"Why sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" (The Tea Party)

"Why sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" (The Tea Party)

The 'Tea Party', a radically right-wing group composed of many different conservative groups including Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, has not died away subsequent to the health care debate, as some expected. Focusing on small-government, lower taxes, and other highly contentious issues, the Tea Party has become a megaphone for angry conservatives and a soapbox for Republican candidates looking for an easily attainable and fiercely loyal base to follow him or her into election season. Republicans are continuing to capitalize on the Tea Party's momentum and some, like Florida's Marco Rubio, are harnessing it in an attempt to win big-ticket elections. Others, like Massachusetts' Scott Brown, have already done so.
There is no way around it: the Tea Party can win some elections. However, Tea Party candidates cannot. In Arizona, Senator John McCain is, very publicly, being challenged by a Tea Party candidate, but it is highly unlikely that McCain, a recent presidential nominee, will not recapture his Senate seat. In New York's 23 district, the Tea Party candidate forced the Republican out of the race and lost to a Democrat in a district where Democratic wins are rare.
Beyond just the Tea Party's radical beliefs, it is their methods to further these ideals that truly make them so polarizing. Not only are many- or at least the loudest- of the Tea Partiers belligerent and ill-informed, for, one elderly Tea Partier once exclaimed that Obama ought to "get [his] government hands off [her] Medicare," they are a disruptive force to the point of stopping civil discussion between elected officials and constituants. Pandemoniac videos of town halls have surfaced since last August in an attempt to humiliate various officials, many including shots of fellow citizens being shouted down by Tea Party members.
Yelling at peers and Congressmen is not the way to further your goals, nor is misinforming the public, whether it is intentional or unintentional. Still, even if the Tea Party reverted to more civil methods, their unprecedentedly right-wing beliefs would not survive. For the same reason that today's America will not be a communist state in the foreseeable future, America will not become a completely laissez-faire capitalist nation any time soon.