Tea Party runs risk of losing steam

Tea Party runs risk of losing steam
By Edward Luce
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: October 21 2010 18:15 | Last updated: October 21 2010 18:15
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/157b3cd8-dd32-11df-9236-00144feabdc0.html


George Washington is often quoted as having told Thomas Jefferson that the point of the US Senate was to make tea drinkable.

Jefferson noted that he poured his tea into his saucer because it was too hot and “my throat is not made of brass”.

Washington is said to have seized on the remark to make a constitutional point, noting that “we pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it”.

Such may be the fate of the Tea Party movement on November 3 – the morning after the US midterm elections. Assuming Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives, still an odds-on event, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, will want to know why an equivalent shift did not happen in the upper chamber.

The first thing he might be tempted to do is to wander into the offices of Jim DeMint, the firebrand conservative from South Carolina, who is the leader-in-waiting of the Tea Party caucus. Far from being triumphant, Mr DeMint might have some explaining to do. Mr McConnell – who, like most of the rest of the 41-strong Republican Senate caucus, has little regard for the South Carolina senator – might even enjoy his moment of revenge.

Yet it would be bittersweet. In order to win the Senate, Republicans need to take 10 of the 37 seats up for grabs, of which only 12 are competitive. One of the easiest would have been Delaware. But Mr DeMint and his allies helped put it beyond reach last month by backing the candidacy of Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party darling, over Mike Castle, a seasoned Republican who, polls say, would have waltzed to victory.

Just to make sure of the outcome, Ms O’Donnell provoked gasps of disbelief at a debate with her Democratic counterpart this week when she denied that the US constitution provided for separation of church and state. Considering that her candidacy is framed around fidelity to that parched document, her latest gaffe put the cherry on a very well-baked cake.

The loss of Delaware might well be the least surprising outcome. According to opinion polls, races are tightening in several other states where Tea Party figures have grabbed the Republican nomination but which ordinarily ought to have offered easy victories.

Take Kentucky, Mr McConnell’s home state, where Rand Paul, a libertarian, wrested the nomination from the Senate Republican leader’s anointed favourite – with the assistance of Mr DeMint; or Alaska, where Mr DeMint took the unusual step of helping to unseat an incumbent colleague, Lisa Murkowski, in favour of Joe Miller, a hard-core Tea partier.

In Kentucky, some polls now show Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate, ahead of Mr Rand, or within a few points. In a frivolous but apparently effective diversion, Mr Conway appears to have persuaded Kentuckians that Mr Rand’s youthful disdain for Christianity and, surely tongue-in-cheek, worship of the Aqua Buddha reflects ungodly traits in his character.

In Alaska, Ms Murkowski, who lost the Republican nomination, is now running neck-and-neck with Mr Miller as a “write-in candidate” in a three-way race – her name may shave a few points off since voters would have to spell it accurately.

Likewise, in spite of personifying a Washington insider, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, may well retain his seat in Nevada against Sharron Angle, another highly eccentric Tea Party figure. Until her nomination, Mr Reid’s defeat was all but assured. Indeed, of the celebrated Tea Party Senate candidates around the country, only Marco Rubio in Florida looks like a certain bet at this point.

All of which causes anguish among establishment Republicans. The electoral winds are blowing the Republicans’ way. But by picking some abysmal candidates, the party may have run itself aground in the Senate. In politics, ideology matters. But so, too, does character – particularly in statewide or national races.

Should Mr DeMint’s Tea Party protégés be responsible for a failure to capture the Senate, mainstream Republicans may well have found an argument to check their continued rise: they tend to lose to Democrats. Far from being a revolution, it would, in hindsight, look more like an internal Republican wave that had crested before the election – or as a cup of hot tea that spilt prematurely into the saucer.