THE GRAND OLD TEA PARTY

[defrog]

ITEM: A survey from Rasmussen finds that if teabaggers were a real political party, the Tea Party candidate would pull more votes than a Republican candidate on the same ballot.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

In other words, the Tea Party brand is stronger than the GOP brand among right-wing voters right now.

Rasmussen does add that technically, the odds of the teabaggers actually forming a viable third party are very slim, if only because the FEC rules make it difficult to compete against the Democrat and Republican machines.

Which is why, says Rasmussen, “The more conventional route in the United States is for a potential third-party force to overtake one of the existing parties.”

You see where this is going already, don’t you?

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) does.

If the Republican Party is wise, they will allow themselves to be re-defined by the tea party movement. And I hope that that will be the case.

So does Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).

“We need to stop looking at the tea parties as separate from the Republican party. If we do that, we can stand up and create the biggest tent of all.”

Of course, the only potential snag in that idea is that teabaggers exist in part because the GOP wasn’t batshit enough for them. So Republicans are going to have to go out of their way to out-batshit the teabaggers to convince them that coming onboard won’t compromise their batshit principles.

Still, with people like Bachmann and DeMint leading the goodwill campaign – to say nothing of Sarah "Second Most Admired Woman In America" Palin – that shouldn’t be a problem.

Upshot: This could be the scariest, most entertaining mid-term election EVER.

Get the tea ready,

This is dF

Comments

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Fair call, though technically I'm saying that because I don't honestly believe that a party with that extreme an agenda could ever actually win control of the govt. Maybe that's too optimistic, given the disaster of the Bush years. And if the GOP really does throw its lot on with the teabaggers and they WIN, I'll be as nervous as anyone living stateside.

[gvdub.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's so much the possibility, no matter how vague, of the Tea Party/GOP winning that scares me so much as the increasing polarization with accompanying unlistening, blind defense of, and unwillingness to compromise from positions that would be, in any sane society, considered completely untenable.

And how's that for a convoluted sentence?