re: #30 Dr Lizardo

certainly, a failure on the Tea Party’s part will have the effect of causing the leadership of the GOP to take a much dimmer view of them; after all, if it comes to that point, the Tea Party will have lead the GOP to disaster.

Not so sure about this. The GOP leadership already has a pretty dim view of the Tea Party, but the TP Congressmen don’t care because they have more to lose by being pragmatic than by going down guns blazing. Doing anything to help govern would get them primaried by someone even more insane. The average (average!) PVI on the districts from the 80 guys that signed that crazy letter is R+14.