Director of Research Samuel Gregg is among those reacting to last night’s CNN/Tea Party Debate on National Review Online. His first point is that “when CNN hosts a Tea Party–sponsored debate, you know we’re not in 2008 anymore.” Gregg’s take is that the debate was a lot more mainstream than the network wanted us to think, and that the economic questions raised and debated are going to be the central issues of the 2012 election:

Almost all of the candidates demonstrated their ability to raise sharp questions about the present administration’s specific policies but also about the basic philosophy informing those positions. The question running through my mind was how the president was going to provide convincing (let alone coherent) responses to the critiques I heard of policies ranging from Obamacare, to his administration’s not-so-subtle association with some of America’s worst examples of crony capitalism, to the ramping up of deficit spending that has produced so few tangible results in terms of employment and growth.

Gregg doesn’t see the Tea Party’s influence declining anytime soon:

It was also revealing that the economic questions asked at this forum closely mirrored many of the issues raised at the previous debates. This suggests that all the talk about the Tea Party’s running out of steam since 2010 seems less convincing than ever. Whether the Republican party likes it or not, the Tea Party is still galvanizing American conservatives and also, perhaps more importantly, independents. And that spells deep trouble for the Left in 2012.