NEWSMAX: It wasn’t long ago tea party leaders worried about a GOP takeover. But after Joe Miller’s stunning win over GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, sources now say it’s the Republican establishment that is concerned about a grass-roots movement whose power has expanded so rapidly that it now threatens the party’s political hegemony.
Leading the charge: grass-roots conservatives who rocked the political landscape by propelling a relative unknown, Fairbanks attorney Joe Miller, ahead of an incumbent senator with strong GOP support. Murkowski reportedly outspent Miller 10-to-1, and her family had controlled her U.S. Senate seat for three decades.
“Well, I don’t know if ‘taking over’ [the GOP] is the right word,” Miller said with a chuckle during an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview Wednesday. “I think the message that is being spread of returning the country back to its Constitutional foundations is absolutely something that can put the Republican Party back on track. It is something that, if embraced, could allow the Republican Party to provide the answers to a nation that is in crisis right now… (more)
“Tea Party” and other ultra-conservative candidates might be able to win Republican primaries, but their agenda is so far out of the mainstream that they don’t have a chance of winning a large number of general elections.
The “Tea Party” might be the best thing that has happened to the Democratic party in the past 18 months.