I love this:
At Viguerie’s news conference, Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the country’s largest tea party groups, said conservatives had wanted a candidate like President Reagan. “What we got was a weak moderate candidate handpicked by the Beltway elites and country-club establishment wing of the Republican Party. The presidential loss is unequivocally on them,” she said.
…
Cincinnati Tea Party President George Brunemann, an engineer, was still reeling Thursday from an election night that also saw Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Josh Mandel, lose to Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown.
“I have been trying to come to terms with what the heck is going on,” Brunemann said. “The easy two-word answer for what happened Tuesday is: America died.”
…
“You never heard a single utterance of the words ‘tea party’ from Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan,” Brunemann said. “I believe the downfall of the Republicans this time was that they never gave credit to the tea party.”
If Reagan tried to run now, he would be considered a moderate by these guys and all the way through the election Ryan was considered a Tea Party darling. The people who try to run for statewide office who have Tea Party credentials lose, a candidate for President the Tea Party liked would get crushed and these guys don’t even realize it. It’s kind of fun listening to them (it would be fun if they didn’t have so much influence).
