Political Irony

As predicted, no Tea Party challengers won their Republican primaries today. The glory days of wing-nut insurgents like Christine (I am not a witch) O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Ken Buck, Richard Mourdock, and Sharron Angle beating more traditional Republican candidates in the primaries – just to go on to lose big in the general election – seem to be over.

And so of course you are going to see the pundits declare the tea party all-but-dead, trampled by the big business Republican establishment. But is that so? From where I sit, it looks more like the establishment candidates gave in and adopted all the wing-nut policies of the Tea Party.

Don’t believe me? Are any of the establishment Republicans pushing to fix Obamacare rather than just repeatedly repeal it? Or working on improving the economy rather than sabotaging it (by shutting down the government) just to make Obama look bad? Or promoting immigration reform? Or willing to compromise with Democrats on anything? Or even consider stopping wasting our time and money investigating Benghazi?

In fact, do Republicans have any policies whatsoever other than “if Obama is for it, we’re against it”? After all, it was Mitch McConnell himself (who just defeated a Tea Party primary challenger) who said that his number-one political goal was to make Obama a one term president.