The Tea Party was able to upset several establishment Republican candidates during the 2010 Republican primaries. And while some of their candidates did go on to win in the general election, they also cost the Republican party several winnable seats by nominating unelectable candidates in blue or purplish states. So what happens if they were more successful in purging RINO's during the primaries?
The one primary they came the closest but fell short was in New Hampshire, where Kelly Ayotte barely won the nomination over Ovide Lamontagne by 1,659 votes. So that race can easily be flipped. Another is the Iowa Governor race where former Governor Terry Branstad won by about 21,392 votes against Bob Vander Plaats. Perhaps the third candidate drops out, and Vander Plaats gets his votes and does better at attacking Branstad as too much of a moderate in order to win.
But the big race I'm looking at that could possibly have national implications was in Arizona. What if John McCain lost to J.D. Hayworth? Perhaps the third candidate Jim Deakin dropped out and most of his votes went for Hayworth, and he did a better job at attacking McCain for his more maverick positions and for losing to Obama. In the end Hayworth pulls off the biggest upset of the primaries and beats McCain in a squeaker. How does the national media react to this outcome and what effects will it have on the perception of the Tea Party and their chosen candidates in the rest of the country? They would have kicked their last Presidential candidate out of the party less than two years since he was their standard-bearer.
So of those three races, which ones do the Tea Party candidates win in the November election, and what would the defeat of John McCain in the primary do toward the national opinion of the Tea Party and does that affect the November 2010 elections at all?