Having attended more than one Tea Party gathering, I can assure everyone that the amount of disinformation regarding the Tea Parties is astounding. The amount of fear mongering and lies being told by the liberal media is quite sad, almost to the point of laughable. Instead of focusing on what the movement stands for and who the people are that are involved in the movement, it seems to be much more popular to highlight the extremely small fringe (I would say less than 1% of those involved) and paint the entire movement with the same brush. I know that there is a very small fringe element to those who attend and support the Tea Party movement, just like there is with any movement. I get Facebook updates almost daily from a guy I went to high school with. He is the textbook definition of a fringe element, but he is not the Tea Party movement, he is only a very small percentage of the entire movement. But rather than stating what should be obvious to anyone who can think for themselves, I want to focus on the implications of this movement and what it means for the political landscape.
While I applaud the Tea Party movement and it's "break" from the two-party system, I only see this as dividing the center and center-right voting public, which will in turn strengthen the Democratic party when it comes to election day. We've already seen this when a "third party" candidate splits a vote among "one side of the aisle". Ross Perot essentially handed the Presidency to Bill Clinton in 1992 (Clinton - 43%, Bush - 37.5%, Perot - 18.9%). With the majority of Perot voters being center to center-right, if you added his numbers to those that Bush received, Clinton would have lost by a landslide. We are most likely going to see the same thing play out in Florida this year with Charlie Crist running as an Independent against the Tea Party favorite, Marco Rubio. While the Tea Party candidate is running as a Republican, Crist will most likely pull a lot of center to center-right votes his way and I see Kendrick Meek (the Democrat candidate) winning the election.
We've seen this as well in places like Hawaii where multiple Democrat candidates split the vote in a special election and the Republican candidate won. Charles Djou (R) received 39.5% of the vote while Colleen Hanabusa (D) received 30.8% and Ed Case (D) received 27.6% of the vote. Hanabusa and Case split the vote, allowing the Republican candidate to win. Just like Clinton in 1992, Djou won because the vote was split due to multiple candidates from "one side of the aisle".
This is why I believe that if the Tea Party remains as active and as prominent as it has been, this will spell victory for the Democrat party in 2010 and 2012. By 'victory', I don't mean that the Democrats will win every election. I mean that they won't be defeated on the scale that it was once believed they would be. They will win elections that they would not have otherwise won had there been just one candidate opposing them.
This is where the liberal media is getting it wrong (well, it's another place where they are getting it wrong, but I digress). They should be embracing the Tea Party. They should be rooting for it's success because it will eventually land them more seats in Congress, and possibly allow them to retain the White House in 2012, that they wouldn't win otherwise. The Tea Party is the Ross Perot of this generation. The Tea Party is not well organized. It is not a "party", simply a "third party" candidate in an election. FOX News doesn't get it. MSNBC doesn't get it. CNN doesn't get it. But people like me "get it" and we see what is going to happen down the road. The Tea Party movement, while noble and admirable for those who agree with it's cause, is going to do more harm than good for it's followers. It's a time bomb that is ticking and will blow up in the faces of it's supporters when they least expect it.
While I applaud the Tea Party movement and it's "break" from the two-party system, I only see this as dividing the center and center-right voting public, which will in turn strengthen the Democratic party when it comes to election day. We've already seen this when a "third party" candidate splits a vote among "one side of the aisle". Ross Perot essentially handed the Presidency to Bill Clinton in 1992 (Clinton - 43%, Bush - 37.5%, Perot - 18.9%). With the majority of Perot voters being center to center-right, if you added his numbers to those that Bush received, Clinton would have lost by a landslide. We are most likely going to see the same thing play out in Florida this year with Charlie Crist running as an Independent against the Tea Party favorite, Marco Rubio. While the Tea Party candidate is running as a Republican, Crist will most likely pull a lot of center to center-right votes his way and I see Kendrick Meek (the Democrat candidate) winning the election.
We've seen this as well in places like Hawaii where multiple Democrat candidates split the vote in a special election and the Republican candidate won. Charles Djou (R) received 39.5% of the vote while Colleen Hanabusa (D) received 30.8% and Ed Case (D) received 27.6% of the vote. Hanabusa and Case split the vote, allowing the Republican candidate to win. Just like Clinton in 1992, Djou won because the vote was split due to multiple candidates from "one side of the aisle".
This is why I believe that if the Tea Party remains as active and as prominent as it has been, this will spell victory for the Democrat party in 2010 and 2012. By 'victory', I don't mean that the Democrats will win every election. I mean that they won't be defeated on the scale that it was once believed they would be. They will win elections that they would not have otherwise won had there been just one candidate opposing them.
This is where the liberal media is getting it wrong (well, it's another place where they are getting it wrong, but I digress). They should be embracing the Tea Party. They should be rooting for it's success because it will eventually land them more seats in Congress, and possibly allow them to retain the White House in 2012, that they wouldn't win otherwise. The Tea Party is the Ross Perot of this generation. The Tea Party is not well organized. It is not a "party", simply a "third party" candidate in an election. FOX News doesn't get it. MSNBC doesn't get it. CNN doesn't get it. But people like me "get it" and we see what is going to happen down the road. The Tea Party movement, while noble and admirable for those who agree with it's cause, is going to do more harm than good for it's followers. It's a time bomb that is ticking and will blow up in the faces of it's supporters when they least expect it.