Discussion:

Discussion for article #226019

They may be winning the internal war. But bit by bit, people are starting to wise up to these itinerant jackasses. The overall results in Kansas (not just for Roberts, but for Brownback and Hueslkamp) were not fantastic. And if the REAL hardline TPers go indie or write-in, that’s an opening the Dems can run through.

This is an excellent piece, Ed Kilgore. I have been saying something similar for awhile now. Just because TP candidates aren’t winning doesn’t mean the TP isn’t winning. They’ve so successfully struck fear into the hearts of the GOP establishment that now the establishment is as far right as the TP. Would many progressives really care very much if Joe Manchin made a strong, permanent shift to the left or if he were replaced by someone strongly to the left? I certainly wouldn’t give a damn. So, whether it’s McConnell or Roberts or Graham, TPers overall are going to be pretty satisfied. At the end of the day, they’re still getting exactly what they wanted.

I happen to think it’s more dangerous for the establishment to have moved so far right than a bunch of newbies coming in with TP cred. Long serving members of Congress like McConnell or McCain making rightward shifts is far more damaging because they’re known quantities. They’re the people most associated with the R Party and they’re the ones with some of the highest profiles. Some congressman from some backwater Louisiana town being an ass isn’t particularly noteworthy but when it’s Republican leadership it signals to moderates, indies and Democrats that the entire party has gone to shit.

I wish the democratic party would start kicking out the incumbents who voted for the financial bailout - which mainly foreclosed on the middleclass and poor and subsidized the rich thru a recession. by the way, no minority should ever vote for chuck schumer, he is why income inequality exist

Roberts didn’t run an ideological race. It wasn’t establishment vs tea party insurgency the way Wolf wanted it. Instead Roberts ran a tactical race. Wolf didn’t help himself. There is no excuse for his breaches of patient/physician trust, even if the patients were dead. Wolf is a deeply troubled and profoundly unethical physician who might lose his license. After Roberts got through with him everybody knew it. In the end it was closer than I thought possible. Roberts isn’t as strong as he thought.

Way to intentionally miss the point.
How’ bout those Dodgers?

For all intents and purposes, the establishment is the tea party. They don’t do any lawmaking and they exist to destroy the very government that they work for, which is as ignorant as it gets. Established radicals as opposed to wanna-be’s, that is the only difference.

The unelected teabaggers are just the farm club waiting to make it to the big league. They are the next wave of Republicans.
Reagan is dead, in all ways.

They have certainly succeeded in moving the entire GOP about as far right as it can possibly go. But they are too stupid to realize that this will just get more Democrats elected.

You can’t tell me that this teahadist nonsense is not about a black guy being in the white house.

The only difference betweet the tea baggers and the Republicans are teabaggers are loud, rude, crude and “in your face”. That can be a turn off to many voters. The Republicans, on the other hand, use their inside library voices when discussing issues. They pretend to be more reasonable but they are cut from the same cloth as teabaggers on issues such as race, guns, anti-choice, sexism, religious interference, etc.

I do agree that they are pushing the GOP further to the right and are making them do things they know are just dumb - like shutting down the government, this bullshit lawsuit of the president and impeachment talk. The baggers were also a big cause of the birther nonsense moving from the fringe into the mainstream talk.

Nothing new. That poster pops his/her head in and out just to bash the Democrats. Has been for a long time. Makes you wonder what his/her real intent is.

I hope this is true. Apparently Brownback is losing to Davis by double-digits at this point, so maybe motivated Dems might be enough to get rid of Roberts as well.

You already identified one of the intents, another is to supposedly kill our enthusiasm.
I don’t know about everyone else, but trolls that work for the teabaggers only incentivize me more. We have to stay busy to keep these fruits away from having any power over us. They’re fricking lunatics.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the end result of the TP era is pushing the country further left as people see how disastrous their policies are. Kansas is an example. In a way, California is as well since the state is in much better shape once the Dems took over.

If I had to hire someone to remodel my house, I know I’d want someone competent who enjoys home building. I wouldn’t want a crank who hates building houses just so I could save some money. I’m hoping people come to the same conclusion with government.

I have never, ever understood why anyone would vote for someone who hates government. It’s like hiring a nanny who hates kids.

This doesn’t make any sense to me:

“(yes, Lamar Alexander faces a challenge in Tennessee tomorrow, but few give Joe Carr more of a chance than Dave Bratt in his hopeless effort to topple Eric Cantor in June)”

Dave Bratt was successful in toppling Eric Cantor in June.

In conclusion the Tea Potty folks are winning the GOP War on America.

The Tea Party is the Republican Party.

The Republican Party is the Tea Party.

All this talk about who wins, who loses, is just semantics.

he’s part of the reason long time pol’s feel that they can do things like that and feel no repercussions…I dont give a damm if there dems or rep’s enough is enough they shoud be runnin scared…If only dems would get registered as well as there friends and family and get out the vote…because ya dont get to whine about how bad things are if ya dont vote if your not gonna be part of the solution then your part of the problem

A point that conservative talk radio hammers away at over and over.

My fear is that our decades long efforts to destroy public education, leaving us with a very large percentage of the voters essentially uneducated, will result in the ultra conservatives taking over the government entirely. The destruction of education can be blamed on both the 0.1%, who like having no one nearly as informed as they are, and the right wing religious people who fervently believe that beliefs trump facts every day. This is the climate that allows absolute cretins to be elected to Congress, and very likely to the Presidency. (GWBush was the first of those.)