Tuesday election results

[quade 3]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/sc-dc-0915-primary-roundup-20100914,0,7627410.story

Man, that's gotta be a weird night at the GOP headquarters. Tea Party is going to end up spoiling a lot of GOP votes.

November is going to be interesting.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

Tea Party is going to end up spoiling a lot of GOP votes.

And spoiling a lot of democratic incumbents.

[Lucky... 0]

Quote

Quote

Tea Party is going to end up spoiling a lot of GOP votes.

And spoiling a lot of democratic incumbents.

Well, we'll show that R's and L's are interchangeable if that happens. I mean Tea Baggers are generally Libertarians, so we'll see your Republican twins vite for you under the guise of, "better them than a Dem."

[quade 3]

Quote

Quote

Tea Party is going to end up spoiling a lot of GOP votes.

And spoiling a lot of democratic incumbents.

I don't think we've seen a single case of that yet, but we've just seen a couple of dominations go to Tea Party members ousting long time Republican seats. I'm not certain somebody like Christine O'Donnel is going to appeal to moderate or truly conservative Republicans; only the Tea Party fringe. Certainly not to most Democrats.

No Tea Party members have, to my knowledge, attempted to knock out Democrat members from the election yet. FFS RANGLE managed to keep the domination for his seat. I personally would have thought a dead cat could have taken that away from him, but no....

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[jgoose71 0]

Quote

Tea Party fringe

As long as the left keeps thinking the Tea Party is the fringe, they will continue on their downward spiral. Yes, there are some real conservatives, but the over riding theme for the tea party is a smaller government that represents the people.

The sooner the left realizes that the people are just as disenfranchised with the democrats, which are just as ripe with corruption and special interests as the republicans, the sooner they can start addressing some of the issues.

But they won't. They are to busy talking down to the general public because they know better and calling them names like "tea baggers."

"There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
Life, the Universe, and Everything

[GeorgiaDon 340]

Quote

As long as the left keeps thinking the Tea Party is the fringe, they will continue on their downward spiral. Yes, there are some real conservatives, but the over riding theme for the tea party is a smaller government that represents the people.

I wonder how disastrous it would actually be for the Democrats if Tea Party candidates took a substantial number of seats in November. It seems to me that it could turn out to be a case of the emperor being found to have no clothes? They have promulgated a lot of anger and heat, but (it seems to me) no specific policies to get us out of our economic situation. Further, they come across as ideologues who are unwilling to negotiate, discuss, or even acknowledge anyone else's viewpoints, but actually getting anything done in Washington (or anywhere) will require being able to work with others. Two years down the road, the bloom will be off the rose and everybody will see the Tea Party has no more to offer than the other two dysfunctional parties.

Here's a crazy idea. Maybe the best thing that could happen to US politics (or politics anywhere) would be to abolish the party system altogether. No more monolithic voting blocks. The only way anyone could get anything done would be by convincing a majority of the House, or the Senate, that their idea is better than everyone elses.
Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[Andy9o8 0]

Quote

Here's a crazy idea. Maybe the best thing that could happen to US politics (or politics anywhere) would be to abolish the party system altogether.

Unless artifically imposed (read: oppressively enforced), it will never happen, because factionalism is basic to human nature. Anyone who's ever experienced, say, the "cliques" in high school knows this intuitively. It happens on a more macro level, too. Some of the early US Founding fathers, like Washington and Adams, argued against the influence of factionalism and its natural spawn, the political party. It was a pipe dream.

[quade 3]

Quote

Quote

Tea Party fringe

As long as the left keeps thinking the Tea Party is the fringe, they will continue on their downward spiral.

The problem with your analysis is you think only the Democrats see the Tea Party as being a fringe element. The Tea Party is and always will be nothing more than a party of publicity. An extremely small yet extraordinarily vocal minority. What passes for "leadership" in the Tea Party amounts to nothing more than circus clowns.

Where are the adults at the Tea Party?

Precisely who among them have any actual leadership skills? Beck? Palin? You've got to be kidding.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

The problem with your analysis is you think only the Democrats see the Tea Party as being a fringe element. The Tea Party is and always will be nothing more than a party of publicity

The Tea Party, like Perot's Reform Party, is attracting those who want to vote against the status quo. That's generally bad for the incumbents. It didn't matter for the Presidency, since the EC effectively eliminates third parties, but seats in Congress are a different matter.

If they only last two years, the country is probably still better off. We're overdue for house cleaning. The Democrats can dump Pelosi and get better leadership. It's a shame the only way to get rid of Boxer is to suffer 6 years of Fiorina. And too bad Arizona kept McCain, the GOP also needs to get rid of the dead wood.

[Southern_Man 0]

Unlike the Reform Party, though, the Tea Party is not an actual party, it is a movement or faction within the Republican party, as all of these candidates are being elected in republican primaries. Perhaps (doubtful I'd say) they will emerge as a true party but they are not at this point.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"