The Tea Party Saved the GOP
That’s the opinion of Peggy Noonan (and many others): Two central facts give shape to the historic 2010 election. The first is not understood by Republicans, and the second not admitted by Democrats. The first: the tea party is not a “threat” to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn’t remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself. In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. (According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, four million more Republicans voted in primaries this year than Democrats, the GOP’s highest such turnout since 1970. I wonder who those people were?) Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph. However, the GOP will make a terrible mistake if it takes Tea Party support for granted. The Tea Party people are an impatient bunch and if they don’t see the kind of action they voted for happening very, very quickly, those third party ideas will get started in earnest. The GOP has the choice of listening to the people and remaining in power, or ignoring the people, going back to the old go along/get along ways in Washington, and becoming relegated to minority third party status. The GOP will join the Whigs in the pantheon of former national parties if they don’t get the correct message from this election. I’m not a fan of third parties, but could become one if the GOP refuses to get this right.
Posted by
on October 22, 2010. Filed under