The Tea Party, the GOP, and Wisconsin

The Tea Party and Republicans are not one and the same, but they do share common principles and goals.

In 2010 in Wisconsin, they joined forces to create an unbeatable alliance.

When working together, great things were accomplished - like unseating the entrenched, seemingly untouchable liberal Washington politician, Leftist Russ Feingold.

Patrick McIlheran discusses how the Tea Party and the Republican Party of Wisconsin achieved their phenomenal successes in the midterm elections.

He writes:

Ron Johnson is not a witch. Wisconsin is not Delaware. This helps explains why Russ Feingold is headed for retirement and a conservative is headed on our behalf to the U.S. Senate.

Christine O'Donnell, who ran for the Senate in Delaware, isn't a witch, either, though she had to say as much in an ad after Democrats and allies dug out old TV footage of her talking frivolously of high school dabblings. A weak candidate favored by tea party people, she lost to a hard-left Democrat after she beat a shoo-in establishment Republican in a divisive primary.

This and weak showings in other states, say tea party critics, especially on the left, just goes to prove that the movement for lower taxes and restrained government is a loser. They suggest Republicans jettison it.

This is nonsense. The constant in Senate races that Republicans lost was weak candidacies. Tea partiers were the variable. For their upside, see Wisconsin.

The difference is that in Wisconsin, there was no fight, as in Delaware, Alaska or elsewhere, between old-time Republicans and tea partiers. There need not be. The two groups are distinct - many Republicans reflexively distrust insurgency, and many tea partiers recall the later Bush years with revulsion - but they can be mutually beneficial. When their interests are aligned and their words kept polite, each supplies something the other lacks.

The teafolk brought conviction, by the pickup-truck load. Wisconsin Republican boss Reince Priebus said as much at Governor-elect Scott Walker's victory party Tuesday: "I appreciate the fact the tea partiers kicked the butt of the Republican Party." The movement, he said, reminded the party of its principles.

"Indispensable," U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan said of tea partiers before the election. One important effect, he said, has been to stiffen the spines of Republican lawmakers who had faced pressure only from the left. Knowing they could be challenged by hard-eyed fiscal conservatives, Ryan said, reattached almost-RINOs to ideals their party says it stands for. "Grassroots pressure works," he said.

The party, meanwhile, offered a horse for Paul Revere to ride. Wisconsin Republicans mounted an unprecedented ground game, boasting of 3 million live phone calls and door-knockings. While the tea parties are determinedly decentralized, Republicans are organized. The party provided the ready-made means to spread a message. The tea party ensured that the message was more meaningful than, "Hooray for our side."

The result was stronger candidates, better campaigns and the utter rout of Democrats.

How the Tea Party and the GOP accomplished the stunning rejection of Democrats by Wisconsin voters serves as a model for the rest of the nation with its eye on 2012.

Democrats are now the minority party in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Dems in Washington also have minority status. It's a seismic shift.

Sending conservative Ron Johnson to the U.S. Senate is great for Wisconsin and it's great for the country.

Feingold is history. He didn't gracefully bow out of the Senate at the time of his choosing, which in all likelihood would have been never. He was booted out.

Given that remarkable achievement, I fail to see how the Tea Party can be deemed a loser. Of course, one person's thrill of victory is another's agony of defeat. Races have winners and losers.

In Wisconsin, the majority of Democrats were losers.

All the spin by political operatives and pundits about the Tea Party's irrelevance is irrelevant. Results are what matter.

The results in Wisconsin are spectacular because the strengths of the Tea Party and the GOP melded.

It's a lesson for 2012.

...Wisconsin shows how this can work. The tea parties, however long the movement endures, need not be married to Republicanism - shouldn't be, in fact - but if both see themselves as parts of a broader conservative movement, they can cooperate to good effect, as they did here.

The result is better choices in elections and, one hopes, better policy afterward.