Why the Tea Party is still winning… And why GOP incumbents are going to have to fight tooth and nail to hold on to their jobs… Attitudes about the health-care law are more nuanced than the political debate might suggest… February jobs report is better than expected: 175,000 jobs created last month, unemployment rate ticks up to 6.7%... Ukraine: Not as divisive of a political subject as you might think… Previewing CPAC’s Day 2 and recapping Day 1… And best of luck, Domenico -- we’re going to miss you. FIRST THOUGHTS. Why the Tea Party is still winning: Yes, some of the more prominent establishment Republicans (John Cornyn, Pete Sessions, Greg Abbott) won their primaries on Tuesday. And, yes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems well positioned to win his in May. But if you want to see signs that the Tea Party is winning right now -- and that McConnell and other Senate Republicans facing primary challenges possibly will have to fight for their political lives -- just look what has transpired over the past week. While Cornyn won his primary and avoided a run-off, 41% of Texas Republicans still voted for someone else, including Rep. Steve Stockman, who ran a non-existent campaign (can you run a NON-campaign?). In other words, more than 4 in 10 GOP voters broke against the No. 2 Senate Republican, even though he hasn’t committed any ideological offenses (other than recruiting Charlie Crist for the Senate in 2009). Then look at the other results from Texas: The VERY conservative Dan Patrick seems poised to become the state’s next lieutenant governor, and a handful of incumbent GOP state legislators lost to primary challengers. And then yesterday, we saw McConnell raise a rifle at CPAC, suggesting that he needed a stunt...
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