skippy the bush kangaroo: tea baggers - not good for what ails the gop

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

tea baggers - not good for what ails the gop

via greg sargent, a memo from "top democrats" on the hill explains how the tea baggers are more of a liability than a help to the gop:

the tea party has presented three problems for republicans. the most glaring problem is where the tea party candidate has defeated the moderate (and more electable) republican candidate. second, republican candidates are being forced to take unpopular extreme positions to satisfy the ideological base to avoid defeat in their primaries. third, we are seeing numerous tea party candidates run as third party candidates which is splitting the republican vote...

there are more than 100 conservative third party candidates on the ballot. this is important because it lowers the win number for the democratic candidate.

lots of folks have argued that talk about the gop winning back the house could be helpful to dems by dramatizing the stakes of the midterms. but this memo suggests that dem leaders recognize that such talk needs to be neutralized quickly, lest it damage morale and dampen fundraising. at any rate, this is how dem strategists view the evolving map right now.

posted by skippy at 9:14 AM |

1 Comments:

Yeah, these "Dem strategists" are the same ones who promoted the candidacy of John Kerry over Howard Dean in 2004, "after all, he's a war hero, how's the right going to counter that?" Err, yeah.

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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