They had jolly well better, if they want to survive

From the Wall Street Journal today, it seems the Tea Parties are starting to band together:

Nowhere is this evolution more vivid than in Virginia, where a federation of more than 30 groups scattered across the state now has the ear of the Republican governor, top state legislators and the state's congressional delegation.

...

Similar coordinating efforts are underway in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Virginia, Texas and Ohio.

Lacking any kind of national cohesion or unity, and with the only real centralizing document having been written by the same GOP that spent like drunken sailors during the Bush years, the Tea Party runs a real risk of being subsumed by the GOP. And that presents the very real threat of becoming a simple "red meat" base section -- a group whose issues occasionally get trotted out around election time and praised rhetorically, but never really taken to heart.