The Tea Party Downgrade

By the Republican Party, which has clearly accepted the Tea Party's Declaration of Independence as somewhere between a welcome relief and a matter of supreme indifference.

The American system can only really sustain two parties at federal level, and each of them is therefore always very broad-based indeed, even by British standards.

But after the events of last week, each of them is now so obviously at least two parties in one that a rare, but not unprecedented, realignment has become inevitable.