs, but it's hardly a stretch to think that others might take her literally. And when you add to that the obsession with guns that animates so much of the right, including both the Tea Party and the Republican Party -- think back to the guns that showed up at health-care town halls a couple of years ago -- what you end up with is a cauldron of potential violence just waiting to explode.

In a perfect world, or at least in a world of universal rationality, Shafer may well be right. We should all be mature enough to understand the context of political speech, including that which is inflammatory and violent. But we don't live in such a world, and the fact remains that all is takes is one person with a gun, or whatever other weapon, to turn whispers or shouts into a bloodbath.

What's more, this isn't just about speech but about ideology as well. It's not just that Palin put Giffords and others in the crosshairs, targeting them, or that military terminology is prevalent specifically on the right, but that conservatism today, as reflected in both the Tea Party and the Republican Party, is exceedingly violent. It isn't just about limited government, it's about conspiracy theories rooted in anti-government, and specifically anti-federal government paranoia. It isn't just about the right to bear arms, it's about owing guns en masse, carrying them in public (whether concealed or right out in the open), and flaunting them (and also using them) as political protest.

All of this, too, is in that cauldron, and it's threatening to bubble over for years. From time to time it has, and what happened yesterday was just the most dramatic incident so far. It could very well get even worse.

As I do not in theory disagree with Shafer and Kurtz, I do not necessarily disagree with Olbermann (see his comment below) and others who are calling for political speech to be more responsible. I certainly do not want this to be yet another Janet Jackson moment, with a single incident (however tragic, in this case, unlike the mere exposure of a nipple) leading to gross over-reaction. Remember when 9/11 was supposed to have been the end of irony? Of course it wasn't. People moved on. And there will continue to be violent political rhetoric even after this.

No, what I worry about is not so much political speech itself but that speech, when violent, combined with a similarly violent political ideology, as we find on the right today. That's when it gets dangerous, and when, as we have seen in the past, long before yesterday, it can get literally violent.

No, let's not over-react, but let's not just dismiss what happened yesterday as merely the violent outburst of an insane individual acting alone, haunted by demons disconnected from political reality. The context and the discussion need to be broader, absorbing not just political speech on its own, which can usually be justified, but the context of that speech, the ideology behind it and the climate in which it is expressed.

It may still be far too early to pin the blame on anyone or anything in particular, but it's pretty clear, I think, if we do consider speech alongside ideology, that our fingers ought to be pointing at Palin and all those like her on the right, which is to say, at much of American conservatism today, including the Tea Party and the GOP.

We must not allow them to get away with what they're doing. And they should not be allowed to get away with claiming that they had nothing to do with it.

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Gearing up for a delusional 2012

By Greg Prince

Delusions of adequacy. There's no other way to explain it.

With the newly-sworn Congress barely in session, we are well into the horse race leading up to the 2012 presidential election. Chronologically, we're entering the third year or "autumn" of the cycle, and appropriately the nuts are starting to fall from the trees.

Thus far the Obama administration has governed differently than candidate Obama campaigned, frustrating progressives and liberals and compromising away hoped-for policy gains. Given both disappointment among the base and the slow pace of economic recovery, especially unemployment, you'd think the president would be particularly vulnerable to a primary opponent. Certainly, some on the left would welcome the prospect of a Democratic primary, but at this point it doesn't seem likely.

The water is a bit muddied by the successful lame-duck session, which demonstrated that once in a rare while Democrats can accomplish something, yet generated a sense of frustration and wondering where that can-do competence had been the previous two years.

Frustrations notwithstanding, a credible primary challenge on the left seems increasingly unlikely. That leaves the GOP side of the aisle where the excitement is to be found.

Starting with a blast from the insufficiently distant past, CNN reports that former Senator Frothy, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, is making preparations for a 2012 White House run:

A source close to the former senator from Pennsylvania confirms to CNN that later Wednesday Santorum will announced [sic] that he's bringing on board one of the top GOP political strategists in New Hampshire, a state that plays a crucial role in the race for the White House. Santorum will also next week make another visit to the state, which traditionally holds in nation's first primary in the presidential calendar.

Haven't we suffered enough? It's hard to imagine a world in which a Santorum candidacy would be taken seriously, but then I look at the current House of Representatives and wonder if he isn't an ideal stealth candidate. He's got the social conservative bona fides Multiple Choice Mitt lacks. He was a wingnut before teabagging asshattery was cool and the public at large doesn't have the longest of memories.

But things could be even more entertaining. Gazing northward from my comfortable home in Minnesota's Fourth Congressional District, we find the Sixth District, a rather "special" place represented by the always entertaining (usually not deliberately so) Michele Bachmann.

Michele Bachmann is always unpredictable – her logic isn't like other people's logic. There was speculation she would consider taking on Minnesota's senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, who will stands for re-election in 2012. It turns out Bachmann's ambitions may be a bit more grand in scale:

MinnPost has learned that Bachmann loyalists have already begun holding conversations with activists and officials in key early caucus and primary states and will begin travelling to those states in the coming weeks and months. Internal conversations have already begun about who might leave her Washington and district offices to staff a potential bid. And Bachmann told reporters she will likely visit additional early voting states in the upcoming months.

