The Tea Party has killed the Republican Party.

The Death came as a result of ill health over several years. The patient was sent to hospice care after the 2006 and 2008 elections. But even palliative care could not prevent the pain at the sudden death in Delaware this week.

The patient had complained of severe chest pains during all of the primaries this election season while watching largely unqualified candidates win primaries with the support of the various groups calling themselves the Tea Party movement.

But the final, fatal end came this week when the Delaware Republican primaries rejected the candidacy of nine-term congressman and ex-governor Mike Castle in favor of the unelectable Christine O’Donnell.

Castle was a prohibitive favorite to win the general election in Delaware over Democratic candidate Chris Coons.

O’Donnell has never won a general election. Political handicappers switched the likely winner to the Democratic Party minutes after confirmation of O’Donnell’s win.

O’Donnell brings some unusual baggage as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. O’Donnell has unpaid income taxes of $11,744 that have resulted in an IRS lien. Apparently this is her form of demanding lower taxes … just not paying at all. And O’Donnell just received her degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, 17 years after completing her studies there because she had stiffed the university out of $4,000 in tuition owed.

Until her win this week, O’Donnell was generously presented as a self-described “marketing consultant.” In more common parlance, Ms. O’Donnell has been unemployed and buried in past debt. O’Donnell has run for this Senate seat twice in the past, losing both times by wide margins due to her thin resume and radical political positions.

O’Donnell opposes all abortion rights and has publicly equated masturbation with adultery. Speaking before a conservative religious group O’Donnell said: “We need to address sexuality with young people. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. (And) you can’t masturbate without lust.”

O’Donnell is said to be opposed to gay and lesbians rights and believes in teaching creationism in public schools.

This primary season has seen several Tea Party candidates win Republican primaries. What most have in common are radically conservative political positions.

What many seem to share is a challenge to find a majority in a general election, putting at risk the Republican hopes to capture the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Most voters share anger at the current federal government with Tea Party supporters. But the Tea Party movement wants smaller government and lower taxes, with a bent more libertarian than conservative.

If the Tea Party movement were to dominate American politics what would result?

In the short term, some poorly qualified candidates would gain tremendous responsibility in government with their elections. The federal debt and deficit would grow, since it will require an increase in taxes, not a cut, along with spending cuts, to balance the federal budget. The tolerance for working with others with opposing ideas would be reduced even farther, gridlocking congress.

In the longer term the U.S., already losing ground with innovation, would lose more impetus to compete. Other nations are nationally spurring growth in their “Green” shift in energy, are nationally focusing upon increasing their educational opportunities, and are building and rebuilding the kind of infrastructures that the U.S. now seems to think it cannot afford to maintain.

Without a cohesive national agenda we will find the nation unable to compete with the dedicated resources of other countries.

The anger that the Tea Party engenders might be useful, re-directed to the real problem in Washington today…that our elected officials and bought by Big Business and the Military Industrial complex.

But, for now, prepare for the funeral of the Republican Party. As always, wear black.

Jim Crawford is a contributing columnist for The Tribune and a former educator at Ohio University Southern.