[9YearLurker]

The tea party completely blew it and got hosed with the presidential primary by not selecting, backing and uniting behind a legitimately small-government (but not Ron Paul wacko) candidate after the 2010 victories.

[USS Alaska]

The tea party completely blew it and got hosed with the presidential primary by not selecting, backing and uniting behind a legitimately small-government (but not Ron Paul wacko) candidate after the 2010 victories.

That would have been impossible because there is no such thing as "the TEA party".

There are TEA parties all over the USA , I think there are 40+ registered TEA parties and ten of thousands of divergent members with no real connections, other than a set of common ideas.

I go to TEA party rallies in WPA and we have no real national ties, which is why it is almost impossible for the lefty crazies to defeat us.

We have no single spokesman or leader. It's just us.

[VRWC For Truth]

No, the GOPe rigged it. Mittens never won the majority only the plurality of primary votes.

[ilgipper]

The tea party completely blew it and got hosed with the presidential primary by not selecting, backing and uniting behind a legitimately small-government (but not Ron Paul wacko) candidate after the 2010 victories. There just wasn't anyone to get behind. The TP didn't blow anything. There just wasn't a viable alternative. Most of our best people are very new on the big stage...first term governors and senators. People can consider Palin as that person, but she would have faced a huge battle to win in the general. She could have done it, but she would have had to reverse public opinion...not easy to do. Other than Romney, the only viable options I can think of are Perry (who blew it), Daniels (who just doesn't have it), Jendal (who blew his opportunity with his terrible debut the 2009 GOP response), or DeMint (who didn't want it).

[ilgipper]

The tea party completely blew it and got hosed with the presidential primary by not selecting, backing and uniting behind a legitimately small-government (but not Ron Paul wacko) candidate after the 2010 victories.

There just wasn't anyone to get behind. The TP didn't blow anything. There just wasn't a viable alternative. Most of our best people are very new on the big stage...first term governors and senators. People can consider Palin as that person, but she would have faced a huge battle to win in the general. She could have done it, but she would have had to reverse public opinion...not easy to do. Other than Romney, the only viable options I can think of are Perry (who blew it), Daniels (who just doesn't have it), Jendal (who blew his opportunity with his terrible debut the 2009 GOP response), or DeMint (who didn't want it).