Monday, November 4, 2013

Go Ted and the Tea Party, Go!

UPDATE:  Tuesday is a pivotal day for the Tea Party in their civil war with the Republi-con establishment.  They have already lost the battle in NJ, where "highly popular incumbent Chris Christie, who conspicuously spurned the tea party wing, is cruising to reelection. In Virginia, a seat that should be safely Republican has been put in jeopardy. . .

[The Democratic nominee, Terry McAuliffe] shouldn’t have a chance in this race. He’s a liberal from New York, a McLean millionaire, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who served as chief moneyman to Bill and Hillary Clinton. A company he led as chairman until last year, GreenTech, is under federal investigations, and he failed to disclose his investment in a Rhode Island insurance scam that used the identities of dying people."

Read the Washington Post,When the tea party jumped the shark.

Another battle is a special Republican primary runoff for Congress in South Alabama, piting “Bradley Byrne, a lawyer and former Republican officeholder” who is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against "Dean Young, the Tea Party-backed businessman."

Read The New York Times, In Alabama Race, a Test of Business Efforts to Derail Tea Party.
 FYI -- jumping the shark, coined to describe an episode of the 1970s TV show Happy Days, is an idiom "used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery, which is usually a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use [a cartoonish turn towards attention-seeking gimmickry] in a desperate attempt to keep viewers' interest."

"Polling released this week by the Washington Post and ABC News found the GOP’s unfavorability ratings among Americans at an all-time high of 63 percent.

But a closer look at the numbers reveals that this has been accompanied by a massive collapse in 2013 of the GOP brand among core constituencies important in midterm elections: Independents, women, and seniors. The crack Post polling team has produced a new chart demonstrating that in the last year — since just before the 2012 election – there’s been a truly astonishing spike in the GOP’s unfavorable ratings among these core groups:

 The interactive chart (run the cursor on the bars for numbers) shows the GOP’s unfavorable ratings have jumped 19 points among seniors, to 65 percent; 17 points among independents, to 67 percent; and 10 points among women, to 63 percent. Those are all key constituencies in midterm elections."

Read the Washington Post, The implosion of the GOP brand, in one chart.

And invite Sarah to join in too!