Could More Democrats Capture Tea Party Fever?

This weekend’s results from Rasmussen on party identification raise an interesting question. Can Democrats exploit Tea Party fervor to keep seats in Congress? A.C. Kleinheider takes a look at Tennessee, where some of those battles will be fought in 2010:
Gov. Phil Bredesen was unique in his ability to out-Republican a GOP opponent and get away with it. Progressives are right when they say that there’s no point in trying to be Republican lite. Given the choice between a Democrat acting like a Republican and a real Republican, voters will choose the Republican. But that doesn’t mean that Democrats need to come at the electorate with a standard-issue liberal portfolio either.
This tea party movement, this seething anger, is being driven and co-opted by Republicans. But at its core, the outrage isn’t ideological. It isn’t even necessarily anti-government. It’s just anti-this-government.
Those caught up in tea party hysteria are the kind of voters Ross Perot captured in 1992. Two years later, without Perot, these foaming, vaguely culturally conservative, middle-income voters went Republican. READ MORE...