by Pedro Miranda

Created on: November 07, 2010   Last Updated: November 08, 2010

The Tea Party movement is a double-edged sword for the Republican Party. It provides an energized base that will pour in and attract financial support into the party’s coffers, as well as supply an enthusiastic force of volunteers. This comes at a price however.

The Tea Party represents the conservative side of the Republican Party. Its conservative values, like those of the Moral Majority of the Ford/Reagan Era, appeal to the religious right but it casts a wider net. Wisely, the Tea Party’s rhetoric targets fiscal profligacy and wasteful spending, which are issues that appeal to a wider variety of voters, rather than focusing on abortion which is an issue that only the religious right sides with. That many of the Tea Party candidates are also religious is well known, but most (the ones that will get elected) don’t make an issue of this and, if asked, deflect the question saying simply that there are more important issues to talk about. This works very well in the heartland of the nation.

In the coastal blue states, this becomes more of a problem. For a Republican to win there, he/she needs to be aggressively centrist, or even tilt a little to the left. This is because the Democratic party in those states generally fields the left of center slates that appeal to its liberal base; centrist or more conservative Democrats are then liable to vote for the Republican candidate if he positions him or herself to the center, or even center left. (Olympia Snow and Lincoln Chafee come to mind) The problem happens when the conservative base, disenchanted with representatives that do not represent or defend their values or ideas, decides that they no longer care if their elected representatives are liberal Democrats or “Democrat light” Republicans. This is what happened in Delaware and, to a lesser extent in Colorado. As a result, the Democratic candidate won in both states after a major “Get out the vote” campaign by the Democrats. In Colorado, Bennett won by a very small margin, in Delaware the Democratic candidate won by a landslide.

The tea party candidate in Colorado played a good race and it is arguable whether a conventional candidate could have done better. In Delaware, the Tea Party cost the Republicans a senate seat.

Or did it?

If they had run a centrist “Democrat light” candidate, the margin might have been smaller, but the results may well have remained the same as many conservatives, fed up with the status quo might well have not voted at all, or left the box blank.

What is important is that, in both states, the Republicans worked with an enthusiastic, energized base. In 2006, and in 2008, that did not happen. In both cases, with middle of the road candidates running, the Democratic Party won mightily.

The net result, it seems to me is that passion and enthusiasm trump political calculations and expediency.

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