Tea Party war on Mike Castle in #DE-SEN is unbelievably destructive to hopes of a GOP Senate majority. Shows the immaturity of the movement.
Tea Party war on Mike Castle in #DE-SEN is unbelievably destructive to hopes of a GOP Senate majority. Shows the immaturity of the movement.
Unless you finally realize that the Tea Party movement is not an arm of the Republican party, and is almost as pissed at national Republicans as they are Democrats……….
Exactly right. The Tea Party’s largely nonpartisan nature is lost on the Left, which continues to associate the movement exclusively with the GOP. Perhaps this is because the Tea Party tends to lean right, but I suspect it has more to do with liberals’ belief that the association will hurt the GOP. That belief highly questionable, to say the least.
Exactly wrong, insofar as this is meant to be a statement of something I don’t already know. I am perfectly well aware that the Tea Party perceives itself as being completely and totally independent of the institutional Republican Party (even though their policy platforms substantially overlap), and further that there’s a great deal of genuine Tea Party anger directed toward the GOP “establishment” (in some cases perhaps more intense and personal than the anger at Democrats/liberals, who, after all, are a bunch of hippies and communists anyway, so one wouldn’t really expect any better from them). In this sense, the Tea Party occupies almost exactly the same place in the Republican/conservative landscape as the liberal “Netroots” a few years ago, before it was partially co-opted by, and/or became a faction of, the Democratic establishment (as I expect will happen with the Tea Party eventually, but that’s a separate debate). More on that analogy in a moment, but first, to your point:
Notwithstanding that the Tea Party != the GOP, nevertheless it is clearly and undeniably true that a GOP-majority Congress would enact policies that are closer to the Tea Party ideal than a Dem-majority Congress. Surely neither you nor any other sane person will disagree with that. Accordingly, it is clearly in the Tea Party’s strategic best interests, in terms of enacting wanted policies (or at least preventing the enactment of unwanted policies), for the GOP to take back the Senate majority. (This is so unless the Tea Party accepts my thesis that it’s politically worse for Obama & the Dems — and thus better for conservatives — if the Dems hold onto slim majorities in 2010, setting the stage for them to be completely wiped out in all houses, including the White House, in 2012. But I seriously doubt they’re operating off that theory, since few on-the-ground political operators things that far ahead, and rightfully so, since political conditions so far in the future are inherently unknowable.)
Given that it’s in the Tea Party’s best interests for the GOP to take back the Senate majority, it follows that the Tea Party is engaging in self-destructive behavior when it sets its sights on moderates like Castle in states where only a moderate Republican can ever win. I’m not asking the Tea Party to like Senators such as Snowe, Collins, Castle, or ahem, Scott Brown. But trying to bump them off, in favor of a Tea Party-endorsed hardline conservative, is an exercise in pure political nihilism. Those sorts of candidates cannot win in those sorts of states. It would be the equivalent of liberals mounting a primary challenge to Ben Nelson in Nebraska, trying to replace him with a Lamont or a Kucinich. Way to go, you get a purer nominee, and lose a Senate seat.
This brings me back to my Netroots analogy, and explains what I meant by “Shows the immaturity of the movement.” Once upon a time, the Netroots was similarly immature (by which I mean simply young and nascent, not necessarily stupid or sophmoric) and obsessed with ideological purity. But by 2006, the “grownups” (relatively speaking) had taken over, and you saw sites like Daily Kos supporting primary challenges that made strategic sense, while discouraging those that didn’t. The Left doesn’t challenge every Blue Dog, everywhere, because that would be crazy. Indeed, many of the Netroots-supported candidates who helped the Dems gain & build their House majority in 2006 and 2008 are Blue Dogs! Kos & co. have come to understand that you can’t have a Democratic majority made up solely of “pure” liberals, and you can’t win solid-red districts and states with the same sorts of candidates you’d nominate in a place like Connecticut (an example I pick because of the Lamont challenge to Lieberman, which, while ultimately unsuccessful, facially made strategic sense — on paper, there’s no reason for liberals to tolerate an “impure” liberal in a state like Connecticut; they could do much “better,” from their perspective). So they advance their liberal agenda, which still does not match up perfectly with the Dems’ by any means, while at the same time making sensible electoral choices that advance the Dems’ chances in Congress, because ultimately, their fortunes (the Netroots’ and the Dems’) are inextricably linked.
The Tea Party needs to come to the same realiziation. Its fortunes are linked to the GOP’s: so long as the GOP remains in the minority, the Tea Party will remain on the sidelines. As such, a GOP majority is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for the Tea Partiers to have any chance at enacting significant portions of their agenda. The Tea Party should therefore work to ensure that they have the most conservative, Tea Party-friendly GOP caucus possible, but only to the extent that doing so doesn’t hurt Republicans’ chances of taking back the majority.
Thus, the Tea Party chose wisely in going after Murkowski (AK) and Bennett (UT). Although hardly “liberal,” these senators were less “pure” than the ideal senator (from the Tea Party perspective) from their deeply red states. It made logical, strategic sense to try and replace them with someone closer to the Tea Party ideal, because there’s very little risk — virtually any Republican is going to win those states, so why not primary? As a result of those sound decisions, the GOP caucus will have two additional Tea Party-friendly senators come January.
Rand Paul (KY) also probably fits the same mold, although there’s a slight chance he could lose, but probably not in this cycle. Angle (NV) and Rubio (FL) are tossups — you could argue either way on the strategic decisions to mount Tea Party challenges in those purple states. There is definite risk: both states would probably be sure-thing GOP pickups with more “conventional” moderate candidates, whereas instead, there’s a real chance Reid could hold on, and/or Crist could win & align with the Dems (now that he’s been scorned by the GOP). But you can certainly argue that the risk is worth the potential reward, particularly in this election cycle.
