[SoConPubbie]

	"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton "We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan "A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792 "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

[HiTech RedNeck]

You might be able to hijack tea, but you can’t hijack God.

[Republican1795.]

The tea has been watered down now.

[Deagle]

Heh, don’t listen to all of this media anti-Tea Party hysteria, it is because they are losing.

If you look at any and all of the Republicans running, what are they professing - Conservatism! Look at McConnell with his fake gun thing (and that was funny), they are all trying to move to the right.

It’s only a matter of time and effort! The problem remains is will they actually govern conservative or will they continue to go for the money (bribery and all)!

[Mozilla]

The big problem is the infighting between tea party groups and the choosing of candidates. Either four tea party or conservatives run in a primary or one is selected and then some tea party groups start trashing them.

[Mozilla]

This Joshua Phillips guy started out well, then he became a jackass. He is the Laura Ingraham of the Washington Times. He is actually trying to defend the tea party groups that endorsed McConnell and did not endorse Matt Bevin. And he is trying to justify the reasons why Bevin was not a tea party candidate. What a loser.

[VerySadAmerican]

Without the tea party voters the gop is going to find out what it’s like to lose big!

[Nextrush]

Much of the “Tea Party” was astroturf for the Republican Establishment and special interests like the hospital industry that want Obamacare to be more like Romneycare.

Palin and Cruz and Rand Paul could get together, issue a joint declaration along with Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, and marshal their combined fundraising-organizational strength into a potent force to fight the GOPe.

Do they all want to???????

Perhaps we need a new leader, a Nigel Farage of our own to start the United States Indpendence Party.

[staytrue]

The author has it wrong.

The republican party has always been the republican party.

The teaparty is too weak to stand on its own and tried to hijack the republican party by winning a few selected primaries.

So now that teaparty failed, they are all mad. Well boo hoo, the republicans were here first.

[kenmcg]

The T Party is not a formal party. It represents millions of common sense Americans who believe in American exceptionalism. The T Party has not been high-jacked and is not dead. All over the country the T Party has been holding GOP politicians accountable forcing them to the right side of politics.

[lexington minuteman 1775]

The Tea Party either needs to leave the GOP or it will be absorbed by the Rove insider types in the GOP.
Freegards
LEX

[LS]

I disagree with the premise. The Tea Party dealt itself numerable wounds, from nominating bad candidates to failing (at the local level) to govern efficiently when it had control. But the two biggest weaknesses of the Tea Party were evident three years ago.

First, it tried too hard to incorporate Democrats as identify itself as "not" a Republican group. No one ever believed this on either side, but this led the organizations to strongly de-emphasize social issues and thought that it could ween Dems away purely on economic issues. This was just bad judgment.

But something that the Tea Party could not do anything about was its age. In every meeting I went to over the course of there years, the average age was about 50. There was never a sufficient number of young, energetic people to keep the movement's momentum going.

I started to see the numbers fall fairly significantly in the talks I was giving in 2011, even with a presidential election on the horizon.

Today, I've been talking to a few, but more important I've been trying to arrange a national film tour for my movie, so I thought I'd contact the Tea Parties. State by state, list by list, the groups I've contacted are defunct, or their leaders tell me they only have a very small number of people. One big Dayton area group I spoke to, which had over 100 in attendance in 2010, had half that a year later, and now the leader tells me that he's lucky to get 30. The only issue, he said, that drew people out was "Common Core." Even then, there still are no young people associated with the movement.

So while the Establishment has definitely opposed the Tea Party and sought its demise, the Tea Party did quite enough to bury itself.

[TomGuy]

some groups can try to use this movement for their benefit.

It is similar to those candidates who run as conservatives and govern as centrists/leftists.

Politicians pander to whomever they think will help their election chances.

[Bikkuri]

I saw this coming (and it was discussed here many times) when we showed how we could start the ball rolling to take our Republic back...