Is the Tea Party really self destructing?

I've been considering this for a couple days. Historically, when people feel threatened, by events, especially by economic factors well outside their control, those people look for scapegoats. That means, they look to the RW. The obvious exception to that rule is FDR and the Great Depression, however generally speaking the economic downturns lead to the perceived protectionist policies of the RW, and the scapegoating of the minority that they consider responsible.

I won't use Germany or Italy or Japan pre-WWII as an example. But let's focus at the end of the 1970's. President Carter is in the White House. He's shown amazing personal courage going to Three Mile Island to get a first hand look at the situation. He has put his money where his mouth is, and lowered the thermostat in the White House wearing the sweaters he told all of us to adopt. He eschewed and removed the elegant and expensive perks on Air Force One in favor of more common items. Ronald Reagan wins in a landslide.

I was reading this article http://www.france24.com/en/20131014-mainstream-baffled-french-turn-far-right when I decided to post this thread.

The extreme Right Wing Party won an election, and worse Polling indicates that they will be in many runoffs next year and potentially take a goodly portion of the legislature. Now, this is France, and what happens across three thousand miles of ocean doesn't really have anything to do with us, except that the French are traditionally more willing to turn their backs on the far RW as they've seen what it can do first hand. When they were the victim of the appetites of the Right.

So what you might ask, what does that have to do with us? If the Tea Party slams the economy by keeping the debt limit from raising, and the government shut down, what will happen? Well we already know. We already know that the economy will tank, both nationally, and internationally. We already know that unemployment, and depression will likely follow.

Then in 2014, and worse in 2016, while President Obama is blocked from taking any action to reverse the course of the economic cliff we're about to go over, the RW starts their demagoguery. It's all the (insert minority or political philosophy here) fault will be their message, spoken and unspoken. It will be immigrants, minorities, and especially egg headed liberals who live in fantasy land.

Before you declare that the American Public will of course see through this and vote intelligently, I would ask where your historical evidence is of that. Because the voting public is as fickle as any in the world. They constantly vote in ways that defy logic. Bachmann wins re-election and she is incapable of stringing together ten words to make a complete sentence. Paul Ryan is consistently re-elected and he is a lunatic. Then of course there is the Rand/Ron Paul nuts, who are perpetually gaining approval from their base.

Now, the danger is not just the RW taking the crisis they manufactured and manipulating it to their advantage for political power, the danger is our own party. We consistently rush right as a political party to fill the gap left by the RW as they move even further right. While those on this board have long objected to this, it hasn't slowed or stopped the trend. Right now, the Republicans have the Far Right, and the Democrats have the Center Right.

I'm starting to think that Rand Paul and Cruz plan on capitalizing on the economic mess they made to catapult themselves into an even higher office. And all we have to do is go along with their plan, act like we normally do, and there is a chance, a chance mind you, that it just might work.