From Fox News

Tea Partiers have found an organizing theme, even if they don’t know it yet. Like beaters flushing quail, they are turning incumbents out of office at an unprecedented rate – both on the left and the right. In effect, they are imposing their own special brand of term limits.

Political pundits are alternately rejoicing or despairing over this unexpected development, depending on the leanings of the latest victim. The passionate energy of the Tea Partiers was welcomed in right-wing circles when it stirred opposition to health care legislation and especially when it lobbed long-shot candidate Scott Brown of Massachusetts into the Senate. Now that it has upset long-time legislator Senator Robert Bennett of Utah and is threatening Arizona’s John McCain, Republicans are having second thoughts. Their anxiety is amplified by the primary contest in Kentucky, where Tea Partiers may push Rand Paul to victory over Trey Grayson, the more mainstream pick of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Tea Partiers already dumped Florida’s Charlie Crist; now there’s concern that party stalwart Orrin Hatch of Utah could be next.

Democrats started out anxious about the Tea Partiers. To lose Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a Republican upstart left no doubt about the group’s influence. Though party pundits have been not-so-secretly rejoicing about the quicksand Tea Partiers are spreading before Republicans, they may quickly change their tune. The loss of West Virginia Representative Alan Mollohan to right-leaning State Senator Mike Oliverio in that state’s primary is another wake-up call. Oliverio honed in on Mollohan’s ethics issues and pounded him on having supported the health care bill. Turns out the Tea Partiers are ambidextrous.

Should Americans celebrate these developments? Yes! Without a doubt one of the most corrosive influences in our body politic is the near-certainty of being re-elected to many Senate and House seats. The folks at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) who each year publish a list of the “Fifteen Most Corrupt Members of Congress” say that the most predictive indicator of joining that unholy club is time in office. Legislators who are voted in year after year acquire an unhealthy disdain for the voters they represent. It is but a short step from comfort to corruption.

Representative Mollohan, a multi-year member of CREW’s “Fifteen Most Corrupt” list, had served 14 terms – nearly 30 years – in office. And, he occupied a seat that his father had held for 14 years before that. His previous popularity and his ethics violations had derived from the amount of pork he was able to deliver on a consistent basis to his district and to friends and family. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he earmarked $369 million in grants to his district for 254 programs over the past ten years. Of that total, according to CREW, $250 million went to five non-profits created by Mollohan and staffed by his friends. Over that period, people associated with these same outfits funneled nearly $400,000 to Mollohan’s campaign and PAC.

While voters have previously been wooed by earmarks, assuming that money funneled to their district came from somewhere and someone else, they are waking up. The nation’s fiscal health is failing, and voters are consequently upending many previously sacrosanct notions. Among those previously taboo topics, for example, is cutting spending on public schools. Governor Chris Christie is daring to take on the militant teachers unions of New Jersey, cheered on by the hard-pressed taxpayers in that most high-taxed of all states. People – especially out of work people – are no longer willing to support the endless raises, bloated administrative budgets and insane work rules demanded by a union that arguably does not deliver a good product. People want a new deal.

Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina has introduced a constitutional amendment to establish term limits on those serving in Congress. He notes that over the past two decades politicians have been reelected 90% of the time. “Americans know that real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians” says DeMint. He is completely right. In poll after poll, a large majority of Americans say they support term limits. The good news is that we may not have to wait for DeMint’s long-shot bill to pass; the Tea Partiers may impose term limits all by themselves.

It’s been a time of Tea parties throughout America, but did anyone really believe that the limited government movement that’s sweeping across the country would arrive at the site of the original Tea party so soon?

Massachusetts? In “red?”

No matter how hard his diminishing flock of supporters tries to spin it, you can thank Barack Obama for that – not only for advancing an overreaching socialist agenda that has galvanized supporters of freedom and free markets like never before, but also for failing to motivate voters inclined to support him and his candidates.

In fact, his campaigning in Massachusetts backfired from the start – turning his endorsement into the “kiss of death.”

Consider for a moment the political impenetrability of this Democratic stronghold: Until yesterday, Massachusetts hadn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972. Not a single member of the state’s Congressional delegation was a member of the GOP. Barack Obama carried the state by 26% just fourteen months ago, and he ostensibly enjoys a 60% approval rating there.

That’s as blue a state as you’re ever going to find, and polling numbers leading up to this year’s U.S. Senate special election gave no indication that anything was going to change.

As recently as three weeks ago, in fact, underfunded and largely unknown Republican State Sen. Scott Brown trailed popular Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley by 17%. Back in November – when voters in Virginia and New Jersey were making their voices heard regarding the Obama agenda – Brown trailed Coakley by 31%.

Clearly the rest of America was slipping away from Obama and his Congressional allies, but not Massachusetts. Never Massachusetts, right?

Over the last two weeks, though, something amazing happened – an “independent voice” began to be heard, first faintly, but soon growing louder and ultimately reaching such a crescendo that it drowned out a noisy din of far left attack rhetoric.

Obama turned independents turned into “decideds” against Coakley – as these voters turned a deaf ear to him and to the millions of dollars worth of desperate noise coming from his political machine, which was supposed to be above that sort of “partisan politics.”

In addition to silencing Obama’s left-wing attack dogs, this “independent voice” also drowned out the “popular” President himself, as Obama’s last-ditch effort to save the flailing Coakley campaign resulted in the sudden, decisive end of a filibuster-proof “Obamajority” in the U.S. Senate.

When Obama made the decision to lay it on the line and campaign in Massachusetts, the race was a statistical dead heat, with surveys showing Coakley ahead by one or two points. By the time Obama had returned to Washington, D.C., Brown had opened up a nine-point lead – a margin even Obama’s vaunted union volunteer army and ACORN-led ground game would be unable to erase.

Clearly, the 40% of Bay State residents who claim to oppose Obama turned out to vote in droves, while a significant portion of the 60% who claim to support him either stayed home or ignored his advice.

To fully appreciate Obama’s “kiss of death” in Massachusetts, we need to back up and look at the broader, national picture.

In November 2008 Obama won Virginia by 6% – yet a year later Republicans stormed to a 60-40% victory in the state’s gubernatorial contest, a 26% swing. In 2008 Obama won New Jersey by nearly 16% – but a year later Republicans unexpectedly captured the state’s Governor’s Office by 5%, a 21% swing.

In New Jersey, Obama campaigned aggressively on behalf of incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, who promptly went on to become the first Democrat to lose a statewide office in the Garden State in 12 years. The same dynamic was at work there: Anti-Obama voters came out in force, while Obama supporters stayed home.

Obviously, much has been made of the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts by a 3-to-1 margin.

That’s true, but independent voters outnumber supporters of both parties. In fact, 51% of Massachusetts voters describe themselves as “unaffiliated” compared to 37% who call themselves Democrats and 12% who describe themselves as Republicans.

According to the results of a new nationwide poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC, Obama’s job approval rating among independents has slipped to 41% – or 12% below what it was a year ago. 1

“My message to my clients? Jump ship now,” one Democratic pollster told the Washington Post. “Obama can’t help you.”2

Indeed. At this point, his support is the “kiss of death.”