The Tea Party is Gaining Ground?

America's newly formed political party, the Tea Party, aimed toward establishing laws that are radically conservative in their nature. Despite the fact that it is led by a few less than intellectual people, the Tea Party is gaining ground and support in the country much to the surprise of many. The Tea Party formed because certain high-standing and vocal Republicans were not pleased with the road that the Republican party was currently on and felt that the Republican party was too politically centralized and was therefore in need of more radical policies in order to fulfill the position that, in their opinion, all true Republicans should hold. The New York Times article entitled "Tea Party Set to Win Enough Races for Wide Influence" by Kate Zernike from October 14, 2010 explains how the Tea Party is currently getting enough support from Americans to have a noticable influence on American politics:

33 Tea Party-backed candidates are in tossup races or running in House districts that are solidly or leaning Republican, and 8 stand a good or better chance of winning Senate seats. While the numbers are relatively small, they could exert outsize influence, putting pressure on Republican leaders to carry out promises to significantly cut spending and taxes, to repeal health care legislation and financial regulations passed this year, and to phase out Social Security and Medicare in favor of personal savings accounts.

Although the Tea Party is very new, the party and its members are determined on expanding and exterting their political influence. In the House and Senate, according to theis article, the Tea Paarty is beginning to emerge, and even though elections have yet to come, there is a good chance that we might see a number of Tea Party members inflitrating the House and Senate. As the article says, the number of people in the Tea Party who are prospectives for open spots in the House and Senate is not large enough to cause significant change, but these prospectives still consider themselves as Republicans, just more radical Republicans, and might be able to sway the opinions the other, less radical Republicans, and be able to push for the policies that they see fit for a better America. In my opinion, the Tea Party will have its run for the next few years, but will eventually die out, just like all other minority parties because of a lack of supporters and radical policies.