The Dumocrats have been spared a similar agony, largely because their franchise has wasted any opportunity to continue sloganeering for "change you can believe in."
Evidently more interested in keeping favor with corporate contributors, they pissed away an opportunity to reach a super-majority when they ignored the hope of 70% of the electorate to establish a public alternative to the health care monopoly.
Not content to just disappoint the electorate once, the Ds then flubbed financial reform. But hey, they're leading in campaign contributions!
Not to be outdone in political incompetence, dusting off their tuxes to celebrate retaking congress, the Rs, Bush-whacked in the last election, have been tripped up by wackos right out of an open call from Comedy Central casting.
So far, all the infant TEA Party has demonstrated is an infantile inability to vet candidates. In a galaxy of dim lights, they've offered the likes of Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell.
Angle is famous for her remark, "...you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) remedies." And added, "my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
And of course we all know about Christine (I'm not a witch anymore) O'Donnell. "Well, I don’t think that the Obama administration knows what’s Jesus's, what belongs to Jesus, and what belongs to them. That’s my big gripe. Apparently, he doesn’t know. But then, that’s because he’s not a Christian. He’s Muslim,”
“It’s a proven fact he’s Muslim. He wasn’t born in this country. He was born in Kenya. There are people who know it, people who know where the birth certificate is. It’s locked up and our government can’t get a hold of it. He’s a illegitimate president, in my estimation.”
Well there's two for TEA, and TEA for two, really well grounded and ready to lead. But there's more. Rand Paul, Carl Paladino, the list goes on.
Locally, they would have us install a similarly qualified, untested new-comer, Tony Larson, on the county council. Larson's basically a cheerleader for the development community ready to keep sticking taxpayers with the costs of growth created by his backers.
The funny thing is, once Larson beat the Republican candidate, Theresa Sygitowicz, in the primary, he has tried to distance himself from his TEA Party supporters; even declining their invitation to participate in the TEA Party forum related to his race.
Like the other TEA Party candidates though, Larson spins out some doozies when he gets loose of his handlers. He stepped in it recently with a wild claim that the county was holding up a project at the BP refinery; only to have BP dismiss his claim out of hand.
But my favorite "Larsony" was his explanation of the financial crisis and housing bubble being the work of government, abetted by minorities. Those poor bankers, scammed by a bunch of clever black and Hispanic families out to get loans they couldn't afford.
No, at this point, the TEA Party has provided comics an embarrassment of riches. But fortunately, there is the secret ballot. No one will know you were stupid enough to vote for one of these goofballs.
To steal a line from P.J. O'Rourke, commenting on the Rs step-children from the right, "we hate government, just look at the candidates we've chosen."
In the bigger picture however, the TEA Party will mature. They will produce candidates who can stand up better to scrutiny and leave the air clear for a debate of their ideas. On another level, this is perhaps the welcome beginning of the disintegration of a two party system that has been thoroughly corrupted.
At no time since the turn of the 20th century has there been such an opening for populism; a reaction to rule by elites. Identifying the elites is a trick the TEA Party's yet to learn.
Jefferson's Republicans were populists opposed to the policies of elites in post-revolution America. His vice-president actually shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury and a representative of Rothschild's Bank of England in the US.
How do you like them apples, Sharon? Now that's what I call financial reform.
