Thursday, February 17, 2011

I Called It. Sort of.

In a post I made after the most recent election, I suggested that the rise of the Tea Party had created a de facto three party game in Washington: A coalition of Obama with either the traditional Republicans or the Tea Party was sufficient to pass legislation. At first glance, the latter coalition seemed unlikely, but not impossible, although I couldn't think of any specific issues on which it could come together.

We now have one:
President Obama scored a victory today in the House when Tea Party Republicans helped scrap funding for a jet engine the White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have been trying to kill for years. (USA Today, Feb 16, 2011)

3 comments:

Jonathan said...

Congratulations. Interesting development.

Douglas Knight said...

The second comment on that post said "The difference is that the Tea Party people tend to be republicans who haven't sold out yet. Aside from that they have basically the same policies." Which fits this example.

Douglas Knight said...

Actually, this is not a good example because it already crossed party lines. USA Today linked to NYT, which had more specific details about the previous vote.