Rasmussen: Tea Party Could Challenge GOP

Most Americans identify themselves as having become more conservative in the last year, which coincides with the growth of the tea party movement. As a result, the Republican Party must figure out how to make the tea party insurgents an integral part of the giverning process, writes Christopher Caldwell in Sunday's New York Times.

Caldwell, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, reviewed "Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System" by pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen for The New York Times Review of Books. He writes:

"The Republican Party’s leaders will need to sit down respectfully with the people who brought them to power and figure out what they agree on. If Republicans make the error that Democrats did under President Obama, mistaking a protest vote for a wide mandate, the public will turn on them just as quickly."