Originally Posted by kane

The liberals are not the only people afraid of the Tea Party or Sarah Palin. The Republicans are worried that the tea party will win enough seats to make their lives hell. If these Tea Party people stick to their word they won't vote for anything that will raise he deficit which will be pretty much anything that is put on the floor. Without their support the Republicans will get nothing passed, never mind having to fight the Democrats.

As for Sarah Palin, you can tell the Republicans fear her because they are changing the delegate rules for the primaries. The Republican primaries have always been winner take all. You win the state, you get all the delegates. They are changing that for at least the first handful of states so now you get a number of delegates in proportion to the number of votes you get. This is how the Democrats do it.

They are doing this because they are afraid that Palin will run and since a large number of the early primaries are in bible belt states she could win some states early on. These victories could force out more moderate candidates that might be able to win the more moderate states and win the general election. Think of Huckabee in the last election. He stuck around early and traded wins with McCain. Eventually they left the bible belt and McCain pulled away in the more progressive states. What they don't want is Palin to come out of the gate fast, win a bunch of states and kill off Romney or some other more moderate candidate then have her get thrashed in the general election. Right now she polls well, but right now she isn't running for office so she can say what she wants when she wants and control her image. If she gets back on the campaign trail it will remind much of the country how batshit crazy she really is.

Originally Posted by kane

tea party endorsed and supported candidates. They are still technically republicans, but if they follow through with that they say they will not vote for any bill that adds to the deficit which will make the rest of the republican party not very happy with them

Originally Posted by kane

It isn't my opinion. It is the tea party's opinion. Here is something from a story in the Washington Post about this very subject. When they talked to a spokesperson for Rand Paul (one of the most well known tea party supported candidates) and asked about deficit spending this is the answer they got: "Runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington, D.C., compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty." Then he said, "Paul would vote against and filibuster any unbalanced budget proposal in the Senate."

So basically Paul is saying that if the republicans put forth a budget proposal that isn't balanced not only will he not vote for it, he would filibuster against it.

It isn't my opinion. This is what these guys are saying. I'm not saying it is a bad idea, if they actually stick with this it could really be good for the country. If anything it might be my opinion that it would be a thorn in the side of the GOP. Maybe it would cause them to change the way they do things for the better and they would actually like it. I'm sure that is likely to happen because our political leaders are known for being good sports about not getting their way and having to give in to those of opposing view.