I have to admit this is a bit mind-numbing. Bachmann's ability to raise vast sums of money, mostly from out-of-state, was demonstrated in the 2010 election, but that's not the same thing as a national draw for votes. Bachmann's idiocy is a known quantity in the Sixth and they vote for her anyway. It's probably a mistake to think Americans nationwide, even a majority of GOP voters, are equally forgiving.

There is yet some amusement value to be had here. The GOP leadership created the monster. As Hot Air observes, "[a] 'Palin vs. Bachmann' storyline in the primaries would be the political event of a lifetime." Yeah, it would. The GOP leadership has fed the teabagging beast for electoral advantage, praying all the while they could keep it under control. But the beast doesn't want to be controlled.

When Bachmann stopped having her way with the GOP leadership in the Minnesota Senate, she launched her quixotic bid for Congress in the Sixth. Bachmann aspires to leadership, having recently formed the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives and campaigned actively for far-right candidates in the 2010 season. Not only were her attempts to secure a leadership position within the House GOP solidly rebuffed, she was denied a desired seat on the Ways and Means Committee, to be placed on the Intelligence Committee. Now in principle the Intelligence Committee is prestigious, but it's also a committee that by nature of its work is often out of the limelight – something troublesome for Bachmann, who follows TV cameras like a moth to flame.

Rep. Keith Ellison had this to say about Michele Bachmann's possible candidacy:

I think it would be great for her to run for president. I think she has strongly-held views which she should test on the whole of the United States – see how her views are received across the country, not just in the comfort of the 6th District.

It certainly could be educational:

I think her views would not match up with the mainstream of American society, but I do encourage her to try it, I think it would be a very good thing for her to get out there – and maybe she should resign from office now so she can devote all her time to her presidential run.

Educational indeed. This has potential for some great political theater. Please Michele... please GOP.

(Cross-posted from Greg Prince's Blog.)

Nullification nonsense: How conservatives mistake the Constitution for the Articles of Confederation

Guest post by Publius 

Publius has lived in and spent most of his life thinking about Washington, D.C. He is an attorney, an avid sports fan, and the editor of The Fourth Branch.

(Ed. note: This is Publius's second guest post for us. You can find his first, on George Will and "engaged justices," here. -- MJWS)

**********

Many have noted the irony of conservative politicians running on a platform of undying love for and understanding of the Constitution while simultaneously advocating the repeal of many of its significant provisions. Vocal elements of the conservative base, primarily centered on the Tea Party and pundits on Fox News, have advocated for repealing part of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (citizenship) and all of the 16th Amendment (income tax) and 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators). Those would be significant changes to the nation's governing text, but they pale in comparison to the most recent calls for change involving nullification.

The so-called "Tenther" movement holds that the Congress continues to pass "unconstitutional" laws that are beyond Congress' power to enact, and that the states have the right, under the Tenth Amendment, to reject all such laws. The legal theory behind the Tenther movement isn't novel, but it is one that has been soundly rejected -- politically, legally, and militarily. The doctrine was used by the South to justify its continued use of slavery prior to the Civil War. It led to the South invoking nullification's close relative, secession, as the ultimate exercise of state sovereignty. Military elimination of the doctrine and the racist policies supported by the doctrine cost the lives of over 600,000 Americans. The Constitution itself was born following a failed history with a legal document codifying the concept of nullification -- the Articles of Confederation.

Given the racist past of nullification and secession, and the severe strain both policies placed on the nation and the Constitution as a whole, one would think the conservative movement would stray far from such policies. Instead, nullification has found new life and even a place on the ballot in many states. In Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, and Colorado, voters have been asked to "nullify" the recent health-care law, and nullification passed in each of those states but Colorado. Virginia recently passed a law through the legislature "repealing" health care with respect to that state. None of these efforts have any legal significance (which ought to be a sign that they aren't constitutional, but I digress).

Of course, health-care reform isn't the only law targeted by Tenthers for nullification. According to the Tenth Amendment Center (which is pushing many of the nullification efforts), other laws targeted for nullification include medical marijuana laws, firearm control laws, cap and trade (which hasn't even been enacted yet), EPA regulations, and more. In addition to repealing laws, the Tenthers advocate passing laws or constitutional amendments which restrict the definition of "interstate commerce" (which would restrict Congress' ability to pass laws, because many laws are passed under the Commerce Clause), require state approval of federal tax laws, and require a return to the gold/silver standard.

