"... sucking the life out of the Republican Party ..."

...................................................................................................................................................................
Letter: A political sea lamprey
By Kevin Gardner, December 24, 2013

State Rep. Rick LeVasseur’s “explanation” of the Tea Party phenomenon (Monitor letter, Dec. 19) is typical of the self-important bombast that seems to be all this movement is capable of producing.

His letter calls itself an explanation yet doesn’t contain one. Perhaps that’s appropriate for something that calls itself a party but isn’t one.

Why isn’t the Tea Party a party, anyway? Perhaps it’s because it has no unity, no program, no organization, no methodology. Instead, it has a beautiful dream of imposing constitutional Shariah law on the country, which in its fevered fantasy will instantly perform radical liposuction on the federal government, thus restoring our polity to an Arcadian state of individual liberation. This, it intones, is what the founders intended. Never mind the details, okay?

To accomplish this sacred aim, the Tea Party has eschewed the corruptions and compromises of ordinary consensus-building and has shape-shifted into a political sea lamprey. It is now busily engaged sucking the life out of the Republican Party, whose empty husk it will reanimate as soon as every last RINO is extinct. The belated realization by mainstream Republicans that their party is being parasitized by political pod-people will make for rich entertainment as we head for the great Tea Party showdown in 2016.

That’s the real value of LeVasseur’s “explanation.” It promises wondrous absurdities yet to come, perhaps even enough to make me stop missing Bill O’Brien.

...................................................................................................................................................................