Tea Party Reflections

A note from Tea Party Caucus leader Rep. Michele Bachmann's Wikipedia page that makes me like her more:

[Of her realization she was a conservative, she] told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune that she was reading Gore Vidal's 1973 novel, Burr: "He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, I just remember reading the book, putting it in my lap, looking out the window and thinking, 'You know what? I don't think I am a Democrat. I must be a Republican.'"

You know, with O'Donnell, Angle, Miller, and Paladino defeated -- yet the Tea Party movement clearly having energized Republicans and helped them take back the House -- really no one from the whole center-right coalition should be complaining about the outcome of the elections.  The candidates who seemed most outrageous lost, like frontline sacrifices, while their party soldiered on to victory. 

(As for me, remember that I'm at the home of the original Tea Party, Boston, this week -- not to mention cat-sitting for Pagan Kennedy -- and so may be slow to respond to e-mail and the like.  Back on New Year's.  And anyone who thinks today Tea Partiers are unphilosophical dopes, remember that I've been to three and yet am happily attending the American Philosophical Association convention as you read this.  When I get back, barring conversion to Marxism, I will resume defending property rights.)