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Wednesday, November 03, 2010

After tea party activism and energy swept GOP to historic victory, corrupt, entrenched Establishment Washington already minimizing their contributions

From:
Tea Party overturned

(The American Conservative) -- by Sean Scallon --

Tea Partiers no doubt think last night was their moment of triumph but yet they need to think again. For now the spin out of Washington D.C is the Tea Party is to blame for Republicans being unable to win control of the U.S. Senate like they did the House, which means it will be difficult to overturn much of what was passed during the first half of the Obama Administration. And because the GOP has control of the House, where fewer actual Tea Party candidates (meaning those who either won Republican primaries over establishment candidates or those who were Tea Party favorites from beginning to end) were elected, the spin will also say “Did we really need the Tea Party to bring out our base which was going to turn out heavily any way in this bad economy?”

The results bare it out unfortunately. Only three real Tea Partiers won Senate seats, Mike Lee in Utah, Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul in Kentucky. Getting the GOP nomination was tantamount to victory in Lee’s case in one-party state Utah, Rubio benefited from split opposition while Paul ran a more conventional Republican race in Kentucky. Jim DeMint’s dream of setting up a Tea Party bloc in the Senate basically died last night with the losses of Angle, Buck and O’Connell with Miller trailing in late returns in Alaska. Mitch McConnell is firmly in control of the GOP in the Senate and it will be interesting to watch if Paul becomes as iconoclastic as his father or becomes just another plastic soldier in Mitch’s toy army. As a new Senator, he’ll find out right away one the first duties he has is to raise money for re-election in 2016. Is he going to do money bombs every week, or is he going to rely on the party leadership to help him out? He’ll have to decide...

The vote on the nation’s debt ceiling next year will be the first sign the “tea” in the Tea Party will go down the drain. Having been in Congress since 1985, Boehner will huff and puff about fiscal responsibility and will also provide the GOP votes necessary to raise the debt ceiling so along with the Democrats. He’s been in the Beltway long enough to know how the game works. The Tea Partiers no doubt shook up the Republican establishment over the past year but the establishment is now back in control because their people won and the Tea Partiers didn’t. Oh well, It was fun while it lasted...MORE...LINK

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