Is tea party the end of our two-party system?

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Tuesday’s stunning primary results made it official: The tea-party movement has captured the Republican Party.

...

The unlikely victory of Christine O’Donnell against Republican stalwart Mike Castle in the Delaware Senate primary showed that Sharron Angle’s primary victory in Nevada and Joe Miller’s in Alaska were not aberrations, but harbingers of a new conservative order.

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The tea party’s successful conquest of the GOP means that the Republican label has shifted even further right, and raises the question of what happens to moderate Republicans and independents in the November election.

The Democrats, for their part, always have been more fractious than the Republicans. The party is riven by the tension between progressives and “moderates” such as the Blue Dogs, who carry the same party label but share fewer and fewer policies.

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So what happens if the tea party gets its “dream ticket” in 2012 — Palin for president, with Glenn Beck as her running mate? (Neither is likely to take the pay cut or risk a genuine electoral contest, but let’s play what-if for a moment.) What if Obama continues to flounder (and there is no indication yet that he has learned anything from his precipitous decline in popularity in the past two years) and is a vulnerable incumbent in that contest?

Wouldn’t that create an opening for somebody like, say, Michael Bloomberg to enter the fray as a third-party candidate? Bloomberg, after all, has been everything — Democrat, Republican and independent — and has more money than God.

The New York mayor is once again working to raise his national profile, while protesting that he has no national political ambitions.

With his Jewish heritage, his obsession with gun control and his support of the mosque in downtown New York, Bloomberg might lack appeal in the heartland, but he is clearly in the political center. A judicious choice of running mate might blunt some of these more obvious drawbacks.

The pragmatic, successful Bloomberg might be able to test just how much of a center still exists. A disenfranchised middle, caught between a reckless Palin and a feckless Obama, might be willing to embrace a third-party candidate.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-tea-party-end-of-our-two-party-system-2010-09-15

[TBoneTX 43,069]

The leftists and members of the elite ruling class are already whining "They (Tea Party candidates) can't win (in the general election)." Liberals always let everyone know of whom they're most afraid. Case in point: If Sarah Palin is such a worthless lightweight moronic loser, why are they working so hard to destroy her?

[Saddle Bronc 124]

An irony of history. Whitehall-style systems are generally better-suited for two parties, since they have potential (and unfortunately, this has been achieved in more than one country with such a system) of shambolic-mess results with more than that number, while US-style system is not-too-badly suited for reasonable-to-horrendous (3 to whatever) multiparty systems.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

I hope so. I would love to see a new liberal party as well. Maybe call themselves the progressive party. We need 4 or 5 parties so no one group ever controls the whole government again.

[mawilson 2,133]

Is tea party the end of our two-party system?

Oh dear god, I hope so. The Republican-Democrat regime must be stopped.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

I hope so. I would love to see a new liberal party as well. Maybe call themselves the progressive party. We need 4 or 5 parties so no one group ever controls the whole government....

...which may have been part of the reason that in 1780's, newly-independent US rejected the Whitehall-style system.

[mawilson 2,133]

So what happens if the tea party gets its “dream ticket” in 2012 — Palin for president, with Glenn Beck as her running mate

Sarah Palin is a Republican-Democrat regimer, not a Tea Party member.

She supported the Wall Street bailouts wheh GWB proposed them. Does that sound like

Tea Party to you?

She will use *any* label to get elected and at the moment the "Tea Party" label seems to

suit her agenda.

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She supported the Wall Street bailouts wheh GWB proposed them.

Tea Partiers are retards. You can tell them that and they will just dismiss you and call you Kenyan.

[mawilson 2,133]

Tea Partiers are retards. You can tell them that and they will just dismiss you and call you Kenyan.

Calling them retards and racists is a strategy used by the Republican-Democrat Regime.

The Regime is so afraid the movement is real, they will go to any length to marginalize it

and paint its members in a negative light.

[Danno 1,228]

Where was all this concern for "Homeless Politicians" when socially conservative Democrats got swamped by the far left?

[Ban Hammer 12,842]

Calling them retards and racists is a strategy used by the Republican-Democrat Regime.

The Regime is so afraid the movement is real, they will go to any length to marginalize it

and paint its members in a negative light.

and strangely enough, some buy into that without considering how a 3 party system might be better for this country.

[The_Dude 1,142]

Tea Partiers are retards. You can tell them that and they will just dismiss you and call you Kenyan.

Some of them really are retarded, like Palin and O'Donnell. The truely retarded ones are the people who make $35k per year, and support tax packages that don't benefit them, whatsoever. But they'll vote counter to their own interests becuase that socialist muslim from kenya is trying to destroy america.

[Peikko 1,575]

Sarah Palin is a Republican-Democrat regimer, not a Tea Party member.

She supported the Wall Street bailouts wheh GWB proposed them. Does that sound like

Tea Party to you?

She will use *any* label to get elected and at the moment the "Tea Party" label seems to

suit her agenda.

Your argument has merit, until you stop and ask what the Tea Party see in her - why does the tea party movement embrace her so warmly?

[TBoneTX 43,069]

and strangely enough, some buy into that without considering how a 3 party system might be better for this country.

It's been said that the only way for the Tea Party philosophy (& candidates) to have a voice is by using the Republican Party as an avenue. Perhaps if a TP candidate is elected president, he or she could say, "OK, we're constructing a third political party," and carefully select & invite current Senate & Congressional members of BOTH existing parties to join the third party. This might not result in a clear majority at first, but it could be a start.

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It's been said that the only way for the Tea Party philosophy (& candidates) to have a voice is by using the Republican Party as an avenue. Perhaps if a TP candidate is elected president, he or she could say, "OK, we're constructing a third political party," and carefully select & invite current Senate & Congressional members of BOTH existing parties to join the third party. This might not result in a clear majority at first, but it could be a start.

Sounds like a Trojan horse technique to me.