Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post writes about a Republican strategist who thinks that the Tea Party will continue to present problems to the GOP because they don’t believe in negotiation but in their passionate believe in the cause. This means that once again there will be a “political brawl” when it comes to the presidential nominee in 2016.

Cillizza thinks that if the Tea Party loses that fight once again that even though it is a heavily Republican group, the Tea Party won’t necessarily be sticking by them that strongly when it comes to the general election. He points out that the composition of the Tea Party is self identified as 38% Republican, 14% Democratic and 39% independent. It’s possible that the nominee could “rally the troops” at least in part because of the “enemy of my enemy” factor.

But if it comes down to a close election there are factors that he didn’t mention, in my opinion. Will the Democratic nominee be someone that produces the visceral hatred so many in the Tea Party feel for Obama? While it’s not accurate to equate being Republican with being racist there are definitely those who voted against Obama because of his race. We just don’t know how many. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee there will certainly be a lot of hatred stirred up by the conservative media and blogosphere. They won’t have a hard time doing that at all. Personally, I don’t think it will be as much as was stirred up by Obama. Since this is based on the assumption that it’s not a Tea Party backed candidate that wins the Republican nomination one question is just how much dislike was raised for the nominee by his opponents in the primaries and whether the voters who identify with the Tea Party will buy into the normal “I lost but this is our nominee that we need to back.” meme. Remember that 39% who consider themselves independents among the Tea party. My guess is that those folks consider themselves independent because of the GOP not being conservative enough for them, or at least quite a few of them do. If that’s the case and they feel that the Republican nominee is just another RINO they could feel going to vote in November 2016 isn’t worth it.