The view from 'tea party country'

TribLive.com ^ | October 26,2013 | Salena Zito

[Hojczyk]

Today, “extremist” has replaced “bitter” as the label that Washington pundits and politicians use to describe these people. It was a word used often during the latest government shutdown, when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, insisted he had the Senate votes to defund ObamaCare.

“We need a vigorous, fighting opposition. ... I just want them to show more discerning judgment when picking their hills to fight on,” he added.

Tea party conservatives should have seen all of that coming, said Baylor University professor Curt Nichols. “Ultimately, they lost the recent tussle with President Obama because they failed to consider what would happen if Democrats refused to do anything during the shutdown,” he said.

Everyone could have benefited if tea partyers had used the government shutdown to educate Americans about the issue and to demonstrate that they were the true adults in the conversation about the nation's future, Nichols said.

Life is ironic: Here in Point Marion, the West Virginia border is literally a stone's throw away. That state's freshman U.S. senator, Joe Manchin, a pro-gun, pro-coal Democrat, has called for exactly what Republicans fought for in the government shutdown — a delay in rolling out ObamaCare.

Washington should note that the public's patience is finite and that no party is immune to growing populism. Out here in “flyover country,” that makes tea party activism seem, well, like a dainty tea party.