I honestly think the GOP would like to kick us out and lose.
I agree. They would rather kill the tea party and lose, than to win with a resurgence of tea party victories, making conservative ideology more mainstream within the (r)epublican party.
Unfortunately, if the Tea Party were a full blown 3rd party, then we would have Hillary Clinton or another liberal Democrat elected in 2016 in a walk.
Realistically, you would see Hillary get 40+% of the vote, a tea party candidate getting about 30%, and the Republican get about 30%. Hillary would carry most states with a minority of the vote, but the way the electoral college works, with states giving their votes winner take all to the biggest vote getter, this is very possible.
In 1992, Bill Clinton got only 43% of the popular vote, Bush 41 had 38%, and Ross Perot got 19%. Clinton won the electoral vote easily because of winner take all in the electoral college.
Splitting off the tea party makes sense only if you want to look past 2016 and try to build up a major political party built around conservative values.
Sorry to be so negative. Just my opinion.
And of course then whine incessantly about how its our fault they lost.
They’ll run establishment candidates, then blame the voters. The two parties are in a race to the bottom. I choose to not join them.
“I honestly think the GOP would like to kick us out and lose.”
Yes, and in a perverse way, the GOPe is little different than the RATs. I mean holding onto their individual and collective “political power” is their primary objective. And at the margins both parties are more alike than different. I think if the GOPe does what they are planning to stunt the Tea Party Candidates, that 2016 should be the end of any support for Republicans. The GOPe needs to die off because otherwise we will simply have the kind of dysfunctional government going forward irrespective of which party is actually in control. I have yet to re-register as an Independent, but I told the GOP to take a hike as far as my contributions are concerned back in the early part of GWB’s second term.
“I honestly think the GOP would like to kick us out and lose.
And I agree. I call it the “Harlem Globetrotter” theory. The GOPe recognizes that their job security, which is exclusively what they care about, is unaffected by them winning or losing the election. In a 2-party system, the job-security of the loser is every bit as guaranteed as the job-security of the winner. They could not care less about traditional notions of representing their constituencies; anything that resembles progress along those lines is pure happenstance. Failure along those lines just allows them to more assiduously state their fighting stance and justify requests for greater levels of campaign contributions. They are interested only in grifting the system, and the possibilities of grifting the system are basically equal whether one opposes or supports any given issue. All they care about is having a spoon out in the flow to catch what they can catch this side of being criminally indicted.