This weekend’s controversial “Tea Party” convention, boycotted by some fiscal conservative stalwarts such as Michelle Bachmann, may have been hindersome to the GOP’s populist momentum. With a recession-friendly price-tag of over 800 dollars (to see all of the convention speakers and the keynote), Tea Partiers were treated to Sarah Palin’s down-home rhetorical flashes (read straight from the palm of her hand) and the superstar power and charisma of other familiar faces from the far-right, such as Tom Tancredo, who decried President Obama as a “committed socialist ideologue” elected by “people who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English.”

But snide remarks from political featherweights aside, fringe conservatives hoped to accomplish two things with this weekend’s convention: to solidify an elite, faithful donor base and to build positive PR for their grassroots campaign that would survive for a few news cycles (simultaneously bolstering far right candidates for November such as Danny Tarkinian in Nevada and Marco Rubio in Florida while pushing Conservatives in Congress to further their efforts to veto the Obama agenda).

They seemingly failed on both counts. While it’s difficult to gauge how their donor base is moving, what is clear is that by attempting to bring their movement to the national stage, Conservatives revealed its ideological instability and its lack of political staying power. As even Bill O’ Reilly noted, the platform of the movement is essentially a dislike of “the liberal vision of big government and [its] stance on terrorism.” Surely there are millions of Americans who subscribe to similar ideas who fall far outside the rungs of this camp. Such vague notions of political philosophical are far from enough to sustain the Tea Party for long.

If the Republicans hope to be truly successful in 2010, they need to put their best foot forward to prove they are committed to working with the President to reduce the budget deficit, pass healthcare legislation and complete the economic turnaround. They cannot count on diffuse populist rage to win them back the House and Senate. Obama is still more popular than his policies, and if he can land the proverbial one-two punch of Healthcare and Financial Reform (perhaps hawking Senate votes from the more liberal Northeastern states…yes Scott Brown, I’m talking to you too), with “Tea Party” momentum potentially stagnant, Republican candidates may quickly find themselves reeling in the polls. The televised beat-down the President put on GOP congressmen was especially telling. The President is beginning to feel the wind at his back, and he has the chance to capitalize in a big way. After all, the Tea Party only materialized in the first place due to Conservative dissatisfaction with the direction of the Republican Party.

The legislative process is indisputably messy and taxing, and driving this legislation through congress, especially without a sixty vote democratic supermajority, will be no easy task. But regardless of the trials and tribulations of the last year, this moment is as ripe for change as was January 20^th, 2009.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.