Challenging Castle, though, is just completely crazy. He is a virtual sure thing to win in Delaware, even though Delaware is one of the bluest states in the nation, because of his overwhelming personal popularity. If he were replaced by a Tea Party-backed ultraconservative, the parties’ fortunes would flip, and the Dems would become overwhelming favorites. To defeat Castle in a primary is, quite simply, to give away a Senate seat to the Democrats. And not just for this cycle — Castle is the sort of figure who, depending on how long he plans to stay in office before retiring (he’s 71), could hold that seat for some time, becoming the GOP equivalent of a Byron Dorgan in North Dakota — a popular incumbent who is basically untouchable at the polls, except possibly in a wave election for the other party (and maybe not even then), despite being in a seat that his political party really has no business holding. This is a perfect storm for conservatives, a rare opportunity for the GOP to add a senator from Delaware to its caucus: an open seat + a very popular candidate with statewide name recognition + a wave election in their favor. If they blow it, the chance may not come again for many, many years.
Brendan, you’re being too pragmatic in your thinking. The Tea Party goals are less about enacting a partisan or a policy agenda and more about bringing politicians to heel. From the Tea Party perspective, both parties are tools of Wall Street and K Street; what the Tea Party wants is to throw them all out. If you break it out into steps, the Tea Party’s priorities are:
1) Throw the bums out
2) Fix the system
You’re concentrating way too much on 2, on the theory that too much success in 1 is counterproductive to the long-term goals of 2. There’s some sensible truth in that, but you’re also thereby missing the point.
No, I recognize that those are their priorities, I just think they are misguided, wrong-headed priorities when applied without any sense of pragmatism, and again, a sign of an immature ideological movement. The analogy to the Netroots again applies here: in their heart of hearts, many liberals believe that both parties are tools of corporate power and such, yet the leaders of the movement have come to recognize that they need to put Dems in power and then try to reform things, not just yell and scream and indiscriminately attack everyone who doesn’t accept their ideological precepts. This is ultimately the correct approach, if one’s goal is to get things done; the Tea Party’s approach is the incorrect approach.
Again, I disagree with you; you’re looking at this with the wrong lenses.
I am not a Tea Party person, but I completely agree with their logic of throwing as many of the bums out as possible, whether in the primaries or in the general election. The most fundamental aspect of democracy is voting and accountability to voters. When things get this screwed up, sending an anti-incumbent message of rank disapproval is far more powerful and important than any policy ramifications that will come later.
Hmm. OK, when you put it that way, I can see the logic. I even might think it has some merit. 🙂 Ultimately my brain still thinks it’s counterproductive, but my gut sympathizes with that idea.
The Tea Party is part of the Republican Party. I didn’t know this was a point of contention. Every “Tea Party Candidate” ran in the Republican primaries. How can anyone argue differently? That goofball Sarah Palin is helping the hapless Democrats more than anyone else, including themselves, by getting no-nothing extremists on the ballot under the Republican banner.
, I just think they are misguided, wrong-headed priorities when applied without any sense of pragmatism,
Pragmatism has given us the status quo…dysfunctional political parties, bloated government and a wave of anger sweeping across the American people.
This has been the way since at least the 90s, granted I was a Republican in the 80s, so I probably just didn’t notice, and I was also in elementary school. You’re probably just noticing that our government and politics sucks because the Republicans aren’t in power for the first time in nearly forever, and a black dude is the president. I’ve got a lot of racist republican friends I grew up with, and beileve me IT’S A BIG DEAL to them.
Hmmm … so SU is starting to make a warped kinda sense … he became politically aware (such as that phrase can have meaning when applied to SU) about the same time that the GOP took over Congress for the first time in over 40 years, back in 1995 … for him “the Republicans have always been in power in Congress” until 2007 … he’s not ‘aware’ of the Carter years … he is only very slightly ‘aware’ of the first two Clinton years …
So, for SU, we (on the conservative side) are not giving Obama/Reid/Pelosi a fair chance to try something new … whereas, for those of us whose awareness goes back past 1976, we already have lived through the Carter disastrous years, and the first two less-than-stellar Clinton years, and now Obama is repeating their mistakes and compounding them with what led to the Great Depression – and *none* of that has any meaning for SU …
WOW !
By SU standards, we are just plain ole meanies, aren’t we ?
I was born the year before Carter was elected, but since you’re drawing a comparison to Obama, he also must not have gotten a fair chance. For one thing, he took office after Nixon’s 8 glorious years. Yes I know Nixon got busted for committing crimes in the oval office, unlike Bush he had the decency to resign after getting caught, I guess he didn’t have a genius like Karl Rove running things back then. He escalated the war Johnson started, and divided the nation horribly, left our country in a shitastrophe after surrending to the Vietnamese (I mean leaving). The country lost faith in it’s government completely, just lost a war, the economy was down the toilet, and it’s all Carter’s fault because he was president in the immediate aftermath?
Since America ignored the lessons of Vietnam under W. Bush, I suppose we’re doomed to repeat them by blaming Obama for the results of the Republicans decisions, that we are all living with today. He just happens to be the clean up guy like Carter.
Sandy…I really really recommend a remedial history course for you.
1) Pres. Nixon did not serve 8 years. He resigned before the end of his second term.
2) Pres. Nixon was not “busted” for crimes in the Oval Office. He was forced by Republicans to resign because of the Watergate cover up.
3) Pres. Johnson did not start American involvement in the Vietnam war, Pres. Kennedy did.
4) Pres. Nixon did not escalate the war, Pres. Johnson did.
5) Pres. Nixon was forced to abandon our South Vietnamese allies by Congress.
6) President Carter was not the president in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam, President Ford was.