Tea will not be the drink of choice on Election Day

[jmowreader]

The MSM (Palin may be right here--a lot of them are pretty fucking lame) has pronounced this the year of the Tea Party. That's all we hear: tea party, tea party, tea party. How Congress is going to be full of tea party members come 2011, and they're going to completely change the face of America.

Not true, guys.

Tea party members have one thing in common: they are really, really extreme. Of course they're winning primaries: primaries are decided by truly committed politics junkies, which tea party members are. (Whether they need to be committed is a different question entirely.) Also consider: in most states, you have to vote one party's primary ballot. Hence, the people who are pissed off to the point they'll join the tea party decide who's going to be on the ballot.

Come election day, and everyone who votes comes out to do so, that's a different story. Now the tea party candidate has to face the scrutiny of non-radical Republicans--and I think some of those people are going to be WAY too extreme for the electorate. For instance, a lot of Tea Party people want to get rid of Social Security and the Department of Education, stances which are very far outside the mainstream.

I'm not THAT worried about the election. I think we'll do okay in most of the country, and even in Idaho--the Democrat we've got in the House is pretty fucking far to the right, and really the only things they're pissed off about him are (1) he's nominally pro-choice, and (2) he won't vote to repeal Health Care Reform. I don't think that will change the fact he's running against a teabagger who works as an immigration lawyer. (We've run a couple of letters from teabaggers who think Raul Labrador's occupation is going to affect his desire to stuff all the Mexicans in a cattle truck and haul them back to TJ like the Idaho Tea Party seems to want to do.)

[AC_Mem]

1. I just want to watch

them debate. This is going to be some must-see tv!!!

[derby378]

2. I have some honest-to-God absinthe for the teabaggers come November

For medicinal purposes only, you understand. :evilgrin: