Guardian: Watch Out, Tea Party

Conventional wisdom has it that the contemporary Tea Party insurgency — if we may call it that — is protected structurally, in the House, by gerrymandered districts of homogeneous socioeconomic makeup.

After all — even with Democratic candidates winning 1.45 million more raw votes than Republicans in 2012, the GOP hung on to its thin advantage in Congress. As prevailing thinking goes, that’s a meaningful harbinger of future elections — and thus of continued Tea Party ankle-biting and obstruction for the foreseeable future.

But hold on. A fascinating editorial in the Guardian (UK) sees an alternate scenario, using a bit of data largely unacknowledged in the American press, post-shutdown:

…according to one analysis the Republicans lost twice as much support over the government shutdown in gerrymandered districts than in those whose boundaries were not politically redrawn. If this is true, the Tea Party will be drained of its self-righteous populism by the popular vote itself.

And here’s the analysis they’re talking about.

Wishful thinking? We’ll have a better sense of that in the next month or two, as the dust settles and post-shutdown sentiment — nationally, and district-by-district — gains clarity.

But it’s suggestive of one thing: on (extreme) occasion, even rabid populists carry the acumen to recognize who butters their bread — or more precisely, who is taking that bread away.

By: rhb

Rob is a NYC-based Internet entrepreneur. He's also a businessman and job creator (wait: doesn't demand create jobs?) who understands the sense, and the eventual predominance, of the progressive agenda.