Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/102968
Sarasota News Leader January 11, 2013 OPINION Page 65 expressed their unhappiness by voting over- Two years later, the Tea Party's shellacking of the Democrats was not repeated. The preswhelmingly for Cleveland. ident was re-elected, defeating a seemingly Blaine, whose mother was Irish and whose distracted candidate who at times appeared sisters had been raised Catholics, had expect- not to have the stomach for the campaign. ed to win the Catholic vote in New York City. Worse, Mitt Romney had allowed himself to Blaine's slowness to distance himself from be defined by the Democrats as a rich man Burchard made sure that did not happen. insulated by his vast wealth from the issues of importance to the average voter for whom With Blaine's defeat, the Mugwumps faded he had no empathy. His slowness to counter into predictable oblivion. Some joined the those charges, and his stalling on releasing his Democratic Party while others became Indeincome tax returns, simply added credibility pendents. Within a decade the Mugwumps had to his portrayal by the Democrats. been largely forgotten. In the 1960 presidential campaign, candidate More than a century and a quarter later, a John F. Kennedy had faced a similar challenge. number of Republicans and Independents He defused it quickly and with casual aplomb. coalesced in 2010 around conservative can- It was suggested that the Kennedy family fordidates for public office. These "Tea Party" tune was being spent buying votes. At a press grassroots activists were angry at, and ener- conference, JFK read to reporters a message gized by, what they perceived as the gross ex- purportedly sent him by his father: "Dear Jack: cesses of the Obama Administration and the Don't buy another vote. I'll be damned if I'll Democratic-dominated House and Senate, pay for a landslide." including ever-climbing unemployment, hunRomney's tepid campaign was not helped by dreds of billions of dollars wasted on stimuthe fact that two Tea Party-endorsed candilating a non-responsive economy, soaring nadates for the U.S. Senate made comments tional debt and Obamacare. that offended many women. One struggled The Tea Party movement did exceptionally well in the midterm elections. Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and increased their numbers in the Senate. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was one beneficiary. In some states new Republican governors took office and state legislatures reflected a more conservative bias. President Obama described the 2010 election results as a "shellacking" of his party. to define "legitimate rape"; the other pronounced that pregnancy as the result of rape "is something that God intended." Women voters flocked to the Democrats, whose party's charge that Republicans were "waging war on women" found considerable traction. By 2012, the Tea Party had lost much of its original cohesion. Charles Krauthammer wrote in September 2010, that the Tea Party was "spontaneous and anarchic with no rec-