Tonight Ken Buck, the Tea Party candidate won the Colorado GOP senate primary over establishment candidate Jane Norton. He is a protege of Tom Tancredo and represents the hard right of the GOP. Combined with the primary wins of Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada, plus the Tea Party forcing Charlie Crist to run as an independent in Florida, the Tea party is clearly hurting the GOP in these states. Also, the Tea Party is attacking Mike Castle in Delaware and threatening to run a third party candidate in Illinois against Mark Kirk (who has his own problems outiside of the Tea Party) The amazing thing for me is that no one in the GOP is willing to state that the Tea Party is helping the Democrats by nominating the weakest and most extreme candidates for the GOP. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Who says the tea party is supposed to help the GOP?

The Tea Party backed candidates are only winning in situations with unusually good candidates/unusually flawed opponents. Most are underfunded and lose badly to the establishment candidate (e.g. Roy Blunt's primary opponent). Because of this, they replace candidates who otherwise had diminished chances of winning anyway while the traits that allowed them to win the primary increase their chances. The net effect on overall GOP Senate seats is still likely negative, but given the more reliable conservatism Tea Party candidates exhibit, it is not clear that they are counterproductive to the conservative cause.

Every lefty talking head on TV..... isn't the dem line that the GOP=Tea Party=KKK

Well, the tea party is the GOP base, isn't it? I'm not about to start saying that the tea party is de facto racist, although I think it undoubtedly has racist elements (as any large enough group will).

Yeah well they don't know **** either

I don't really think the Tea Party is the GOP Base.... I think it's more or less a group of people who have had enough of the stupidity of politicians in the area of taxes and spending and are growing ever more wary of the liberty that is being stripped away. Many of which may be ignorant of the specifics of agendas but see the big picture of the agenda as madness.

I can see some Tea Party folks coming from the Dem party..... as it seems the obamapelosireid version of the dems is far left of JFK, and still substantially left of the final 6 years of bubba clinton.

I'm hoping all of them
but Im predicting one. Harry Reid is so kewl he can survive anything.

Polls put this number somewhere around 13%, and that is, of course, from self-identified tea partiers. I think that the idea that there are tea partiers who supported Obama in 08 is patently absurd.

link

Edit: This also completely denies the fact that the health care plan passed by Obama was largely based on the health care plans proposed by Nixon (who ran against JFK in 60) and Gingrich (who took over the House in 94).

I don't think it's hurting the GOP. This exactly the sort of re-branding they needed to get the stench of Bush off.

Rand Paul is probably going to win, so how does he hurt the GOP? And the reason Crist is running as Independent is because Rubio wooped his ass in the primary and he really isn't a Republican anymore. Why would the GOP want him in the party?

Well, this is, I guess, part of the strategy of the right--to paint Obama as a radical liberal when he is actually quite moderate (evidenced by the fact that he is getting a ****load of heat from the left). I think Obama is smart enough to know that governing from the middle is far more effective than governing from the edge. Of course, the Republicans know this too, so there is this need to paint him as liberal as they can.

But unlike Democrats, who use the same strategy to install "blue dogs," the GOP tries to install right or ultra right wing candidates. This is a decent short term strategy as long as the focus stays on issues that the public can agree on and the base is invigorated. It is a horrible long term strategy, however, as the country is moving to the left. When the tide inevitably turns against the right again, those hard right candidates are extremely easy to pick off-especially with a "blue dog" strategy.

The people funding the Tea Party? I'm pretty sure Dick Armey isn't out there trying to help the Democrats.

Because Crist is going to win. They could've kept Mel Martinez's seat in the party with a moderate Crist, but now he's definitely going to caucus with the Democrats once he wins.

The problem with the re-branding theory is that the Tea Party LURVES Bush. The Tea Party is the 27% that never gave up on Dubya, they don't want the stench off, they wish they could talk Cheney into running again.

It's true that Tea Party supporters approve of Bush more than the general public. But it's not as if Bush supporters and Tea Party supporters overlap precisely as you say - 57% of Tea Party supporters approve of Bush. This is in fact considerably lower than the number of Republicans who approved of Bush at any point in his Presidency (I can't find a recent poll but I can't imagine it being lower now than in January 2009).

I thought the tea party was more about taxes. Aren't they more of Ron Paul's people than Bush?

It's a long way till November, Crist hasn't won yet. Rubio still has a good chance.

And you didn't really contradict my re-branding theory. If it was a new group that didn't like Bush in the first place then they wouldn't require a re-branding would they? It's like Blackwater, same people, new name.

You're switching denominators there. The Republican base that approved of Bush now forms 57% of the Tea Party.

Also, http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Bu...in;contentBody has Bush approval among Republicans 57/34 in Jan of 09.

max, I hope these polls disabuse you of the notion that the Tea Party is more Ron Paul's people. Like 13th notes, many Tea Party people are selfaware enough to realize that being anti-taxes plays better in public than being "4 more years of GWB", but they really aren't about low taxes. They hate the gays, like staying at war in Afghanistan, don't want to close Gitmo, prefer their mosques far away from Ground Zero, etc. etc.

I love that first article:

This.... I'm not sure why Republicans would really care about a few of those guys. Winning a majority in the senate isn't exactly likely or crucial for their purposes, why fill the senate with people who RINO's or whatever?

i dont know why you singled this out, is there something wrong with it?

god bless you 13, but really, in what separate universe other than the universe of college students, the daily kos and olberman/matthews/mad cow is obama a moderate and is the country moving left?

obama has gone from a +44% to a -5% in job approval and the generic congressional vote has gone from a +13.4% to a -6% in consensus polling.

the argument you make is very difficult to quantify, but , of course , we'll see how far the country has moved to the left or right when the only poll that counts comes in november.

but really, the notion the country has moved left since the inauguration is certainly a head scratcher.

Obama is certainly on the moderate side of mainstream liberalism. He's not running the country from the far left and has riled the far left on more issues than he's pandered to them.

As for the direction of the country, note that I said the country is moving left in the context of a long term strategy. Yes, the country has undoubtedly moved in opposition to Obama and the Democrats since the election. But long terms trends favor progressives on nearly every issue.

It is pretty funny that the tea party is considered a single group. There is a very clear divide between the libertarian "old tea party" and the paleocon-meets-neocon "teabagger party" and the only ideological overlap they have is the dislike of taxes and Obama.

As for Obama he is clearly much more right of where everyone expected - which puts him pretty much in the middle.

Not closing Gitmo, not pulling out of Afghanistan, not passing the healthcare his supporters wanted, not being tougher on big business and esp the bankers. The funny thing is the right jokes that he didnt keep to his campaign ideology and promises, but if he did he would be much further to the left than he already is, which i guess would make him a super-communist.

Certainly the Dems wouldnt hate even more leftist policies.

Is bailing out Wall Street considered conservative?