Griper Blade: Making Every GOP Candidate Choke on Their Tea

Toward the end of last month, I wrote that everyone was nationalizing the craziest teabagger candidates -- that is, everyone but the Democratic Party. If dems put Republicans on the spot with positions held by out-of-state nutjobs, those Republicans would be forced to either reject Tea Party orthodoxy or embrace craziness. The last thing a candidate wants to do is spend a lot of time explaining that they're not Christine O'Donnell -- for more than one reason. My argument went like this:

The only avenue left to dig Democrats out of the hole is to point out the obvious and the undeniable -- a lot of these people are crazy. And not the fun-at-a-party kind of crazy, the bad kind. Put Republicans on the spot, make them defend these lunatics or cut them loose. Are you with Rand Paul on the Civil Rights Act? Do you agree with Alaska senatorial candidate Joe Miller that federal unemployment benefits are unconstitutional? Do you agree with Sharron Angle that Social Security should be phased out and the Department of Education shut down -- or that rape can be a blessing in disguise? Give Republican candidates a choice: appeal to the teabagger base or to the rest of the electorate. It's a situation most won't benefit from. Advantage becomes predicament, since most of that GOP enthusiasm comes from the feverish base. And that's not enough in all cases.

It seemed like a no-brainer to me. And now it seems that the Democratic Party has come to the same conclusion. Run against the crazies, no matter what race you're in...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]