Tea Party Candidates Riding Momentum into Mid-term Elections

With hotly contested races shaping up around the country, the impact of Tea Party candidates is being felt everywhere.

Interestingly, Tea Party candidates are running on much of the same platform that catapulted Barack Obama into the White House nearly two years ago. Obviously, the messages vary somewhat based on the fact that many of the Tea Party candidates' best talking points are those addressed specifically at Obama policies and legislation. But that doesn't change the fact that the primary message in both instances is exactly the same -- CHANGE.

Obama used the concept of change and "shaking up Washington DC" to propel him to a historic White House win. But two years into his presidency, Americans feel that the little bit of change that Obama has effected has actually gone in the wrong direction. Regardless of the arguments you want to make about policy and spending, the situation is simply that no politicians have the ability to bring about ground-level changes that are going to directly impact the vast majority of Americans.

Policies at the highest levels of government are rarely designed to impact the vast majority of Americans. One could argue that the new healthcare legislation will have an impact on all Americans - and that may be somewhat true. But for those of us who already have decent insurance and are seeing doctors when we wish to see them, very little is going to change. We'll still have insurance coverage and we'll still see our same doctors. We may pay slightly more or less for coverage, but nothing's really going to change.

In the same sense, even if every one of the most "radical" tea party candidates wins office in November, it would be silly to expect anything to change at the ground-level. Do you expect taxes to go down? Do you expect intelligent spending decisions to be made? Do you expect cuts to wasteful programs and more efficiency in government? If you do, then you haven't been paying attention.