By focusing on Tea Party-endorsed challengers who helped shake up the Republican Party establishment, the latest TIME cover story seems designed to plant a seed of doubt into voters? minds.
But, in general, David Von Drehle plays his piece pretty straight, as when he discusses Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio:
The theme of the drama is clear. In an age of Big Government solutions to crushing public problems, the new script for the GOP is adapted from the famous words of the late William F. Buckley Jr., conservative guru. The Republican Party is standing athwart the Age of Obama, yelling, Stop! The party may not have an agenda, entirely, but it certainly has a battle cry. As Rubio has put it, “We have reached a point in our history when we must decide if we are to continue on the free-market, limited-government path that has made us exceptional or if we are prepared to follow the rest of the world down the road of government dependency.”
For embattled Democrats, facing the looming loss of the House of Representatives and a much weakened position in the Senate, this is rich. They can’t help feeling that talk of fiscal discipline from the GOP is like a Sunday-morning temperance sermon delivered by a Saturday-night drunk. It’s especially galling because they believe the mess of broken glassware and dirty ashtrays is being blamed on them.
There?s a reason for this blame, Democrats. If the free spending under George W. Bush was bad, you could describe the past two years as ? to quote Roy ? ?George W. Bush on steroids.?
