The Tea Party has been in the news quite a bit lately. If you ask David Brooks, they are a movement ascendant, like the hippies, feminists, or Christian Coalition of the past.
From a moderate-to-liberal perspective, of course, they’re also a bunch of semi-literate wackos.
What strikes me, however, is the opportunity here. For years, so-called “third” parties have tried to break the stranglehold the Republican and Democratic parties have on the electoral process. The tea-party movement, if it is not co-opted by the nouveau GOP, could use the current popularity of referenda to change the system. If the tea-party movement succeeds in galvanizing alienated Republicans and Independants, and if the left-wing Greens and Rainbows, inter alia, recognize it, the time may be better than ever in the next couple years to throw out laws that have enshrined center-right-two-party domination of the way we elect our governments.
That’s a boatload of “ifs,” but it’s certainly not without the realm of possibility. Further, it might even rejuvenate American politics.
