The reason liberal democrats complain and ridicule the Tea Partiers is because they are scared shitless about the movement.
The liberal democrats see a growing movement in the Tea Party and it is spreading over the entire country, gathering momentum.
But the Tea Party movement should not be viewed as a third party but instead as an activist watchdog movement over both political parties, weeding out those that refuse to stop the government spending, those that refuse to shrink the size, scope and intrusion of the federal government, those who see that the only answer to our debt crisis is to raise taxes, those whose ideology is to increase the massive government bureaucracy with constanr regulations for us all except themselves, those who govern according to their own self interest rather than governing by the will of the American people, those who feel they are above the rule of law, those who are in the pocket of special interest lobbyists, those who make secret deals behind closed doors, without debate and without transparency, those who violate their oath of office and a strict interpretation of the US Constitution.
Not only are they scared of the constitutionally conservative Tea Party, they’re afraid a similar movement of progressive socialists will well up in their own ranks and target moderate Dems.
There was some evidence of this in ‘10 where Democrats in some districts did not support incumbents who voted against Obama care (McMahon in NY-13 is one example). Also in AR, unions spent $10 million plus to defeat Lincoln in the primary process in favor of the left leaning Halter.
If this becomes widespread, Dems don’t have a prayer of taking back the swing districts they lost this time around and they will lose even more swing districts.
The Tea Party wiped them out in November. Hence the attack. We will send them packing in 12 too.