Mainstream Media Still Doesn't Understand

I saw this headline yesterday in the Los Angeles Times:

ELECTION SURPRISES SHOW 'TEA PARTY' STRENGTH

I think that headline is more than a little bit misleading. It makes it sound like the teabagger movement is going to be a big player in the November elections, and that has yet to be proven. The media seems to still be buying into the right-wing lie that the teabaggers are a movement that crosses party lines and includes Republicans, Independents and Democrats.

If that was true then they really could be a force in the November elections, but it's not. The truth is that the teabaggers are not a broad-based movement. They are nothing more than an angry and disgruntled arm of the Republican Party. They are people who voted Republican in 2008 (and probably for many years before that) and will vote Republican again in 2010 and in 2012.

A truer headline would have said the teabaggers are showing a lot of strength "in the Republican Party". They have yet to show that their wing-nut beliefs (such as opposition to universal health care, desire to privatize social security, tax cuts for the rich, opposition to job stimulus funds, opposition to 14th amendment, etc.) will strike a chord with the general public. I suspect that they won't.

One fact that is hard for true believers on the right and on the left (like myself) to accept is that the United States is not a country that likes the extremes -- either way. This is a middle-of-the-road country, and while it will accept changes, it wants those changes to be done slowly and carefully. I don't think the huge lurch to the right wanted by teabagger candidates like Paul, Angle (pictured), Rubio, Miller and others is going to be accepted by the majority of Americans.

While some of them may get elected because they are running in Republican-dominated states, I don't think this will be a good thing for the Republican Party. If these teabaggers get to Washington, they will be in the spotlight and it will just show Americans how out-of-step they really are, and it will brand the Republican Party as too far right-wing to be trusted. It could easily be a hinderance to a Republican return to power.

The teabaggers are showing strength, but only in the Republican Party.