GOP turns on Tea Party

GOP turns on Tea Party
By Gabriel Winant


Conservatives have spent the past year or so gleefully citing the Tea Party phenomenon as evidence of the president's unpopularity. This was always a fantastical claim: the arrival of a new political movement doesn't tell us more about public opinion than, you know, actual measures of public opinion. But it was an easy weapon to hand, so there it was.

But in wielding the Tea Party as a rhetorical cudgel against the president and his party, elite Republicans made a crucial miscalculation. By making the approval of the Tea Partiers the measure of legitimacy, they entrusted their own fate to this new group of activists. And now the establishment of the GOP is stuck trying to wrest control of the party back from these ruffians, whom they wanted to exploit without actually empowering.

Out of North Carolina today, there's a story about Republican leaders trying to put the skids under the congressional campaign of Tea Party candidate Tim D'Annunzio, who’s running to challenge vulnerable Democratic incumbent Rep. Larry Kissell. The state Republican Party has been publicizing D'Annunzio's past run-ins with the law and his questionable sanity. Apparently, the guy went through a phase in the 1990s in which he claimed to be the messiah and had a lot of theories about the Ark of the Covenant, 1,000-mile-high pyramids, the New Jerusalem -- you get the picture.

"Mr. D'Annunzio has disqualified himself by his background, his record and his behavior," says the GOP state chairman, which is a pretty strong line for a party chief to take on an ongoing primary. Still, given D'Annunzio's, shall we say, colorful past, it's little wonder that the party is eager to be rid of him.

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/05/25/tea_party_gop_establishment

for the Repugs//// (He was on BBC's Hard Talk)

:shrug:

:evilgrin:

But, since there's usually only one right answer and a million wrong ones, I guess the odds are against it.

Please Sarah, tell us what you thing!