"The Post asked political experts whether the Tea Party will help or hurt President Obama. Below are responses from Robert Shrum, Ed Rogers, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Dan Schnur and Donna Brazile. "
While the Tea Party movement is being a big political issue, the Washington Post posted an interesting article that listed different perspectives of political experts on the Tea Party movement on affecting the President, Democrats, and the Republicans. Some says the Tea Party will help President Obama, and some says it will hurt the President. It is worth to read the different perspectives on the Tea Party effect and to see how it will affect the politics and elections, especially the upcoming 2010 congressional elections.
Robert Shrum - The Tea Party is the best thing happened to President Obama and the Democrats.
The Tea party "produced unwanted and unabashedly extreme candidates who will kill the Republicans' best hopes for 2010."
Ed Rogers -" The Tea Party is a big problem for President Obama and his party this year and probably through 2012." "After the November elections, however, many Republican leaders will be intimidated by the Tea Party's success and will worry about the challenge its candidates could present in the Republican primaries in 2012. The result: GOP elected officials will not want to be accused of compromising with Obama on anything." "Obama, in turn, will have to pander to his base, making governing all but impossible"
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend - "So the Tea Party may help the president not only in this election but, most interestingly, with policy." "By constantly raising the issue of the long-term deficit, it is forcing a discussion on how we pay for programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which take up a large part of the federal budget." "The Tea Party will provide the president precisely the opening he needs."
Dan Schnur - "While the national reputation of the Tea Party movement does not appear to strongly affect swing voters in one direction or another, and while the broader political and economic trends work strongly against the party in power, the individual eccentricities of insurgent Republican candidates could provide opportunities for the Democrats pick off a few seats here and there."
Donna Brazile - It will neither help nor hurt Obama. "Polls show that 50 percent of Americans have no opinion of the Tea Party."
