[plain talk]

The truth is both the GOPe and Tea Party need each other. To me the debate is over who leads and who supports. Thus far the GOPe wants tea party types to suck it up and support them. We are fed up and want to reverse the lead / support roles. A big tent is required for any political party to succeed. The hard core leftists run their “tent”. The Tea Party needs to run our “tent”.

Rove is insane to think the GOPe can do it without the tea party.

[Ohioan]

Rove is not insane. He is analytically dysfunctional. He has an impressive memory (rote) for previous political data; understands what groups divided in what way on candidates & issues, both in general and by locale. He is utterly clueless on how to change those patterns. Hence his pseudo-pragmatism, which tries to force normal Republicans into appeasing all the bad things that they should be standing up against.

As others have developed, the man is unprincipled. But, while that alone should disqualify him so far as decent patriotic Americans are concerned; what is really pathetic is that he is actually incompetent as a campaign director.

See, the link in my post, just above. Or consider what happened in 2006, when Rove engineered a Republican disaster in the mid-term elections. Contrast that with the Tea Party victories in 2010!

William Flax