In Come The Loons?

by Deacon Blues

"Local schools do not have the right to teach what they feel? Talk about imposing your beliefs on the local schools. You've just proved how little you know not just about constitutional law but about the theory of evolution . . . . You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
--Christine O'Donnell, this morning.

Convetional wisdom inside the Beltway, driven by a lazy media taking a spoon-fed narrative from Fox News tells us that there will be tidal wave of Tea Party Republicans taking over the government in two weeks. Maybe so, maybe not. Since Democrats refuse to uniformly go on the offense and go down swinging if necessary, we're left to laugh at the Tea Party loons who have no chance, like Christine O'Donnell this morning. Sure, it's fun to see how the Tea Party has hurt the GOP in certain races like Delaware. And yes, it's also fun to see how the media can tell us last week about Sharron Angle's strength in raising over $14 million during the third quarter without waiting to see how much she spent to raise that money.

But what gets lost in these diversions is the nature of our politics for the next two years in a Congress with Tea Party senators and representatives. For every Christine O'Donnell to laugh at, there may also be an Angle, Joe Miller, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ken Buck, or dozens of representatives running through the Capitol thinking they were elected to shut down the government and roll back the last 100 years of history. And yet Barack Obama talks as if he will try and work with these people.

Make no mistake, some of these extremists will get elected next month, and in the case of the Senate, will pollute our national discourse for the next six years. They will render the states that elected them as national laughingstocks, but they'll still have enormous power and soapboxes to take this country backward at a time of great challenges. I'm sure the president quietly looks forward to running against such a crowd in 2012, but adding just a few Millers, Pauls, or Rubios to the Senate will render it even more worthless than it is now.