Is the Tea Party bad for the GOP?

Is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other Tea Party leader's helping or hurting the GOP brand?
Is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other Tea Party leader’s helping or hurting the GOP brand?

The Daily Beast has done some very interesting reporting on how the mainstream Republican’s and their new friends with the Tea Party are having some big time issues with each other. Last week New Jersey re-elected Chris Christie as their Governor by a record margin. You might think that the rest of the national GOP high profile leaders would be happy. After all it was a big win in a very blue state but not so fast.

John McLean of the Daily Beast feels that the Tea Party is so eager to grievously wound the Republican Party establishment because its leaders view themselves as modern prophets of the apocalypse.

In the aftermath of the great government shutdown of 2013, the Tea Party continues to cause heartburn for establishment Republicans. Consider the results of last week’s elections, which offer clues to the internecine GOP battles that lie ahead. Although it’s much too early to draw hard conclusions, Chris Christie proved that a moderate, common-sense Republican could win in deep blue New Jersey, while in purple Virginia the wild-eyed social reactionary Ken Cuccinelli failed to gain traction outside his uber-conservative Christian-right base.

Yet the Tea Party is willing to defy overwhelming negative public opinion, wreck the government, risk plunging the world economy into chaos and invite political defeat. The driving force behind this destructive strategy is that Tea Party zealots answer to a “higher calling.”

They believe America teeters on the brink of destruction, and hold as an article of faith that liberals, gays, Democrats, atheists and the United Nations are to blame. This “end-times” world-view is a foundational precept of the evangelical movement, from which many of the so-called Tea Party favorites spring. Scholars call it apocalypticism. More…

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