Tea party candidates...

...have pulled some major upsets in the Republican primaries this year and should score some victories in November. (Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Joe Miller and Mike Lee come immediately to mind.) The GOP is expected to win a majority in the House and could even take back the Senate.

But as Mark Shields (above) once said, "Elections are won between the 40-yard lines."

And as the Republican Party gets more and more ideologically pure (and frightening), I can't help thinking that it will become less and less attractive to independents in the middle of the political spectrum. I just don't see how a "hostile takeover" of the GOP by the tea partiers -- in the words of Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks -- is a winner in the long run. Americans just gravitate toward the center.

I think a more likely outcome over the next two or three election cycles is for Senator Jim DeMint, tea party Republican from South Carolina, to get his wish: 30 or so ideologically pure Republican senators mostly talking to each other while the other 70 or so -- Democrats -- pass legislation. The U. S. would then, officially, become a one-party state.