Bad day for the Tea Party

Suzanne Bonamici, keeping a blue district very blue, indeed

Apparently, the folks in Oregon's 1st Congressional District don't much care for tea.

Yesterday, Democrat Suzanne Bonamici won a decisive (double-digit) victory over Republican Rob Cornilles in the race to replace David Wu as that district's congressional representative.

Tea Party folks might want to take note.  Their brand of politics doesn't sell over here in the Pacific Northwest.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee saturated the airwaves with ads showing footage of Rob Cornilles declaring himself the "original Tea Party candidate."  In Oregon, that's akin to calling yourself a chronic porn hound.

(And aren't we glad this race is over?  Here in Oregon, we don't do ugly like they do in South Carolina or Florida, but speaking for Maty and myself, we were still mighty sick of seeing all the political ads on the boob tube.)

"I hate you all."

Meanwhile, in Florida, Mitt Romney, the man Tea Partiers love to hate, absolutely clobbered Newt Gingrich in that state's Republican primary.  Another double-digit loss.  The ever-magnanimous Gingrich forwent the traditional congratulatory phone call to his opponent, but vowed to fight on in the remaining 46 states.  Even though his campaign did not manage to get his name on the ballot in at least one of those forty-six.  (Oh, yeah, and he called on Rick Santorum to drop out of the race.)

All good for a laugh.  It is still too early to be sure, but it seems that Mitt Romney is well on his way to winning his party's nomination.  Now, it is just a matter of how much damage Newt Gingrich chooses to mete out as his own campaign crashes and burns.  I predict his vitriol will be directly proportional with the size of his (unwarranted) ego.  Bad news, Republicans!

The extreme right-wing of the Republican party is getting a good dose of the medicine that lefties and progressives on the Democratic side of the ledger know all too well.  And that is this:  their party deems it unnecessary to cater to their concerns.  The GOP knows right-wingers have nowhere else to go.

It will be interesting to see whether the Tea Party folks will swallow that bitter pill or if they will let their blind rage set fire to the Republican house of cards.  Many of the Tea Party folks feel that the whipping they received in 2008 was a result of having settled for "liberal" John McCain.  And, of course, they've got this Ragnarok/Rapture complex, which just might propel them onto the path of mindless destruction.

Rage on, Tea Partiers!