America's Coming Ride on the Teabag Express

My life has slowed down sufficiently that I can start to re-engage with the world around me. BH and I recently moved to a new state, so I have to get all re-registered to vote so I can go to war with those lunatics in the Republican Party this fall. I confess, I've seen some crazy stuff over the years, but the Teabagger takeover of the Republican Party might be the most alarming. It's easy to be cynical about it. A lot of Democrats are saying "those candidates are so wacky that there's no way they'll win." I wish that were true. They'll underperform compared with a more moderate candidate, but the fundamental dynamics of the election are so hostile to Democrats that quite a few of them get into office. From a political science point of view, this election is a major test whether the retrospective or median voter models of vote choice are accurate. Since I generally adhere to the former - the latter assumes that enough voters know a lot about issues and candidates - I think that we're have a substantial Teabag Caucus in Congress next year. What's also interesting is that in the past ideology hasn't played that much of a role in primaries, and establishment figures have generally been able to win because of their superior institutional support. What we're seeing now is a right-wing uprising in the Republican Party. The leadership has completely lost control. Well, the part of the leadership we're used to seeing anyway - I suspect that part of this is one faction of the Republican elite supporting and exploiting the teabaggers to win power within the party. God help us all. Even if the Democrats were to benefit from the nomination of all these loonies, we'd still have a major political party in thrall to a neo-fascist political movement.