The Tea Party's "Nixon in 60/Dean Scream" moment?

I only listened to the speech in the background, while working, but it sounded like it was full of pomposity ... as if it was from POTUS.

As Alma and YF said, she's trying to create a cult of personality a la Palin. It's not happening.

 

Prediction: Scott Brown will NOT get the GOP nomination for Mass. Senate in 2012. The Tea Party is going to turn on him - the decisions that have sustained his strong positives in Mass. make him a RINO in the eyes of the teabaggers. There are so few Republicans in Mass. that (assuming a competitive Dem primary) it won't take that many votes to knock him off.
Any Democrat capable of beating him (Deval Patrick, Vicki Kennedy, Marty Meehan) has already taken a pass on the race. Brown has more to fear from his own party than from any other Democrat out there. A successful Tea Party move against him hands the seat back to the Dems.
I can see the same thing happening with Olympia Snowe in Maine.
The 'baggers officially took over the New Hampshire GOP at its annual meeting Saturday. Mass. and Maine are next.

 

You can overcome a disastrous TV moment if you're substantive. Clinton did it after the '88 DNC. I suspect Jindal can do it in the aftermath of his Kenneth the Page turn a couple of years ago.

Bachmann's not substantive.

 

I think it's possible in 2012 that both houses flip again -- the House goes to the Democrats and the Senate to the Republicans.

The Senate has few GOP seats to defend because of all the Democrats who swept in in 2006; Brown's seat is the only one not safe. Plus, several red-state Democrats whose term is up have announced their retirement.

The House only needs to shift 23 seats to go back to the Dems, and the tea party momentum is largely spent. If Obama runs strong again, he could have some coattails, and the tea partiers who fail to repeal Obamacare and balance the budget will have some 'splainin' to do, Lucy.

 

The way I understand it, the Tea Party is a party that isn't a party.

Their leaders say that there are no leaders.

The mostly white, middle- to older-age members say that it is open to everyone.

And it's a grassroots movement sponsored by right-wing billionaires.

 

If all the changes made turn out to be positive the Republican house is going to get reelected. So will Obama. Majority of country will not want to move back to what we just had.

 

Not a chance.

Brown's seat is safe. No big Dem is going to challenge him and even the Dems are conceding that they can't beat him.

The Reps. could take the Senate. Based on folks resigning and the Dems. having to defend more seats, the numbers favor them.

The House will stay Rep. They just missed picking off even more seats. You'll see more Dems, unhappy in the minority, choose to not run for reelection. The census is going to move more seats from bluse states to red states, and redistricting is going to favor Republicans.

Obama may win, but, he only received 53% of the vote in 2008. I don't think he'll receive a larger percentage in 2012, so I don't think he'll be able to carry a lot of vulnerable Dems over the finish line or elect a lot of new ones.

In fact, his fund raising may suck the air out of the fundraising of Senate & House candidates.

 

I tend to agree with that. Obama will win in 2012 the same way Bush did in 2004... Lack of decent competition, and to be fair, part of the reason there will be lack of decent competition is because any republicans who think they have a realistic shot at becoming president some day, likely will wait until 2016 because they don't think they can beat him.

Who knows though? We would have said the same thing about George Bush in 1991. A year before Clinton got elected, nobody thought Bush could be beaten either. But none of the people being mentioned as possible candidadates for 2012 have a snowball's chance in hell.

 

New Hampshire was the easy pickings, there. They just want to sit around the campfire and polish their gun barrels, up there.

 

I think the acronym RINO was started with Olympia Snow in mind.

 

IMO, 2012 will see some dramatic shifts in the political landscape. One the one hand, we'll be in the deep throes of the double-dip recession (didja see the housing price figures for last month?) and the stock market bubble we're riding now will burst as states and municipalities go, literally, bankrupt. And on the other hand, the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling from last year will be fully entrenched, as the Fortune 500 corporations will have had time to bake into their 2012 budgets plenty of donations to their favorite candidates (which is why, IMO, Obama is taking a sharp, pro-corporation turn because he knows he needs a large chunk of cash from them to make up for the lack of funds his grassroots supporters from 2010 will no longer be able to provide him, since they'll be too busy trying to put food on the table). I suspect the corporate money will go to the GOP, and they'll be able to control the message, and subsequently run the table in a landslide election.

 

FDR was facing similar issues in '36, but the GOP's bench was empty, they ran Yahoo Landon, and FDR won easy . . . as Maine goes, so goes Vermont.

Tell us what the unemployment number will be in fourteen months, and we'll have something to talk about.