Tea Down The Drain

The Tea Party had a bad night and the GOP Establishment had a good one. Time was when Telegraph, Spectator and the posher Mail writers would have exulted in that. But now, to please those below the line, they have to pretend that the Tea Party was triumphant, and that we could do with such a thing here. It is very, very funny to read.

Not a single Tea Party pick-up in the House would not have gone to any old Republican this year. In the Senate, the Tea Party managed precisely three: one who had won as soon as he won the Republican primary, another who faced divided opposition, and a third whose supporters mistakenly believed that they were voting for his father; those last will rue the day that they sent Ayn Rand to the Senate.

Meanwhile, Lisa Murkowski will be caucusing with the Republicans, with all that that entails for that caucus. Had Sarah Palin not owed John McCain the biggest favour of her life, then she would have endorsed J D Hayworth, he would have won the closed primary in Arizona, McCain would have gone back to his roots and his record, and the Independent third of Arizona's voters would have put him right where Murkowski is now.

If the Tea Party still exists in 2012, then Olympia Snowe, Dick Lugar, Bob Corker, Orrin Hatch and Jon Kyl will join her as senior Republican caucus members elected as Independents against Tea Partiers. In 2014, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham, if the latter does not become the first Tea Party victim in the Senate to fail to hold his seat as an Independent despite having attempted to do so. All in all, quite a bloc, and quite a block.