The Tea Party: Will it destroy, or revive, the GOP?

“Buckle your seat belts, folks,” said the New York Post in an editorial. “Things are about to get interesting.” For the first time in recent history, primary elections were dominated last week not by Democrats or Republicans but by a third political force: the leaderless, populist movement of anti-tax, anti-spending, small-government conservatives known as the Tea Party. Across the nation, from Alaska to New York to Delaware, GOP voters rejected the staid selections of the party establishment and went with younger, more conservative candidates who’d won the Tea Party’s seal of approval. Once GOP leaders had recovered from the shock, said Joshua Green in The Boston Globe, they did their best to sound pleased with the Tea Party–approved slate of candidates for November. Given the energy of these voters, there’s an obvious upside for the GOP in allying itself with a dynamic, grass-roots conservative movement. “The question now is, at what cost?”

“The GOP is committing suicide,” said Mort Kondracke in CQPolitics.com. By nominating extremist candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware—both of whom were anointed fellow “Mama Grizzlies” by Sarah Palin—the Tea Party has likely blown the GOP’s shot at winning a majority in the Senate in November. Democrats will now try to make the case that the GOP is controlled by wackos and right-wing zealots like Angle, who has proposed phasing out Social Security, and O’Donnell, whose personal financial disasters and nutty comments about masturbation and witchcraft have alarmed even longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove. Palin’s endorsements were “reckless and irresponsible,” said Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. Don’t get me wrong. I believe the Tea Party “is among the most vigorous and salutary grass-roots movements of our time.” But conservatives need to heed the famous maxim of the late William F. Buckley: “Support the most conservative candidate who is electable.”

Reports of an imminent “GOP meltdown” have been greatly exaggerated, said Eugene Robinson, also in The Washington Post. The Tea Party may be giving the party’s establishment fits, but “at least the party is full of passion, energy, and resolve—which can’t be said of the Democrats.” The party in power is limping into midterm elections behind an increasingly unpopular president and a broken economy that in two years they’ve failed to fix. “The Democrats are the party of government and of the status quo,” said David Brooks in The New York Times, and voters are in the mood to punish incumbents—even if that means voting for a Tea Party “extremist.” Tea Party–backed U.S. Senate candidates such as Rand Paul in Kentucky, Rob Portman in Ohio, and Marco Rubio in Florida are polling comfortably ahead of their Democratic rivals. Even the much-maligned Sharron Angle has drawn even in the polls in her race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada.

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But what happens if they win? said Jacob Weisberg in Slate.com. The Tea Party movement is driven mainly by middle-class, angry white men filled with resentment at some inchoate “Them”—the liberal elites, the Wall Street bankers bailed out by TARP, and the president with the suspiciously foreign-sounding name. All of them, Tea Partiers believe, are conspiring to steal the wealth of hardworking Americans and give it to the poor, immigrants, and minorities. “As mobs go, Republicans will find this one will be especially hard to lead, pacify, or dispel.” The Tea Partiers don’t just want to cut back on government, said Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. The movement is filled with radical libertarians, who want to virtually dismantle the federal government and return to local rule. “A Republican Party dominated by Tea Party ideology would be pure, disturbing—and small.”

Don’t be so sure, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. The Tea Party consists of literally thousands of local groups, all animated by anger over the monstrous growth of government, and the trillion-dollar federal deficits that have been projected to extend long into the future. They fear that out-of-control spending “will end America as they know it.” Polls show that about half the country now shares that concern. If the Tea Partiers can force the GOP to return to its conservative principles without leading it into extremism, then they may succeed in reversing the pendulum of American politics, away from Barack Obama’s big-government liberalism and back to Ronald Reagan’s conservative vision. “Nobody knows how all this will play out, but we are seeing something big.”