Can the Tea Party survive 2010?

With infighting reportedly on the rise, many Tea Party candidates are going down in flames. Growing pains or the beginning of the end for the protest movement?

Can anything stop the Tea Party?
(Image credit: Harrison Mcclary/Reuters/Corbis)

Infighting is threatening to bring down the leaderless Tea Party before it can transform activist anger into ballot box gains, The Washington Post reports. No sooner had party favorite Sharron Angle won Nevada's Republican Senate primary than Tea Partiers began arguing about whether some other candidate would be better equipped to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In Virginia, establishment GOPers took the nomination for two House races as Tea Partiers failed to unite around their own candidates. "No one owns the Tea Party brand," says Brendan Steinhauser, grassroots director for FreedomWorks, "and that's kind of the problem." But is it a fatal problem? (Watch a Fox News report about the Tea Party's value and viability)

Yes. The Tea Party is over: "The Tea Party was never a strong or widespread movement," says Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It got attention because it was "loud," but there's a difference between the "appearance of clout" and actual influence, and a new ABC-Washington Post poll has found that half of the country views the anti-government protesters unfavorably. Given the mess in Virginia, to take one example, "anger... is no substitute for organization."

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