It ought to be obvious that such efforts, if enacted, would effectively eliminate the federal government. If the federal government, for example, could not pass a budget without state approval, or could not raise taxes from residents of a state until that state consented, the federal government would be crippled. How do we know this? Because it was already tried once before and it failed miserably with the Articles of Confederation.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the Confederation Congress could pass laws, but the power of enforcement lay with the states. Furthermore, Congress itself had no power of taxation -- all revenue had to be requested by the states. Substantively, such provisions in the Articles of Confederation are identical to granting states under the Constitution the power of nullification. Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government neared insolvency, inflation of the "continental dollar" skyrocketed so much that the saying "not worth a continental" was born, and the military, desperate for funding which rarely came from Congress, was authorized to confiscate whatever property it needed to carry on the Revolutionary War.

Notwithstanding these clear lessons from our past and the bloodiest war fought in U.S. history, many in the conservative base continue arguing that embedded in the Tenth Amendment is the state right to nullify unconstitutional laws. Taking the next step in the logical nullification process, even conservative elected officials have articulated a state right to secession, including Republican Governor Rick Perry of Texas, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC, arguably the head of the Tea Party), Rep. Steve King (R-IA), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), and more.

Arguments for nullification and even secession are, more subtly, a rejection of Article III of the Constitution, which establishes the judiciary and gives it the sole right to interpret the Constitution, and Article VI of the Constitution, which establishes constitutional and federal supremacy. Any state that considers a law to be beyond the powers of Congress can challenge that law in the courts (as many have done with the health-care law, for example). The courts then make a determination as to the constitutionality of that law and, provided it is constitutional, the law is then binding upon all states pursuant to Article VI of the Constitution. Nullification shifts that decision-making process away from the judiciary and into the hands of the state political classes. In effect, the role of the judiciary as a constitutional arbiter is eliminated.

Nullification proponents are quite familiar with the role of the judiciary and its ability to nullify unconstitutional laws. Simply put, such proponents have zero confidence in the judiciary and seek to re-write Article III.

The Tea Party's admiration for the Constitution appears to end where Article III, Article VI, and Amendments 14, 16, and 17 begin. It is an admiration that ignores the historical fact that the Constitution was enacted to establish a stronger central government as a replacement for the weaker state-centered government that was failing miserably. It is a devotion that calls for violent "second amendment remedies" when Congress and/or the courts take an action with which one may disagree. It is a love that calls for a return to policies that supported the racial oppression of millions to the shame of a nation. It is a love of the Constitution that would cause its demise.

Now is the winter of our discontent

By Carl 

It's a matter of evolution: 

The new Congress hasn't been seated yet but signs of a rift are already beginning to emerge between Republican leaders and Tea Party groups who were a driving force propelling many unknown candidates to victory last month. 

There are many ways to characterize this. I prefer to think of it as the chickens come home to roost.

The Republicans have had a forty year "Southern Strategy" which has yielded some pretty impressive political victories and some pretty shameful defeats. On the one hand, this strategy was most directly responsible for the election of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as the takeover of Congress in 1994, and the House in 2010.

On the other hand, it was directly responsible for the corrupt Congresses that ensued, the rape of the American budget, the tax hikes needed to compensate for the spending by Republicans on credit, as well as war without end and a terror attack that will go down in history as one of America's weakest moments, bought and paid for by the GOP.

This strategy divided the nation into three groups: economic royalists, socially conservative Christians, and the rest of us. Power within the GOP rested firmly in the economic royalty camp, with the occasional intruder like Pat Robertson allowed a seat at the table primarily because he could speak both lingoes fluently. The Christian Coalition was allowed to rant and rave and was allowed loose in the neighborhood every two years (especially during presidential elections) to foam at the mouth about "teh gehys" or dead pre-babies or "war on Christmas" or what have you.

The Tea Party is a curious admixture of both camps. There's a strain of "I got mine Jack, now you get yours" that economic royalists have attuned to like a 50,000 watt radio station next door, but there's also a deep strain of social conservatism that infests the movement, too.

It's basically the rank-and-file saying "Help us, finally, dammit!" to the powers that be that dictate policy that helps the wealthy without assisting the middle class and poor from losing ground.

Sadly, they still see the "free" market as the solution to the problem, when as I've pointed out consistently, the government is better poised to help them.

Worse for the GOP, there's really no way to placate all forms of the movement: 

In a sense, identifying with the Tea Party movement was like catching Beatlemania in the 1960s. People were drawn in for different reasons — the beat, the haircuts, the lyrics — and great gulfs of taste divided the John fans from the Paul fans, the George fans from the Ringo fans.

Smashing success broke the Beatles apart. As 2010 closes, there is no bigger question in U.S. politics than whether the Tea Party will go the same way. The pressures on this already divided movement will be enormous. As long as the far-flung elements of the Tea Party were shoulder to shoulder against Obama, it was easy to keep them together. But now, the party that argued so effectively for smaller government is headed to Washington, where so many other waves have broken and receded. Having remade Congress and with a GOP presidential nomination up for grabs, the Tea Party is about to learn that rallying against its enemies is easier than choosing among its allies. 

Effectively, the Tea Party is a movement without a leader and many people vying for that leadership. But it may be too late: success happened so quickly for the chaotic movement that even early adopters like Dick Armey have had trouble herding the kittens.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)