Professor McDaniel: Tea Party Will Eventually Unite Around Scott Walker

VOX -- The Tea Party has shown it can push GOP politicians to the right and win one-off Senate primaries. But taking on the establishment in an expensive, months-long slog of primaries and caucuses across the country is a more difficult proposition. Even when Mitt Romney looked weak in 2012, the Tea Party didn’t manage to coalesce around a viable alternative. This time, things feel different — candidates like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, who could appeal to Tea Partiers but also potentially win the general election, are considering bids. The establishment could have difficulty anointing one favored candidate if they're split among Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Mitt Romney. And in a recent post at the Mischiefs of Faction blog, political scientist Jason McDaniel of San Francisco State University posits that the Tea Party conservatives will eventually unite around one candidate: Walker.