Hey, Republican Establishment: WAKE UP!!!

That's what a recent Rasmussen poll unequivocally says:

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

Among Republican voters, 39% say they'd vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.

Here's Hot Air's analysis:

Fortunately, there is no such thing as a Tea Party, er, Party, which Rasmussen asked respondents to assume when answering this survey.  It would take too long to form such a party, and as the results above show, it would be a self-defeating process, especially in 2010.  A split on the Right would produce another Democratic victory at a moment when Congress desperately needs a course correction from its radical, statist path.

The news here is not good at all for Republicans, however.  Even registered GOP voters split 39/33 on whether to vote for a generic candidate from their own party.  This reflects the damage done to the GOP during 2001-6, when voters thought they were electing small-government, fiscal-restraint politicians, and wound up instead with porkers who spent hand over fist.  Democrats don't have that same kind of problem; they have 71% of their voters locked in to the party, with only 7% favoring the Tea Party brand.  Independents, as noted above, are even less enamored of the GOP, favoring the Tea Party 33/12, with 25% going Democrat.

This is an absolutely critical thing for the GOP establishment to understand.  Long-time readers of this blog have known for a long time that the Dem gains over the past few years are not due to a leftward drift in the people of the country, but because of the departure of the GOP establishment from its base.  It's still a right-center nation, but neither party in recent years has appropriately represented right-center principles, and that's where the GOP has really failed.  The McCain nomination is the crown jewel of that failure, and it is now time to get back to the conservative history and roots of the party.

The danger here is that people on the Right will try to actually make a run at a third party.  That is the worst possible course of action because it will guarantee Democrat victory.  Yeah, the GOP leadership has lost its way.  But not everyone there is part of the problem.  There are a few top-level GOPers who are die-hard conservatives, and have the political firepower to become a vibrant, effective new leadership that will return the GOP to power in Washington by returning to its base.  We need to reclaim the GOP from the bottom up, not build an entirely new party that will play third fiddle indefinitely.

Here's the bottom line:

The key in 2010 is to have the GOP represent the Tea Party brand, and the only way to do that is to firmly insist on fiscal restrain and reduction of government as the platform for the election.  The Right needs to put aside all of its usual hobby horses and focus on the message from the Tea Party movement.  If they need an excuse, call it a moment of national crisis as the Democrats attempt a takeover of the health-care and energy industries.  The next election has to be fought on those narrow terms in order to bring the GOP into line with the tea-party momentum and unite against what is clearly a fringe progressive movement to massively expand an already-broke government.

If the Republican Party can do that, these generic numbers will become formidable.  If not, expect another cycle of loss and frustration.

And, I would venture to say, it would be the beginning of the end of a free and prosperous America as a global leader.

Let's pray the GOP wakes up.  A few phone calls and e-mails from you and I would help.

There's my two cents.