No Gingrich Didn't Beat The Tea Party

Now that Newt Gingrich has jumped to the top in the polls some are reading that as proof that the Tea Party is dead. Gingrich has moved ahead of Bachmann, Perry, and finally Cain. He is the consummate Washington insider therefore the Tea Party is dead. Long live Occupy Wall Street! An article in US News & World Report also echoed the same refrain although that writer, Robert Scheslinger, sites the failure of the Tea Party to primary Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and the failure of Tea Party candidate Dick Mourdock to gain traction against Senator Dick Lugar in Indiana as evidence of its death. Snowe is a pretty clever old bird and she was able to wrangle an endorsement from newly elected and Tea Party backed Governor
Paul LePage. Snowe's late husband had helped Lepage as a youth and just as Sarah Palin campaigned for John McCain Lepage returned a personal favor to Snowe. In Indiana the reason Mourdock can't budge Lugar is simply that although he has endorsements but no money from Tea Party Express and Freedom Works he turns off most Hoosiers including the Tea Party. The Tea Party learned the Delaware lesson with Christine O'Donnell well and it is not about to give Mourdock a chance to lose a Senate race to Joe Donnelly. Although a Democrat, Donnelly would come closer to the Tea Party model than Mourdock.

So where is the Tea Party? It's alive and well. All that energy and angst didn't just fade into political apathy. Here is the way the political model works. Groups that have no power demonstrate in the streets. When these groups acquire power and find a home in the system they find a more effective way to make their cause felt. At the present the Tea Party has veto power over any legislation going through the Congress. In 2013 they will have veto power over anything going through the House or the Senate. So the Tea Party will make peace with Gingrich? I doubt it. Bachmann and Perry will each get a second look and Gingrich's Washington connections will be his undoing.