Conventional wisdom is that Republicans are lucky to have tea partiers on their side. The problem with that thinking is that tea partiers already were on the GOP's side: they are basically conservative Republicans.
To some degree, tea partiers have done a service to the GOP by diverting attention of conservatives from the stained GOP brand, and they've also made conservatism relevant to the media. On the other hand, extremism and antiquated racial attitudes have come to define the tea party movement for many Americans, and most Republicans are smart enough to know they can't afford to be seen as racist extremists.
All of which leads us to a report in Politico today from Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman:
GOP leery of Tea Party Caucus
With the official formation of a congressional Tea Party Caucus, Rep. Michele Bachmann has thrust an existential question before House Republican leaders: Are you in or are you out?
Indiana’s Mike Pence, chairman of the Republican Conference, was adamant. “You betcha,” he said, deploying a Minnesota catchphrase.
But Minority Leader John Boehner won’t have his name on the caucus list.
And Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor and his chief deputy, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California — known as “Young Guns” for the GOP — are undecided.
As examples like this start to proliferate, it's going to start becoming clear that despite the energy tea partiers have brought to conservative politics, the tea party movement has put the GOP between a rock and a hard place. Once Labor Day rolls around, the real campaign begins, and average Americans will start paying attention to the election season. One thing they don't want to see is guys dressed up in strange revolutionary outfits talking about civil war and saying Obama is Hitler. The problem the GOP has is that the other thing most Americans don't want see is a return to the failed policies of the Bush-Republican years.
That's one of the reasons why, as bad as the economic situation is, and as realistic as it is that the GOP could win this election, it would be a mistake to count Democrats out. The other part of the reason is that Democrats have been very successful in enacting key policies to start changing the direction of this country. It's true that not everybody believes Democrats have gone far enough, but it's equally true that people don't want to turn back the clock to the way things were the last time Republicans were in power.
On paper, everything should be cutting against Democrats this year -- a bad economy and control of the White House. Nonetheless, we're still seeing empirical evidence -- such as the latest Gallup poll showing Democrats up by 6 -- that it would be just as big a mistake to assume that Republicans will win this election as it would be to assume that they will lose. For all the Democratic problems, Republicans have troubles as well. And I wouldn't trade their challenges for ours in million years.