Every time a tea party candidate wins a nomination, I smile

The most common trait of so-called "Tea Party" candidates is that they rail against government spending. The second most common trait of so-called "Tea Party" candidates is that they're the direct beneficiaries of government spending.

Tea Partyers on the dole

Adam Serwer is a staff writer for The American Prospect, where he writes his own blog.

The most common trait of so-called "Tea Party" candidates is that they rail against government spending. The second most common trait of so-called "Tea Party" candidates is that they're the direct beneficiaries of government spending.

It's a trend that's so consistent it would have been rejected as a plot point on a 1970s sitcom because it's too much of a cliche. Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, who recently called Medicaid "welfare," nevertheless supports medicare payments to doctors because he's an ophthalmologist who thinks "physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living." New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, a real estate millionaire who warned "the ruling class" about "the people's revolution" in his primary acceptance speech, secured $1.4 million in squandered government subsidies. Alaskan Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller has admitted to receiving farm subsidies but like a number of his colleagues running for office this year thinks the minimum wage is unconstitutional. Then, of course, there's Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who wants to privatize veteran's health care and is herself a recipient of health care from the federal government.

As Jonathan Chait writes in his review of the new book by the American Enterprise Institute's Arthur Brooks, while conservatives want to believe they're a part of some manichean struggle between the forces of capitalism and statism, conservatives and liberals are actually both seeking some degree of balance between market and state. The frame of a binary struggle may benefit conservatives politically as they try to portray themselves as the Luke Skywalker half of a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader, but as the Tea Party candidates on the dole show, they're not so much against government spending as they are against government spending on other people.

That's what this argument is really about -- not whether the government shapes the market, but who benefits. As these Tea Party candidates' opposition to everything from health-care coverage to the poor to a federal minimum wage standard shows, they're simply opposed to government intervention on behalf of those who might actually need it.

By Adam Serwer | October 5, 2010; 12:07 PM ET

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/09/AR2010100903308.html?wpisrc=nl_cuzhead wrote: the Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University poll[/url], large majorities among the public say that Medicare (96 percent), Social Security (95 percent), food stamps (82 percent), federal aid to public schools (91 percent), unemployment benefits (91 percent) and environmental protection (89 percent) are important government programs. For the functions served by these government programs, large majorities also say they want to see more federal government involvement, not less. For example, 64 percent of respondents said they want to see more federal government involvement in reducing poverty; 61 percent want more government involvement in protecting the environment; and 52 percent want more government involvement in ensuring access to health care. And as our own survey found, presented with a choice, more people want government to spend more now to create jobs and improve the economy (50 percent) than do those who want government to avoid increasing the federal deficit (46 percent).

(Alaska candidate Joe) Miller said last week that he will no longer answer reporters' questions about his background...

Carnivore wrote: This is at least one tea-bagger that has probably moved what could have been a hotly contested seat into the Democrats' hands.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/27/AR2010102707428.html?hpid=topnews wrote: Tea party antics could end up burning Republicans[/url]

The tea party's volatile influence on this election year appears to be doing more harm than good for Republicans' chances in some of the closest races in the nation, in which little-known candidates who upset the establishment with primary wins are now stumbling in the campaign's final days.

In Kentucky, a volunteer for tea-party-backed Senate candidate Rand Paul was videotaped stepping on the head of a liberal protester. In Delaware and Colorado, Senate hopefuls Christine O'Donnell and Ken Buck, respectively, are under fire for denying that the First Amendment's establishment clause dictates a separation of church and state. In Nevada, GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle is drawing rebuke for running TV ads that portray Latino immigrants as criminals and gang members.

Perhaps the most dramatic tea party problems are in Alaska, where Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller is suffering another round of unfavorable headlines after it was revealed late Tuesday that he had admitted lying about his misconduct while working as a government lawyer in Fairbanks.

Miller was conducting his own poll in 2008 in an effort to oust a state GOP chairman, and he used his colleagues' computers to vote in the survey, then erased their computers' caches to try to hide what he had done.

"I was beyond stupid," he wrote in a letter of apology included in documents ordered released by a judge Tuesday. He was suspended for three days without pay, according to the documents.

Miller, who was considered a shoo-in just two months ago when he defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary, was already falling quickly in GOP and Democratic internal polls before Tuesday's revelations, strategists said. Last week, he was in the spotlight when a campaign-paid security guard handcuffed a reporter who tried to ask Miller a question.

Such moments are giving Democrats hope that the few undecided voters who remain may become turned off and move away from Republicans in the closer races nationwide, including those in Colorado, Nevada and Kentucky.

"In state after state, Republicans nominated a less viable general-election candidate, and that's more on display than ever in these final days of the campaign," said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee...

Tea Party candidates cost the GOP three seats they otherwise would have won. News orgs in Colorado have now declared that Senator Michael Bennet has defeated Tea Party candidate Ken Buck. Christine O'Donnell cost the GOP the Delaware seat, which they would have won in a walk if she hadn't prevailed in a fluke primary victory. And Harry Reid was widely written off as a dead Senator walking -- until Sharron Angle's victory in her primary gave him his only opening to retain his seat.

Those three seats would have brought the GOP to 50.

It is the first time since Senators were directly elected under the 17th Amendment in 1914 that the House has changed party majorities but the Senate has not.