demise of the tea party greatly exaggerated

I’m not sure what this means.   Tea Party … functionally disfunctioning.

Leading Congressional Republicans, though they remain far apart fromPresident Obama, have embraced raising tax revenues in budget negotiations, repudiating a central tenet of the Tea Party. Even more telling, Tea Party activists in the middle of the country are skirting the fiscal showdown in Congress and turning to narrower issues, raising questions about whether the movement still represents a citizen groundswell to which attention must be paid.

The main proponents of the Tea Party, flutters about out there with Grover Norquist and Freedomworks.  They galvanize the “kooks” for their own sake — to defeat Health Care and Financial Regulation.  Now they tend to the Republicans elected and we get over to this as the grassroots movement:

Grass-roots leaders said this month that after losing any chance of repealing the national health care law, they would press states to “nullify” or ignore it. They also plan to focus on a two-decade-old United Nations resolution that they call a plot against property rights, and on “fraud” by local election boards that, some believe, let the Democrats steal the November vote.

Or Fluoridation, perhaps?

Mr. Cummings, who is the Midwest coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, a national group, said a major issue he would be focusing on now was Agenda 21, a United Nations resolution that encourages sustainable development. It has no force of law in the United States, but a passionate element of the Tea Party sees it as a plot against American property rights.

We have the wave of white house petitions that demand action.  The Star Wars “Death Star” gimmick passed by without comment.  As does the Right of Secession — receiving the proper number of signatures to get demand, but set in the cylinder filing cabinet for “Ignore” anyway.  And this “Try Feinstein for Treason” for advocating Gun Control.     And, wait for it:

The legislation has caused outrage amongst second amendment activists because it closely resembles Adolf Hitler’s 1938 Nazi Weapons Law which itself was virtually mirrored by the Gun Control Act of 1968.

(Blink.  Rub my eyes.)

So, there’s two directions to go with on “Current Day” “Tea Party” functioning.  At Freedom Works’s regime change, and the dishing back and forth between Armey and everyone else.

Or to the item on the Free Staters being called the biggest threat to New Hampshire.

 “People in positions of responsibility within the Republican Party tolerated too much of this,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. He blamed a backlash against “tinfoil hat” issues pushed by the Tea Party-dominated legislature in New Hampshire for the loss of a Republican majority in the State House last month and a near loss in the State Senate. Republican leaders “looked the other way too often,” he said. “They sort of smiled, winked and nodded too often, when they should have been calling ‘crazy, crazy.’ ”

No, the Free State Porcupines might not be the same as “Tea Party” — and they predate the Tea Party–, but there is convergence here.  Still, worth noting that in one of the state legislative match-ups, the winner was the Democratic Anarchist over the Republican Minarchist.  Is this a Tea Party extreme versus Occupy extreme?

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