[Once-Ler]

I wouldn't consider RINO Freshman Justin Amash (MI-3), Lou Barletta (PA-11), Charlie Bass (NH-2), Dan Benishek (MI-1), Chip Cravaack (MN-8), Robert Dold (IL-10), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8), Richard Hanna (NY-24), Nan Hayworth (NY-19) Joe Heck (NV-3), Tom Marino (PA-10), Pat Meehan (PA-7), Tom Reed (NY-29), David Rivera (FL-25), Jon Runyan (NJ-3), Steve Stivers (OH-15), or Scott Tipton (CO-3) as Tea Party pickups. I consider them anti-Obama wins.

Many of the legitimate Tea Party successes where helped by anti-Obama anger and many were just replacements of Republicans in Republican leaning districts. I'm not saying the Tea Party is irrelevant just not as powerful as most Freepers think.

[A'elian' nation]

The Tea Party ain’t dead. Just diluted and divided.

First of all, the Tea Party is not a Party . . . not yet.

Tea Partiers are shooting themselves where it hurts because we are giving about 50% to Newt, 30% to Mitt, and 20% to Rick.

A Party divided will not stand. Why Tea Party folks are giving 30% to Romney is beyond me other than they are desperate and think he is the only one who can beat 666.

Funny - 66.6 is about the percent of us against Romney.

[upsdriver]

Many of the legitimate Tea Party successes where helped by anti-Obama anger

And just who were these anti-Obama voters? Tea party participants, of course.

[nwrep]

I'm not saying the Tea Party is irrelevant just not as powerful as most Freepers think.

Some (many?) Freepers are surprisingly gullible when it comes to assessing potency of actions or movements. They have their blind spots and come to believe their own assertions. For instance, some hold that pollsters are always wrong, even when they are right, even when it shows our guy (Newt) expanding his lead, pulling away and eventually winning as he did in SC. The polls charted that trajectory, but some Freepers take that as evidence that the polls were wrong.

Freepers can be just as delusional and in denial as our ideological opposites. It is just that the Freeper blind spots are different than those of, say, the Media or the illiberal elite.

[JediJones]

But as someone indicated above, the key for the Tea Party is to push the limits of how conservative our candidates can be by controlling the primary process. We have a long way to go to convince people to vote conservative as opposed to just voting to throw out the bums of one party and put the other party in. But as long as we constantly have conservatives up in the primaries then we will get them in when the tide turns the way of our party instead of getting the “safe, electable” RINOs in. More fundamental change might involve actually changing voters’ minds, which is something that probably takes marketing and money.