2010 is a tipping point year. The results of the primaries Tuesday showed the Tea Party is about to become a real political party, gaining strength at every turn, driven by one overarching idea, the idea that the government is broken and needs fixing. The last time this happened was in the 1850s when the just formed Republican Party, whose one overarching idea was the abolition of slavery, saw that idea draw people from both political parties, but particularly from the Whigs, who were subsumed into the Republican Party and disappeared. It is time now for the Republican establishment to disappear under the swelling voices of those who do not like either party very much, and who want real hope and change, not the Marxist kind, and not the country club kind. The Republican Party is changing, involuntarily it is true, but changing nonetheless. The name may remain, but in 2012 the nominee of the Republican Party will be a small government get off my back Tea Partier.

We’re at a time when all the bigs

Who sit in their palatial digs

Hauling loot in diesel rigs

Laughing, grinning, dancing jigs

Should know that their nice lifelong gigs

Are due to have one of those zigs

That cause these fattened oily pigs

To join the late lamented Whigs