The tea party is bad for Republicans.

4. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) predicted recently that the tea party movement will “die out.” Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who lost his primary race to a tea party-backed candidate, has made the media rounds to accuse the movement and some of its heroes, such as Glenn Beck, of poisoning politics. There is no shortage of Republican grumbling about the primary wins of tea partiers Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, two Senate candidates who are being hammered by Democrats for their anti-big-government rhetoric. Democrats are doing their best to make Republicans answer for it when tea party activists pledge to dismantle Social Security or the Environmental Protection Agency.

But in every political cycle there are “bad” candidates who say the wrong things — and with the right electorate, they still win. The tea party movement is giving Republicans a dream of an electorate, one in which surveys find more GOP-inclined voters enthusiastic about casting ballots than voters who lean Democratic. Democrats have done some damage to the tea party brand — its favorability has fallen in polls — but in general, the presence of a new political force that is not called Republican and is not tied to George W. Bush has given the GOP a glorious opportunity to remake its image, at a time when trust in the party is very low. Some liberals deride the tea party as a new bottle for old Republican wine. But rebranding works. (Even Coca-Cola eventually benefited from the publicity of New Coke.)