Tea Party compromise
by digby
My, my my, here’s a shocker for you:
Tea party activists are again supporting Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown this election, even though many aren’t thrilled with some of his votes over the past two years.
They say any disappointment with Brown is overshadowed by two bigger factors — the threat posed by Brown’s Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren and the desire to help Republicans seize control of the Senate.
“The bottom line is that he’s a Republican in the Senate,” said Ted Tripp of the Merrimack Valley Tea Party. “Republicans have to take control of the Senate so we can stop the liberal agenda and roll back the liberal policies that have been put in place over the past few years.”
When Brown staged his surprise win in the 2010 special election for the seat left vacant by the death of longtime U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, some of his earliest and most ardent backers were tea party activists.
Two years later not all tea party supporters are still enamored of Brown, but say they’re backing him as he seeks his first full six-year term.
And to think everyone told us that the Tea Partiers were libertarian iconoclasts who didn’t care about the Party and always acted on principle no matter what the consequences.
I get it. They look at Elizabeth Warren and think she’s the second coming of Josef Stalin so they’ll vote for the turncoat Scott Brown instead, if that’s the choice. But still, they were supposed to be the kind of voters who would rather have Stalin than some bipartisan squish. And yet, here they are.
It’s probably a good idea to examine the assumptions underlying the legislative positions of these hardcore wingnuts as well. Perhaps it’s not what everyone thinks it is.
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