Quote:
Originally Posted by nik-
Yeah, it's great for Presidential politics. The problem is they're electing enough of them in the midterms to grind progress to a halt.
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I think their numbers are actually going down. Their effectiveness is obtained by scaring the republicans into voting their way, or they'll replace them at the primary/caucus level. The Tea Party is very effective at rallying their supporters to vote in these mostly ignored races. All this crap is on tv about Cantor losing because he wasn't paying attention to his district or other red herrings. Fact is that only about 5% of the people in the district voted in the primary. So they were able to rally about 3% of the population to get out and vote and easily overwhelmed the typical 2% of the population that normally vote in these things.
Similar thing happened in the Virginia governor race. The Tea Party was able to change the rules from a primary to a caucus (since a tea party guy had no chance in a Virginia wide primary) to get their guy in. The governor race was supposed to be easily won by the assumed Republican nominee, but instead all the Tea Party did was get the Democrat elected.
It's not like Bratt gets to replace Cantor as majority leader or speaker, so it is not really that significant if Bratt wins or loses. Except that it puts fear into the moderate republicans.