GOP attacks fizzling?

Polling data from ABC shows that the tea party movement is fizzling out, and doing little damage to the Democrats. The movement is drawing support from the Republican party almost exclusively, and the movement's supporters mostly lean Republican already. Only 8 percent of its own members are even active anymore, the movement has little room for growth, Americans have decided that the more they learn about the movement the less they like, and they don't want to learn any more about it.

Another fizzle: GOP voter enthusiasm for the 2010 midterms is dropping like a rock.

Fizzle: a lot of the tea-party shrieking about the evils of Big Gummint have fizzled out as the need for Gummint becomes laughably obvious due to the recent disasters. Bobby Jindal, already a figure of ridicule for making fun of volcano research before a volcanic eruption cut Europe off from the rest of the world, is now being forced to eat his words about government spending as he screams for Gummint to help clean up the BP oil. Meanwhile the heart of tea-party country, the "we-hate-Obama" belt running through Tennessee and neighboring states, is underwater and everyone is hollering for...help from the Gummint.

Fizzle: despite all the anti-Obama screeching, to the effect that he botched the oil-spill response and that it's "Obama's Katrina", only 26 percent say he's doing a poor job -- the same 26 percent that hates all things Democratic.

And why is this important? In midterms, timing is everything. The Dems lost the House because the NRA got a ton of momentum in September 1994, when the gun bill was passed. The Dems won the House back in 2006 partly because they had momentum: the GOP sex scandals blew up just before the voting. And now the GOP, which had hoped to retake the House this fall, is losing some, um, tumescence in its effort to get people riled up.


Partly because they sound kind of silly. To wit:

Day 1. We hate Big Gummint! Big Gummint should do little or nothing!

Day 2. Why isn't Big Gummint helping more in the Tennessee flooding?

Day 3. Why isn't Big Gummint moving faster on the BP spill?

Day 4. Why isn't Big Gummint moving faster to secure the Arizona border?

Day 5. Why isn't Big Gummint moving faster to follow Oklahoma's lead in shoving probes up women's vaginas in abortion clinics?

Day 6. Why isn't Big Gummint stripping the citizenship from terror suspects -- while letting them keep their guns?

Day 7. ...We hate Big Gummint!