YOU CAN FOOL SOME PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME:

For failed candidates, tea party's the ticket (KENNETH P. VOGEL, 9/16/10 , Politico)

[O]’Donnell, the upset winner over Rep. Mike Castle in Tuesday’s GOP Senate primary, is hardly the only Republican with a losing record who has found success in the anti-establishment tea party. Across the country, many of this year’s tea party candidates are outsiders only because they have failed in previous attempts over the years to become insiders. In fact, some lost multiple Republican primary or general election campaigns before recasting themselves as tea party champions.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of shifting their focus from social or national security issues to the fiscal concerns that have been the tea party’s foundation. But other re-brandings have involved more sweeping stylistic - if not substantive – overhauls by veterans of the political process anxious to portray themselves as apart from it.

In several cases, they’ve been met with open arms by tea party activists, many of whom are new to politics – and this troubles some tea party leaders.

“They haven’t really looked into some of these candidates – it’s enough that they say they believe in freedom,” said Andrew Ian Dodge, the Maine state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, which does not make endorsements.

“There are candidates in some states who are kind of gadflies who suddenly jumped on the band-wagon,” Dodge said, adding that separating them from true outsiders motivated by tea party principles is “something that the tea party movement is very much learning.”

Here in NH, they opposed a woman who'd never run for office to back our failed '96 gubernatorial nominee. Not that there's anything wrong with their decision to run professional politicians.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 17, 2010 5:39 AM