Strange Brew

The party is on, tea is served, and everyone is invited.

Both political parties are busy trying to serve-up their own brand of tea, but the Tea-Party faction insists on its own brand. Joining the party means imbibing a strong, robust, undiluted brew that the mainstream doesn't have the stomach for.

Interesting that mainstream conservatives can resist the Tea-Party caucus as radically conservative. The so-called conservative wing of the political spectrum knows very well that such an extreme budget-policy position is neither populist or politically pragmatic. So, we see both the liberal and conservative wings positioning the Tea Party to take the risk.

The third-party element is predictably being set up as counter party to the risk. It is being binomially co-opted despite attempts to throw their own party independent of the mainstream. It is difficult for the Tea Party delegation to avoid the inherent risk an organizational tautology presents.

Breaking the cause-effect relationship of circular, political realignment is no easy task. While the Tea Party identifies the deficiency of probable policy options, the severity of the options it represents will facilitate moving the center of the political spectrum to the right, which effectively limits the policy options (increasing the probable risk proportion at the margin).

Redefining the center may be what the Tea Party caucus wants, but there is a point of diminishing returns. The two mainstream parties have organized to control that marginal risk to derive a stable, predictive value, and they will position a radical caucus to support it.

The party is on, tea is served, and everyone is invited whether the hosts like it or not. The tea party presents the opportunity for real pluralism, and despite best efforts to control the ingredients, the brew can have a strangely radical affectation, nonetheless.