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**Written by Doug Powers

Harry should start sprinkling Zoloft on his pomegranates if he actually still believes this:

The days of the Tea Party’s influence on American politics are numbered, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this weekend.

The Senate’s top Democrat told a home state newspaper that he expects the conservative activist moment’s grasp on the GOP to diminish, a bold prediction given the influence that group showed Saturday in Ames, Iowa, where Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a Tea Party darling, won an influential presidential straw poll.

Reid also predicted that the Tea Party would lose a number of seats next year, and said that the Tea Party would go extinct when the economy turned around — something he also said in January.

I’ll repeat what I wrote back then about why a lousy economy did not directly cause the formation of the Tea Party, and what Harry can do to facilitate the movement’s demise — that is, if he’s really serious about it:

The health care takeover and all manner of shock & awe-style spending binges and pork shams Harry Reid was at the forefront in shoving down America’s throat was much of the reason the Tea Party came to fruition, and it’s now likely to stay motivated as long as politicians like Reid remain in office and committed to finishing the job. This means, somewhat ironically, that if Harry Reid wants to help fast-track a Tea Party breakup, the greatest single contribution he could make would be to resign his Senate seat.

Read more from Glenn Cook at the Las Vegas Review Journal.

**Written by Doug Powers

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