WASHINGTON (AP) - Tea party-backed candidates helped and hindered Republicans, injecting enthusiasm into campaigns but losing Senate seats held by Democrats in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada that the GOP once had big hopes of capturing.

Republican leaders and strategists are muttering that the same tea party activists who elevated Speaker-to-be John Boehner and the party to power in the House simultaneously hobbled the GOP’s outside shot of running the Senate. Tea partiers largely spurned establishment candidates in the GOP primaries and helped nominate Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado.

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Complaints that tea party hurt GOP’s Senate hopes

It had to happen. Someone was bound to point their finger at The TEA Party and look to pass the blame for losses along to them (The TEA Party). It was inevitable.

The truth is, The TEA Party DID influence some races by supporting candidates. What the TEA Party is NOT responsible for is the LOSS of a race, particularly the ones in question in this story from AP.

Republicans won Senate races in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That put them within three seats of a 50-50 split. In the case, Vice President Joe Biden would have broken the tie and allowed Democrats to retain their majority.

A 50-50 split would have been a workable solution, not the perfect solution, but one that would have been very workable in a *super majority* situation. The TEA Party worked hard to promote candidates that had true Conservative beliefs, sadly, The TEA Party didn’t take things like having a BIG MOUTH or a questionable past into consideration.

In Delaware, tea party activists rallied behind O’Donnell over nine-term moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle. Party leaders tried to crush O’Donnell; the state party chairman said she could not be elected dogcatcher, much less a senator.

Voters went with O’Donnell and Republican officials in Washington largely abandoned the race. There were revelations about financial troubles and the emergence of TV footage in which she spoke out against masturbation and talked about dabbling in witchcraft as a teenager.

On Friday, she blamed Washington Republicans for her loss to Democrat Chris Coons.

That’s right Christine, it was everyone but YOU. Your past, your words, your financial skills, or lack thereof, had nothing to do with your not being elected, it was all because the GOP didn’t back you.

Then there’s Sharon Angle.

Sure, she would be a better Senator than Harry Reid, a monkey would be a better Senator than Harry Reid, but is a person that makes gaffs reminiscent of Joe Biden what the TEA Party wants or someone the Conservative could support and vote for? Apparently not.

Angle was dogged by missteps. She told a group of Hispanic students they looked Asian, drew ridicule for avoiding reporters and suggested a “militant terrorist situation” has allowed Islamic religious law to take hold in some American cities.

“My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States,” she said. “It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

Unlike in Delaware, national Republicans and their allies stood with Angle and waged a bruising campaign that came up short against Reid.

I agree, Sharia law has no place in America, but wouldn’t Angle have been a lot better off to have focused on HER senatorial race and not making racial gaffs? As to why the GOP stood with Angle and not O’Donnell, maybe even the GOP recognized O’Donnell for what she really was, an unelectable ding-a-ling with a questionable past.

Now, let’s take a look at Colorado.

In Colorado, Republicans nominated tea party favorite Ken Buck over Lt. Gov. Jane Norton. Republicans hoped Norton would have an easy race against Sen. Michael Bennet, appointed to the seat that Ken Salazar vacated when he stepped down to become President Barack Obama’s interior secretary.

“Did they help Ken Buck win the nomination? You bet,” said Colorado Republican Party chairman Dick Wadhams. “Were they responsible for his defeat? Absolutely not.”

Buck, a district attorney, proved an easier opponent. Although he had tea party backing, he also had expressed views that Democrats seized on to peel away enough voters, mostly women who disagreed with his comments on rape and abortion.

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A financial blogger and ex-CEO credited with being one of the original “founders” of the Tea Party has come out against the movement, saying it has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting and is now obsessed with “guns, gays and God.”

In a “message” to the Tea Party Wednesday, Karl Denninger declared that he “ought to sue” anyone who uses the Tea Party name “for defamation.”

“Yeah, that’s a joke,” he writes. “But so are you. All of you. Especially Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, and douchebag groups such as the ‘Tea Party Patriots.’”

Denninger writes: “Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party’s own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the ****ing money!”

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Tea Party ‘founder’: Palin, Gingrich a ‘joke’

I am either going to alienate some folks and get kicked out of the TEA Party or I am going to be given kudos for telling it like it really is (was) in the TEA Party, and for telling you how most of these accusations made by Karl Denninger are a lot more truth than some folks are going to want to hear.

Personally, I am not aware of anyone being overly obsessed with guns in the TEA Party, one way or another. Not any more than I have seen in other organizations. So, I have to challenge Denninger on that one. Maybe he knows something I don’t know concerning the TEA Party and guns. I know some folks in the TEA Party carry guns, some that OWN guns, some that simply don’t have anything for guns, but guns have never been an issue that I have witnessed.

Now, let’s talk about the “gays and God” part.

Some TEA Parties have become obsessed with gays and God. Some want to make that an official part of the TEA Party Core Values. Denninger left out the other part of that little equation, the part that gets my goat as much as the *gays and God* crowd, abortion.

Some TEA Party groups want to take on the issues of homosexuality, abortion and religion, in an official capacity, and that is NOT what the TEA Party was created for, or what it was intended to do.

There are some in the TEA Party today that can’t tell you what the Core Values of the TEA Party are, but they are insistent on the idea of the TEA Party taking up the social issues of the day, homosexuality, abortion and religion.

