Republican politicians, pundits, and many of their various minions and sub-lackeys have begun to proclaim this the start of a great Obama backlash, the natural reaction of average americans when confronted with the pressures of a socialist government.
Democrats recently won an open seat in a conservative area of southwest PA, coinciding with a Republican congressman and proiminent christian conservative in Indiana resigning because of an affair he had with a married coworker. Additionally Specter lost in a Democratic primary, and to a presumably more progressive candidate.
None of this of course will halt the spin machines, which have already been set to hyper-speed. Republicans hope to narrow the anti-incumbent sentiment to target only Democrats and the less than far right (those who only want to rewrite science textbooks) as their victims in the 2010 general election.
Fortunately, Democrats often do really silly, almost halfway democratic, but still mainly stupid things, like running 2 candidates against the lone Republican in a 3 way one-time election because they're constitutionally obligated to put a white guy in the race.
I'm skeptical of the importance of this because it happened in Hawaii and by tomorrow I will have again forgotten that it too is a state, but since Democrats lost an apparent lock of a win in Barack Obama's hometown, things might get even more silly.
Fortunately, the other side has recruited the best of the brightest. In Utah, 3 term incumbent Bob Bennett (should've been a 1st base coach with a name like that), couldn't even make it out of his the Republican convention, let alone to his party primary, despite voting the party line 88% of time while maintaining a right wing stance on every major issue. In Kentucky, the primary winner is the son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, creatively named Rand Paul, who sadly might even be more popular after saying he wouldn't vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The common link? It's not the fact that Utah and Kentucky couldn't go 21 minutes without being the butt of a joke before this, or that the 5 reddest states in the country have a combined 1 pro sports team. The tie-in is the smell of chamomile, or maybe lemon verbena. Tea baggers claim responsibility for a unstoppable insurgency movement, the result of which will be a takeover of Congress and the White House by 2012.
I can't even imagine how long each day must feel to these people, knowing a black man is the leader of the free world. They probably waste a lot of time stressing out about it, sweat pouring down their button downs and soaking the seats of their SUVs, which in turn frustrates them into being a little too snarky to the various immigrant laborers working about their home.
The notion, apparently, is that tea-baggers, like liberals but motivated differently, disdain Republican neo-cons, disgusted because George W. Bush himself ended up too left wing. I find it unrealistic to believe that a group of organized Republicans are the type to buck the entire establishment, or that a few elections somehow symbolize an entirely new Republican party. Perhaps their internal meetings even go something like this:
For the time being, I refuse to be impressed by nerfballs winning in states that wouldn't vote reasonably if they had that Staples easy button. Kentucky didn't even elect George Clooney's dad when ran for Congress in 2006. What kind of sense does that make? The way I see it, no tea- bagger will beat a Democratic incumbent in 2010, and maybe not even win a single open Democratic seat.
Truly, I think everyone is just killing time, because the next 2 years Sarah Palin will take up about 93.4% of the space on television and in newspapers (if they exist by then). The system is set up very comfortably for our culture though, because I'm pretty sure one could purposely avoid all news for at least 7 months and still blend in seamlessly with most situations they find themselves in.
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