Maine's Tea Party Coup

This weekend, tea party supporters attending the Maine Republican party convention voted “overwhelmingly” to rewrite much of the party platform to reflect their less than mainstream views.

The inmates (the tea partiers) are now officially running the asylum (the Maine GOP). Maine Politics reports that delegates attending the Maine Republican party convention voted “overwhelmingly” to rewrite much of the party platform to reflect their less than mainstream views. The new Maine GOP platform now calls for, among other things, getting rid of the Department of Education, and the Federal Reserve. It also rails against "the UN Treaty of Child Rights" and "Law of Sea Treaty" on the grounds that we must push back against "efforts to create a one world government." The tea partiers also took the opportunity to call for an investigation of (this is an actual quote) the "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth." Also, we've adopted Austrian economics... whatever that means.

It's hard to even know where to begin. On one hand, it is not exactly new news that Tea Party people have some unconventional views. What is news is that Tea Party values are imposing themselves on mainstream Republican party values. Up until now, the primary question for mainstream Republicans is whether the Tea Party would break off from the Republican Party and form their own movement. The events in Maine raise the possibility that the Tea Party is looking to ideologically transform the GOP to reflect their (gulp) "unconventional" ideas.