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Tea Party: the cracks begin to show
As a political movement, the Tea Party has come a long way in a relatively short time. They've already got one prominent supporter on the national ballot for November 2010 (Rand Paul), and there are probably others that I'm unaware of.
I'm starting to wonder whether it may have peaked too soon, though:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/not-all-tea-partiers-support-sharron-angle/57793/
It seems to me that established parties can afford to have public schisms; I'm not sure that insurgent movements can.
(For those who may have come in late: I am not a TP supporter.)
I'm starting to wonder whether it may have peaked too soon, though:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/not-all-tea-partiers-support-sharron-angle/57793/
It seems to me that established parties can afford to have public schisms; I'm not sure that insurgent movements can.
(For those who may have come in late: I am not a TP supporter.)
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Nobody's repudiating the Tea Party movement yet, because even if it's unpredictable, it can still do an individual candidate far more good than it is likely to do them harm, especially if they make all the right extremist noises. When they start destroying political careers not because someone isn't extreme enough, but because for everyone who makes extremist noises there is a rival who will make more of them, they're in at least mild trouble, but so far that has causes muffled flurries but not destroyed careers. They're in major trouble when they start killing people who have rivals in the party, rather than simply ruining their careers, because that's when the candidates have more to lose by getting the party's attention than they have to gain. Right now it's very much the other way around still.
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Right now it's useful for some candidates to claim affiliation with or support of the Tea Party in part because it's viewed as being a big enough force to make a difference in an election. If it starts fragmenting (such that not all the Tea Party support goes to a single candidate) then that utility decreases and may disappear entirely. Especially because I think that a lot of candidates, and voters, are looking to see whether the Tea Party is merely sound and fury signifying nothing, or in fact a storm that's not blowing over soon.
Put another way: neither the Libertarians nor the Greens are currently a notable force in American national politics, and this was only made worse (for the Greens) by Nader doing an independent candidacy last time around while the Greens still ran their own candidate. In the absence of approval or ranked-choice voting, parties have to be big in order to survive, or they get strategically voted into irrelevance.
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Part of my argument, however--which is still not spelled out very well--is that if there are multiple 'insurgency' candidates that it may actually decrease turnout, because it's clear that the individual candidates' chances are compromised by the split.
The situation you're describing--in which TP support, or even a segment of it, becomes a prerequisite for nomination--is arguably concomitant to the TP supplanting the Republicans as a party, at least locally. (Granted, the phrase 'necessary, but not sufficient' should probably appear in here somewhere. :) )
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