Following up on my post from the other day about the Tea Party actually hurting the GOP’s chances for picking up seats next year, we now have today’s WSJ taking a look at this very threat:
he rise of conservative “tea party” activists around the country has created a dilemma for Republicans. They are breathing life into the party’s quest to regain power. But they’re also waging war on some candidates hand-picked by GOP leaders as the most likely to win.
In upstate New York, Dede Scozzafava, 49 years old, is the choice of local party leaders to defend a Republican seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, an abortion-rights candidate who could appeal to independents. Doug Hoffman, 59, is a local accountant backed by tea-party activists who has jumped into the race declaring himself the real conservative.
A lot of political analysts actually predicted this. While many in Washington and the world of punditry thought the tea baggers would pose a big problem for Democrats next year, they never thought ahead enough to realize that they could actually have a real adverse effect on the GOP. Now we are starting to see this, and its the product of a lot of big Republican names backing the tea party while not really buying into it.