I blogged earlier that the best way to deal with anti-establishment populists was through strategic election reform that empower local t(hird)-parties.  I believe that today's tea-party protests, of which Josh Marshall does a great job of showing are very extremist in their rhetoric, show how much we need to give non-extremist Republicans a realistic exit threat from their party so that these folks can't keep wagging the dog.  This exit threat is not going to be the Democratic party, and so the only other constructive option are third parties, but not the sort of third parties we are accustomed to....

What we need are local T(hird)-Parties that contest only local elections, and o.w., vote strategically together and engage in civil issue advocacy.  Now, chances are there'll still be third parties that keep on contesting less local elections and that are quite illiberal, but if we used winner-doesn't-take-all elections in state assembly elections, but not state senate elections, then these other third parties, likely including today's tea-partiers, that fail to employ the politics of Gandhi, trying to move the center of political opinion/practice, will not be influential.

dlw