On 2010-08-30, at 4:05 PM, SA wrote:
> On 8/30/2010 3:36 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>>
>> These mobilizations of the disgruntled rank and file on both the left and the right typically occur in opposition parties in times of crisis and quickly dissipate after they successfully restore their party leaders to power.
>
> The issue isn't how many seats the TP win for the GOP but which candidates get elected and what their programs are. If you haven't noticed, in several races TP activists have managed to knock off candidates from the Republican establishment in the primaries and replace them with their own candidates, and in other races the GOP incumbents survived challenges only by moving sharply to the right (like McCain in AZ).
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I wouldn't place too much store in the primaries. There's a world of difference between what candidates, including insurgent candidates, say to an aroused party base in order to win nomination and what they say during elections to attract independents who often represent the margin of victory, and, most crucially, what they say when they get to Washington where they are subject to the party leadership and caucus discipline (and ultimately, beyond the party, to the markets and the corporate lobbies).
Take Scott Brown, for example. You could say, well, he's from Massachusetts, which is how Sarah Palin and others on the disappointed tea party right console themselves. But that's precisely the point: Brown's surprising election victory and subsequent trajectory reveal the limits of tea party influence in a traditional Democratic state and in the country at large. The conservative right is strongest in those states which, despite their changing demographics, remain strongly Republican - Kentucky, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, South Dakota, Arizona. But the TPM doesn't seem to have much traction in the larger and more industrialized states, which tend Democratic. The election will tell us more, but the likelihood is that in these blue states, where tea party candidates have managed to win primaries, they'll either split the Republican vote to the delight of the Democrats during the election or, if somehow successful like Brown, will move to the center of the political spectrum to the dismay of conservative activists who threw themselves into their campaigns - in much the same way "blue dog" Democrats positioned themselves further to the right in red states to the dismay of liberal activists. Such moves to the left or right of party orthodoxy are encouraged by party establishments desperate to hold on to shaky seats.
I also question to what extent the tea party "program", such as it is, is substantially more than an aggressive restatement of traditional Republican values and positions which conservatives feel have been abandoned by incumbents they dismiss as RINO's. To be sure, Rand Paul, if elected, may introduce a bill like his dad before him calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve. This will doubtless satisfy his constituents in Kentucky, but it will no more be embraced by a triumphant Republican caucus riding a wave of tea party activism than Dennis Kuscinich's championing of single payer was adopted by a Democratic congress swept into power by a similar movement of the DP ranks seeking change from the left. On all crucial votes, the mavericks who are closest to the party's base still vote with their caucus and avoid serious confrontation with their leadership. That's less, it seems to me, because they are "sellouts", than that they have a proper understanding of the present relationship of forces between their party leaderships and their angry but still confused and disorganized rank and file supporters.