NOW THIS IS GOOD – AT 7:01 P.M. ET:  I admire people in politics who, if they make a mistake, work to correct it.  It's far better than to make excuses or, Obama style, blame someone else.  Again, from Fox:

In the wake of the Tea Party's 2010 victories and losses, a new effort is underway to improve vetting and candidate recruitment. It is an explicit acknowledgement of past mistakes to avoid in the future.

Ned Ryun of MajorityAmerica.org is running a nationwide "New Leaders" program with several Tea Party factions and says the movement is going through some rigorous self-appraisal.

"I will say this when I'm talking with these local leaders they have mentioned by name Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle and said we'd prefer not to have that again in 2012. In many ways they felt it was damaging to the movement to have candidates like," Ryun said.

It is a goal being embraced by several of the major organizations within the broader Tea Party movement.

"We've got to do some vetting of the candidates because we don't want someone getting out there announcing they're a Tea Party candidate, getting some good support and suddenly we discover something terrible about them," said Judson Phillips who organized the first Tea Party Convention as a founder of Tea Party Nation.

Tea Partiers admit they did not know much about Republican Christine O'Donnell's background before supporting her for the GOP nomination in Delaware. It will never be known if a well-run Republican campaign in Nevada may have ousted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but Tea Partiers are painfully aware that Sharron Angle spent more time running from reporters than she did waging a credible campaign.

To the Tea Party, such setbacks amount to growing pains and the operative word is growing. "We want to see candidates that can be far more credible, that are able to effectively communicate the ideas that we know are winning ideas. And not have the other things that came with O'Donnell and Angle campaigns," Ryun said.

COMMENT:  Wonderful attitude.  Examine what went wrong, and fix it.  The Tea Partiers are, of course, denounced as kooks, extremists, racists, nutballs.  In fact, they appear to be thoughtful people who know how to build a movement and improve it as they go.  Kudos.

November 26, 2010