Oolong, anyone?

McManus: 'Tea party' tempest brewing

The movement is as fired up as ever — and just as unwilling to compromise. That could spell trouble for the Republican Party.

Doyle McManus, LA Times
June 2, 2013

The "tea party" is back and is brewing trouble for the Republican establishment.

After the GOP debacle in the 2012 election, when Republicans not only failed to win the presidency but blew a chance to take over the Senate, party leaders paused to consider what had gone wrong.

The Republican National Committee issued a scathing report warning that the party was in "an ideological cul-de-sac" and resolved to act friendlier toward women, minorities and low-income voters. Strategist Karl Rove said the lesson was to nominate more moderate candidates and set about raising money to do just that.

But tea party and other conservative leaders, undaunted, drew the opposite conclusion.

"It was not conservatives" who lost those Senate races, 19 of them wrote in a joint attack against Rove's efforts. "Not one moderate challenger won." The solution, they argued, was to swing further right, not toward the center.

(More here.)