I don’t mean religion like an opening prayer or an invocation, those are issues that most thinking people have NO issue with. Nor do I refer to the act of having a benediction to close a meeting. I am referring to those that truly believe the TEA Party should be a political AND ecumenical organization. I am talking about those that would turn ALL TEA Party activities into a ‘Come to Jesus‘ meeting.

I do not exaggerate, they exist. The TEA Party wasn’t founded for that purpose.

In January of 2009, Market Ticker bloggers including Graham Makohoniuk and Stephanie Jasky suggested “mailing a tea bag” to Congress to protest the planned $800-billion stimulus package and $700-billion bank bailout. Denninger followed that up with a call for a “tea party” protest to coincide with President Obama’s inauguration, thus helping to unofficially launch the political movement.

I was a part OF that Mail Congress a Tea Bag thing. I thought it was a great idea, a protest that was not only direct and to the point, but was inexpensive as well. The perfect protest. It wasn’t too long after that when I began to see an agenda coming into play that was NOT that of the original founders of the TEA Party, it wasn’t a part of the Core Values that ALL TEA Party groups claim to embrace.

The 1st TEA Party rally I attended was nearly my last. It was a local fare, and several of the speakers failed to even mention the TEA Party Core Values. Several speakers addressed their personal agenda of religion and abortion. One older lady, a retired teacher she said, was so much into her rants against abortion that she was in tears with her pleas to ‘stop abortion and save all of those precious little children.‘ I do NOT embellish.

That particular TEA Party rally had a very respectable attendance, but every time a speaker launched on a social, moral or religious issue, every time someone strayed from the heart of the matter, Core Values, many in the crowd walked away, some speaking their distaste for the *evangelical* ambush.

I am as against abortion and homosexuality as it is possible. But the TEA Party, and it’s rallies, are not the platform from which to speak on those social issues.

TEA PARTY CORE VALUES:

�? Uphold the U.S. Constitution

�? Limited Government

�? Fiscal Responsibility

�? Free Markets

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware is calling out the Republican establishment in Washington for not helping her underdog campaign.

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that aired Sunday, the tea party favorite said she has asked the National Republican Senatorial Committee for help but that the group is standing on the sidelines even though her Democratic rival, Chris Coons, is getting a boost from his party.

A spokesman for the Republican committee, Brian Walsh, has noted that the group gave O’Donnell the maximum direct contribution of $42,000 and is working with her campaign.

The committee is not spending heavily on ads as it is in closer races elsewhere. Polls show Coons with a strong lead.

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O’Donnell says GOP establishment not helping her

Maybe she can cast a spell and make the GOP get behind her.

What? Just sayin’…

Seriously, I know we ALL did, and said things in our youth that we wish we hadn’t, but like the guy that throws the pitch that gets knocked out of the park, you just know that O’Donnell wishes she had that one about witchcraft and the Satanic altar date back.

But you’ve got to admit, O’Donnell has spunk, and she’s not backing down either.

O’Donnell calls Coons a Marxist in Del. debate

Delaware Senate candidates Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons tangled with each other over taxes, Afghanistan, whether he’s a Marxist and whether she’s a deadbeat in a combative 90-minute debate that also veered into evolution, abortion, religion and gay rights.

Democrat Coons, the New Castle County executive, and Republican O’Donnell, a conservative activist and national celebrity since her Tea Party-powered primary victory over veteran Rep. Mike Castle, started right off trading insults. He said she supports failed economic policies and extreme education positions, and prefers “partisan bickering” over compromise and solutions. She said voters should choose him if they think their government is too small, their taxes are too low and they want a rubber stamp for President Obama’s failing economic policies.

The moderators – CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Delaware public television anchor Nancy Karibjanian – did their part to make sure no sore subject went unmentioned. In the case of O’Donnell, that meant her personal finances and past TV appearances in which she has talked about subjects like masturbation (equivalent to adultery) and witchcraft (she dabbled in it long ago).

Karibjanian noted an IRS tax lien against O’Donnell for about $12,000 in taxes and penalties from 2005, a 2008 mortgage default judgment on her home, and the bachelor’s degree the 41-year-old candidate received this year “because it took a decade to pay off the tuition. The question, then, is how can voters rely upon your thoughts on how to manage the deficit if you’re having such personal financial issues of your own?”

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O’Donnell calls Coons a Marxist in Del. debate

I honestly have to say, I haven’t kept up with this race. I don’t know anything about Coons, I know little about O’Donnell other than what the media has put out there.

Maybe Coons really is a Marxist, maybe O’Donnell really is a witch, all I know is this, if Christine O’Donnell is the best the GOP could come up with, if the guy she beat was so pathetic that O’Donnell took him down, the GOP in Delaware is in deep poo-poo.

If I had a chance to interview O’Donnell, this is how it might go…

TexasFred, ‘Christine, are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?’

O’Donnell, ‘I’m not a witch at all. I’m an Irish-Italian Roman Catholic from Moorestown, New Jersey, and I never made it to ‘full fledged’ witch, I only dabbled in witchcraft, that’s not like being Samantha or Endora or anything. And Sarah Palin thinks I’m just peachy keen and that I’ll make a great running mate in 2012 by golly, you betcha I will doggone it!’

TexasFred, ‘So, tell us, WHY would Palin think you’re a good choice as HER running mate in 2012?’

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