Now That One Election's Over With...

...I can start worrying and obsessing about another.

Lexington looks to the possible presidential candidates on the Right for 2012. Takeaway:

But herein lies an exquisite dilemma. If the party rejects the wild and woolly candidates on the tea-party right, it will extinguish some of the fire that lit up the mid-terms. Plenty of more conventional politicians are queuing up or standing ready to be drafted: Mitt Romney with his mountain of cash and experience, and a football team of competent state governors such as Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal. But it won't be easy for these pragmatic types to mobilise the anger that galvanised the party in the mid-terms. There are riskier possibilities, such as Florida's Marco Rubio (the Republican Obama), and perhaps even General David Petraeus - but the former may too young and untested and the latter, for all his military accomplishments, has a wooden persona.

It's going to be pretty interesting to see whom the Republicans choose to give the nod to, now that they've seized the House and actually have to start behaving like responsible legislators. Personally, I don't think that the Tea Party movement is going to survive a brush with power. It's very, very easy to howl "Slash the state" when you're not a part of the state. It's one of the reasons why I abandoned anarchism as a viable political model. It's profoundly easy to denounce a budget busting bill, provided that budget busting bill doesn't help you.

So I dunno. I'd like to see the Republicans tack towards the center. Actually to be honest, I'm begging them to. But I don't see it happening. I perceive political parties as being focus group driven and right now, the focus group on the Right is screaming for something other than thoughtful governance.