Larger Editorial: Does the GOP Have Buyer’s Remorse About the Tea Party?

For the majority of the two years since the Tea Party has existed it has mostly been a boom for the mainstream Republican Party. They pretended to hate it when the Tea Party was getting started and kicking out some of the last moderates in the GOP. But every person who ran as a Tea Party candidate ran as a Republican and it picked the Republican Party up several seats in the 2010 election.

Now of course, part of that was a reaction to “President Black Panther” in rube filled areas that were determined to vote for whatever party he wasn’t in. And we also have to factor in the flood of corporate money that went into The Tea Party (from billionaire puppet masters the Koch Brothers) by corporatists that wanted a bought and paid for candidate instead of just a partially bought and paid for candidate like John McCain. Still, the Tea Party was a very clever rebranding of the Republicans after the country had Bush-fatigue. It allowed them to cast themselves as different while not really being different.

Well now we are seeing the differences. This week alone we are seeing Tea Party backed idiot Michelle Bachmann make a real play at stealing the nomination away from Company Man Mitt Romney. We’re seeing Eric Cantor willing to wreck the US economy just so Tea Party momentum for “deficit hawks” can push him into John Boehner’s job. And we’re seeing Mitch McConnell–the Republican leader in the Senate–burned in effigy by Tea Party bloggers for outlining a way the President can unilaterally raise the deficit without them.

The differences become more stark with each week. On the one side are Republicans that are very right wing and on the other side are Republicans that are so right wing they could be mistaken for Confederates. [Texas Governor Rick Perry is set to enter the presidential race and probably win by playing to the Tea Party and the Sons of the Confederacy…of which there is overlap.]

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have proven unable to get the Tea Party under control. We’ve even seen establishment Republicans like Orin Hatch–the longest serving Republican Senator–have to bow down to the Tea Party who have still sworn to defeat him in the next election. All of which makes you wonder if Dr. Frankenstein is having serious second thoughts about his creation.

What started out as a way to legally buy politicians after the Supreme Court allowed unrestricted financial contributions to political candidates has now ballooned into a movement the big money can’t control. It’s ironic that the same big money interests that made the “grass roots” Tea Party movement are now panicking that the wayward goobers are going to wreck the economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. They’ve had to marshal non-Tea Party Republicans (all two of them willing to stand up) into telling the President to raise the debt unilaterally.

Ironically, the Tea Party rhetoric might actually scare big business into supporting Obama for a second term. So I guess I should thank Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachmann, and groups like Freedom Works for derailing any deal Boehner would have made with Obama that would have left Democrats worse off than Republicans. By refusing to give up anything, they’re really giving up everything, forcing Obama to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally and give the Republicans nothing they’re “demanding” with all the teeth of 3rd graders screaming for cuts in broccoli because they don’t want to give up ice cream. Still though, it makes you wonder if the “mainstream” GOP guys that are just quasi-racist and only 99 percent hell bent on ending social security have buyer’s remorse over the Tea Party.