If the Republican Party ever hopes to return as part of the governing coalition of the United States, they will have to cut ties with the Tea Party. The alliance has hurt them more than it has helped them.
The latest evidence is the surprising primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to a Tea Party challenger, David Brat. The issue: the very conservative Cantor was not conservative enough. The evidence: that he might possibly consider immigration reform.
In the short run, it would certainly be costly to the Republicans to wrest their party back from the cuckoos in the nest. It would likely cost them their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, in the medium run, when they no longer had to worry about being primaried, Republicans could start cooperating with the Democrats again in running the country.
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The Republican Party spent about 10 times as much money on getting Cantor reelected, as his opponent had available, and Cantor still lost.
RNC cooperation with the Tea Party was entirely non-existent, on the contrary, the RNC opposed Brat as much as they possibly could. Methinks, those pesky voters were not for sale. How to get rid of them?
Purge the rolls. I understand that Cantor let a Tea Party guy displace his own on the county Republican committee. The party has rules about who can run on its ballot in the primary. The rules are not designed to keep carpetbaggers out, but they could be.
Did you notice that both the Democrat and Republican in the general election are on the faculty at Randolph Macon.
Yes, a classic economist vs. sociologist confrontation. :-)
Purge the rolls, get rid of voters who don't like RNC endorsed candidates. All power to the Democrats... A recipe even for moving from two to three parties, and Democrats ruling according to the adage, my way or the highway (remember how partisanly ACA came into being).
This is similar to the problem that the Labour Party had in the '70s. An insurgent group with a non-viable ideology took control of parts of the party. The leadership eventually decided that they (the leaders) had let things go so far that the leaders were the ones who had to leave the party and form another. I think the Republican leadership would do well to take action now, while they still can.
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