I was right and Jon Stewart and Frank Rich were wrong. But they are rich and I am not. Go figure.
And there was this, from October 28th, 2010:
The key is that the Republicans did in fact become vulnerable in their own base. Republicans who showed any degree of reasonableness starting losing primaries. And the people winning those primaries, and the voters who fueled those victories, show every sign of believing the rhetoric rather than the reality. What started off as a stunt, turned into a monster that the Republicans could no longer control. So far, the damage has been electoral. While overall the juice from the Tea Party has ramped up enthusiasm in the base, there’s no question that the Republicans have damaged their prospects of winning a half dozen Senate seats. But really radical candidates are going to win a lot of House seats and at least a couple of Senate seats, and then they are going to expect the Republican Party to continue with their Party of No strategy. Anyone who stands in the way of total-obstruction-all-the-time is going to face a challenge from the loony right. They created a caricature of the president and they can’t very well compromise with the devil without infuriating their supporters.
Lee Drutman makes a lot of sense and I’ll be talking about his piece, but it’s a gruesome exercise in both-siderism. The culpability here is not equally shared.
It’s nowhere near equally shared.