On 2010-11-03, at 9:02 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Nov 3, 2010, at 7:56 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
>
>> Also, Chip, given your position my sense is that the folks you need to worry
>> about are the Democrats, not the Tea Party
>
> Would you cc: the staff of The Nation on that too?
Frank Rich had a good piece on Sunday about the tea party Republicans, rightly observing that "whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually effecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after...Trent Lott, the former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game in July. 'As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them'.”
Rich's conclusion, however, is that "the tempest will not be contained within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican Party itself" once "the Republican establishment’s panacea of tax cuts proves as ineffectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting deficits as the half-measures of the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress."
More likely, the TP's will fall back in disillusionment in the same manner as has the Democratic base has since 2008. But it's also true the odds of a third and fourth party to the left of the two major ones - even of a more "respectable" party of the middle pledged to "restore sanity" - have probably never been higher.
Whatever the true character of the tea party - independent movement or the anxious and angry face of the Republican party - it represents how increasingly volatile and polarized US politics have become over the past decade.