Sharron Angle Retires from the Tea Party

I'm Lost, How Do I Get to Main Street From Here?

 Well Sharron Angle lost, and in her concession speech she said the following:

"They may call us the Tea Party, but we know we're Main Street America."

"They" may call us the Tea Party? Who may? Sharon, the Tea Party dubbed itself the Tea Party. It's not a pejorative being slung at you by your enemies. It's the name the Tea Party chose so it's a little late to start acting like it's some insulting term that "they" hung around your neck. Or is it...

Tea Party activists take note. You just got thrown under the bus. Your candidates rode your anger as far as they could, but once they realize it got them attention but not actual votes they will jettison you faster than Stephen Slater deplanes. Brace yourselves for an epic rebranding. Here's how it will work:

First the candidates that lost are going to distance themselves from being identified as Tea Partiers. Perhaps suggesting, as Sharron Angle is, that "Tea Party" is a term invented by the "lame stream media" to tar them with. You may even hear them call themselves "Main Streeters" or something that connotes "middle." Then they'll try to straddle demographics. They'll try to appeal to the Republican base while trying to convince you that they are still your best option even as they become less radicalized. In turn, you will become more frustrated and alienated as you feel your candidates sell you out. Individually and collectively, you will become disillusioned about your disillusionment, lose steam and splinter into even more radicalized sub-groups (see: Democratic Party and their 10,000 ineffective special interests).

About that time the economy will improve, not because the government fixed it but because that's what economy's eventually do all on their lonesome. The economy improves, jobs reappear, and the whole impetus for the Tea Party goes away. At least until the next time there is a recession when Americans will rediscover that their government is broken. And they'll be super angry about it too... until it improves again. You think the government wasn't any less broken from 1994-2008? Sure it was, but we had a nice healthy .COM boom with which to finance our Suburbans. We only care when it interferes with the number of times a week we can eat at Applebees. It's just a cycle... rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

But in the meantime, would you mind not calling Sharon Angle a Tea Partier? She can't for the life of her imagine why anyone would call her that.