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Tea Party strategy

So, I guess the writing is on the wall: the Democrats are going to get hammered on Election Day, right? I would not be too sure about that. There are far too many monkey wrenches that are ready to be thrown into this engine.

The most amusing thing to observe during the Conservative Political Action Conference festivities last Thursday was the subtle attempt to disassociate from the so-called "Tea Party movement" without flatly rejecting it. What is going on here? This: The cooler heads within the Republican National Committee know that the Tea Partiers are a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. It is not merely the fact that most of these people are dumber than doggy dung, it is also the ugly reality that so much (although not all) of that movement is based on the nasty philosophy that has embodied the white supremacist movement for decades. You could hear it in the remarks made by the protesters at the Sept. 12, "March on Washington.” You could see it in the signs they carried. Most of these twits refuse to even acknowledge that the president is an American citizen!

The RNC is frantically searching for a "peace in our time" moment. They have quite a dilemma before them, to be sure. On the one hand, they need to keep these knuckleheads "inside the tent pissing out" so to speak. On the other hand, they have to avoid alienating the moderates.

Like the demented uncle living in the attic, they must do everything humanly possible to make sure that any contact with the neighborhood kids is limited, if you know what I mean. The Tea Party people are already claiming credit for Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts a couple weeks ago. They are determined to steer the course of the GOP in November, come hell or high water. If they are allowed control of the party, their extremism will only turn off a huge segment of the voting population.

— Tom Degan
Goshen, N.Y.
From www.LansingCityPulse.com