I don't think the left should be in a hurry to see the Tea Party disappear. They represent a threat to the GOP as I see it, in that they are muddying the political picture and scrambling the slate of candidates. And I think that "libertarians" will wind up muddying the "message" even more. The Tea Party risks being caught between the GOP (anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-drug, pro-religion) and what passes for libertarianism in this country (pro-drug, pro-choice, pro-lgbt). Being on the same side on a couple of issues doesn't come close to bridging that gulf. When it finally disappears it will probably just be absorbed into the GOP and any dissent stamped out. The longer that takes to happen, the more political damage the GOP suffers.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
