Nervous Nellie legislators

Speaker John "If I Only Had the Nerve" Boehner

Amidst all the recent attacks on Tea Party Patriots by Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, or American Crossroads architect Karl Rove, here’s an excerpt from an article entitled "Harvard Prof: Tea Party Not Going Anywhere, More Likely To Win," an analysis posted yesterday at Breitbart’s Big Government:

"At the grassroots, volunteer activists formed hundreds of local Tea Parties, meeting regularly to plot public protests against the Obama Administration and place steady pressure on GOP organizations and candidates at all levels," they found. "At least half of all GOP voters sympathize with this Tea Party upsurge."

Though Skokpol and Williamson have their typical biases and describe the Tea Party movement as a "radical" one that may not like minorities--without any evidence of that assertion--they acknowledge that "even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority—indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center—the entire gaggle of grassroots" and outside groups that support the movement "wields money and primary votes to exert powerful pressure on Republican officeholders and candidates."

Skocpol observes that the "Tea Party clout has grown in Washington and state capitals" because "Americans are also losing ever more faith in the federal government." In addition, "most legislators and candidates are Nervous Nellies," and they have seen the Tea Party defeat establishment Republicans like Charlie Crist in Florida in 2010 and David Dewhurst in Texas in 2012 in addition to knocking off incumbent Republican Sens. Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Richard Lugar (R-IN). 

"That grabs legislators’ attention and results in either enthusiastic support for, or acquiescence to, obstructive tactics," Skocpol writes. 

So in 2014, let’s keep grabbing the attention of all those Nervous Nellie legislators!