California's GOP Senate Primary & Tea Parties

A weekend editorial by Allysia Finley in the Wall Street Journal decried the Tea Party members' effects on the California GOP Senate primary next week.

In her well-written piece, Ms. Finley suggested that Tea Party enthusiasts may be responsible for nominating a middle-of-the-roader, Tom Campbell, as they doubt Carly Fiorina's credentials, but can't deliver sufficient support for Chuck DeVore to nominate him.

I found it all a bit too hysterical. Having been to two Tea Party events since last October, both at the US Capitol, I can't say that I find the movement, such as it is, to be much more than a crystallization of conservative disgust with high taxes, too much government spending and a lack of a sense of reality by elected representatives of either party.

If you removed the words "Tea Party" from Ms. Finley's piece, it would merely describe a not atypical choice among voters in many elections.

I faced such a choice in New Jersey's general election for Governor last November. Chris Christie wasn't the true conservative in that race. He was the GOP moderate, well to the left of a much more conservative independent whose name I now cannot even recall. Corzine, of course, was the sitting uber-liberal.

Anytime three candidates vie for an office or nomination, you're going to have an unstable dynamic which can allow the moderate to triumph.

Isn't that part of our political system? Doesn't it discriminate for the majority, which is rarely rabidly conservative or liberal?

What's so unusual about next week's California GOP Senate race, in that regard?

Nothing at all.

But it seems to be yet another opportunity for someone to wring their hands about the "Tea Partiers" and their destructive effect upon yet another election.