The Republicans claim they support the values of the Tea Party when they are at Tea Party rallies or when they are at home asking the voters to send them to Washington. But an amazing thing happens in Washington. They do not vote like conservatives.
As we move closer to the 2012 election, we are starting to look beyond that and think about what happens in 2013 and 2014. Many people ask whether the Republican Party will survive. Perhaps the more important question to ask is should the Republican Party survive?
Political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution and there is certainly nothing that restricts American politics to two parties or for that matter a Republican and a Democrat Party.
Conservatives have called the GOP home for quite a while. The modern conservative movement in the Republican Party arguably began with Barry Goldwater. After Goldwater lost, the GOP went back to the establishment. The only breaks in the establishment’s domination of the Republican Party were Ronald Reagan’s defeat of the establishment in 1980 and Newt Gingrich’s revolution that lasted only until the establishment could force him out.
The establishment was in firm control of the Republican Party as George W. Bush became President and by the time 2006 had come along the establishment had driven the GOP into oblivion.
By 2008, the GOP was on the political endangered species list. The Democrats openly gloated about restoring the glory days of the seventies where they held a super majority in both the House and Senate. James Carvell gloated that the Democrats would rule for 40 years.
Then along came the Tea Party.
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