From the FT:
The Republican Party continued its rollercoaster ride on Tuesday night when a controversial Tea Party candidate won the party’s Senate nomination for Delaware in what was the biggest poke in the eye to the party’s establishment in a year of many such setbacks.
Christine O’Donnell, who has been widely berated by senior Republicans as a flawed character for having invented large chunks of her resum?©, using party funds to pay her own personal expenses, and highly eccentric social views, defeated Mike Castle, the long-serving congressman for the small state who was until recently considered a shoo-in.
The only good news:
Ms O’Donnell’s victory, which was helped by a last minute endorsement from Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in Tea Party donations, means the state’s Senate seat will almost certainly now be retained by Democrats in the November 2 mid-term polls.
The Tea Party is a threat to just about everything of real value. Even democracy itself.
The fight is on.
I hope the Democrats are up for it.
The Labour Party had better be.
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If the Democrats hold the senate seat … when are they going to sort out Delaware’s rampant taxation abuses?
(Sorry … just being naive)
James in Jersey
Oddly enough, the Tea Party surge will probably help the Democrats shore up the Senate (at least) in the November mid-terms because some of the TP candidates are so far right (including O’Donnell) that they are unelectable even by US standards.
If the Tea Partiers help get Sarah Palin the nomination as Republican candidate for president in 2012 they will be doing Barack Obama a huge favour. I guess he could lose against Palin if absolutely everything went wrong but it seems unlikely.
Richard, could you clarify why you think the Labour Party should be up for the fight? Do you really believe a Tea Party movement will being in the UK?
Being should read begin!
The ‘Tea Party’ is not a party. It is a loose association of Americans who disagree with how the US Government is run.
The Tea Party has no head. It has no leaders. It does show the accumulated anger that many people have over wasteful spending and the deafness of politicians to their concerns.
Keep in mind too that conservatives are tired of politicians calling themselves Republicans and then turning around and helping Democrats accomplish their agenda. The most notable examples being Senators Snowe and Collins from Maine who can be depended on by the Democrats to provide the last needed votes to push forward their agenda.
Interesting that Fred thinks it’s the Republicans who have been helping the Democrats accomplish their agenda. The real problem has been conservative Democrats who have constantly sided with Republicans on Senate votes and who have required legislation like the health care reform bill to be watered down so much that it becomes almost completely ineffectual. So in fact the problem is that liberals are tired of politicians calling themselves Democrats and then helping the Republicans accomplish their agenda, rather than the other way round.
The Tea Party looks to me like an entryist faction a bit like the Militant tendency in the UK Labour Party in the early 1980s.
A novel idea. Voters and candidates are a threat to democracy.
Odd blog. Campaigning against over-mighty, over-taxing government has always been a mark of the political left.
@Charles Crawford
The Trots were in the 1980s
The Labour party got rid of them
The libertarian anarcho-capitalists and the Tea Party are now
Are you seeking to remove the threat?
If not you’re on their side – and are a threat to democracy
@Peter Risdon
The libertarian left (the genuinely libertarian left) does not seek to destroy democracy
This comment has been deleted as it did not meet the moderation criteria for this blog specified here: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/comments/. The editor’s decision is final.
Really good article by Richard Adams in the Guardian on the comparison between the Tea Party and Labour’s early 1980s Militant Tendency here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/democrats-pray-rightwing-civil-war
I liked this letter in today’s Independent:
Please may we have more pieces like the one by Matthew Norman (15 September) which emphasise how impossible it is for Sarah Palin to become President of the US. I am going through a very insecure time and am anxious for reassurance on this matter.
Ed Edmunds, Barry, Vale of Glamorgan