NP: Bears vs. Seahawks

Mark Silva at the Chicago Tribune's Washington politics blog wonders if the upshot of the TEA party movement might be an actual political party, with Sarah Palin at its head.

On the one hand, I think it's eminently possible. I've been predicting a schism in the GOP between the financial and social conservatives for long than I can remember.

On the other hand, I think you can size the potential market here by the crazy answers on certain polls -- what percentage of Americans think Obama wasn't born in the U.S., or that George W. Bush was the bestest President ever -- and it seems pretty consistently around 20%.

And while that 20% might very much like to play in their own sandbox, it's going to be tough for them to do that and wield any sort of real power at the same time. Now, there's a way this could play out where the financial conservatives do much better as a result of looking less crazy, but that might make them a bit standoffish when it comes to forming a coalition with that same bloc.

In any event, I'm going to keep saying that the 2012 primaries are going to be seismic until something big changes my mind.