Selling out or side-tracking; with both federal houses under the GOP, it will not take long for earmarks to become essential legislative function, "to prevent Obama from having and using a blank checkbook" being the new mantra; and deficit reduction will become "clearly needed long-term, but too severe a move now, and the recovery will be impacted, and we must govern responsibly."
Newsweek, here.
National Review Online, here.
Rand Paul being lightning rod - for now, for fifteen minutes, (the upper bound of the attention span of a GOP-voting tea bagger), and then back to business as usual.
Don't tread on them. Don't even step near them. Keep them nice, on ice, until 2012, and then napalm them again with all that same old stuff. Call them again "grassroots." Same old, same old.