Election Results Show Tea Party Fails to Gain Traction in Western States

Is that Harry Reid in the middle?

​Some of you might have found it particularly hard to greet the Red Dawn of Nov. 3. We admit that it's difficult to face the idea of Tea Party-propelled candidates marching off to Washington with plans to combat imagined New World Order conspiracies within the vaults of the Federal Reserve. Or to consider that some of our nation's leaders are now beholden to people who believe their social security numbers indicate that nefarious banks purchased them at birth.

Take heart, gentle reader. You've got this much to be happy about: The intellectually dishonest and clinically paranoid Tea Party movement suffered some significant losses west of the Mississippi.

As Timothy Egan points out on the New York Times website, the Sarah Palin-anointed Tea Partiers of the West failed to defeat Democrats -- and, in one case, a fellow Republican -- in a number of big races. You can start by taking a look at Palin's home state of Alaska, where write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who despises the Tea Party as a pack of loonies, is beating Palin's pick, Joe Miller.

Here in California, Carly Fiorina -- who courted the Tea Party on the sly while trying to present herself as a mainstream conservative -- failed in her challenge to incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. In Colorado, Tea Partier Ken Buck, who thinks human activity doesn't cause global warming, lost to incumbent Michael Bennet.

In what was perhaps the most gratifying rout of a Tea Party candidate, the puzzling figure known as Sharron Angle lost to incumbent Majority Leader Harry Reid. Even some conservatives believe that Angle -- who demonstrated confusion as to the differences between Asians and Latinos during the campaign, and has partnered with the Church of Scientology to prevent schoolchildren from receiving mainstream psychological treatment -- would have been a particularly unhelpful addition to the U.S. Senate.

So heave a sigh of relief. Who knows? Without those pesky Tea Party patriots around, maybe we'll get lucky, and the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, and Lord Xenu will choose to construct the NAFTA Superhighway out West. Talk about creating jobs.

Follow us on Twitter at @TheSnitchSF and @SFWeekly