There's another side to Vile Teabaggery

The Upside to Vile Teabaggery is the mobilization of your hardcore base in a low turnout off year election. And you win at the polls. Life is good.

But there is a Downside of Teabaggery. And the Downside is that all the Normal GOP candidates that should have run for President are scared shitless of all the Teahadists. This in turn has left the GOP with only one candidate that can walk the Pro/Anti Tea Party line at the same time. Willard Milton Romney. Willard is just enough Tea Party and just enough Not Tea Party to weasel his way past his third tier challengers.

And now that Romney is the apparently the nominee in waiting, the GOTP is still haunted by the teabaggery because normal republican establishment figures are also scared shitless of the Teahadists and unwilling to unite around Romney:

This is why the primary season has been so brutal for Romney. To win over the skeptical conservative base [ed note: the author is referring to Teahadists], he needs influential figures on the right to vouch for him. But if they vouch for him, they risk being declared RINOs themselves, establishment sellouts trying to force an impure nominee on the GOP. And they know that any dramatic gesture they make now will be remembered. What if Romney wins the nomination, loses in the fall, and the conservative base concludes they were tricked again – that it’s time to redouble their purity crusade? Or what if Romney wins in the fall and, like George H.W. before him, tries to govern from the middle as president, prompting a GOP civil war. What conservative leader would want to spend the next four years explaining why he or she played such a critical role in elevating that kind of president?

This goes a long way toward explaining the bizarre, protracted GOP primary season. Conservative leaders seem to have concluded that Romney’s opponents would all be poor general election candidates [ed note: No Shit Sherlock], and that it’s best for the party if Romney wins the nomination. This explains why Santorum and Gingrich have received so few high-profile endorsements, and why officially neutral conservatives have nonetheless weighed in at pivotal moments to kill their momentum.

There is an upside to the Crazy and there is a down side to the Crazy. Once you have created the monster that is the Frankenbagger, it is hard to put it down. Sure it has it uses, but long term it is a toxic problem.