But will Tea Party protest energy help or hobble the Republican Party? They’re challenging some GOP candidates and could split the vote in those races.
By Patrik Jonsson
The Christian Science Monitor
October 17, 2009
ATLANTA–Begun as a loosely affiliated groundswell of Constitution-waving protesters in tri-cornered hats, the Tea Party movement is now starting to rock the political establishment in key arenas.
The growing numbers of Americans coming out to the Tax Day Tea Party, the Fourth of July Tea Parties, and then the 9/12 Tea Party march on Washington are going back to their home districts and keeping up — even intensifying — the fight for smaller government and more transparency on spending and taxation.
In places like New York, Florida, California, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, local, state, congressional, and gubernatorial seats are suddenly being tugged to-and-fro by the new and unruly political force.
The upshot?
The street energy is welcome for an otherwise moribund Republican party looking for new moorings amid a tumultuous electorate.
The downside is that early examples shows that, in the short run, Tea Party-sponsored candidates could make it more difficult for Republicans as they — Ross Perot-like — split races as they target both “tax and spend” Democrats and those they like to call RINOs, or “Republicans-in-name-only.”
“In the Republican primaries, especially, the Tea Party movement could be a very significant force” — and not always in the Republicans’ favor — says Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison.
The article continues here.
