Blaming the Tea Party
by digby
South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson thinks the GOP budget — and in particular its call to phase out Medicare and replace it with a marketplace for private insurance — is a total disaster. He’s saying that Republicans, including members in his sphere of influence like Rep. Allen West (R-FL), should back away from it.
In an email to fellow Tea Partiers last week, obtained by The Palm Beach Post, Wilkinson called the GOP plan a “public policy nightmare” that could trigger “huge Democratic wins in 2012,” and prompt Republicans to blame the Tea Party for their losses.
“Republicans will lose if they support the Ryan Medicare plan. Americans do not support the [Paul] Ryan plan,” he wrote. “Expect the GOP to then blame the Tea Party for losses.”
That would certainly be a blessing. It wouldn’t solve all of our problems — some of the worst of them have to do with elite failure. But it would push the Republicans back from the edge and force them reevaluate their extremism. They got a big, unfortunate boost in 2010 when they should have been retrenching but if they can be strongly repudiated in 2012, the party will be likely to do some introspection and recalibrate.
As I said, it won’t solve the central problem, but it will take one of the major dangerous consequences of them off the table for a while which might give us some breathing room.
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