Surely porcupines mate, but exactly how they do it is a prickly matter.

Can the GOP, struggling for a message beyond "Don't Blame Us, We Gave Obama Our Mess," absorb energy from the Tea Party without losing the support of moderate Republicans and Independents? And can the Tea Party, struggling for broader appeal, cozy up to the GOP without losing its steam?

That is the the dance of the seven veils we see everywhere between the GOP and the Tea Party. In some primary races, the Tea Party threw out GOP establishment candidates like Utah Sen. Bob Bennett and Trey Grayson in Kentucky. In other races, GOP candidates quickly learned their lessons and toed the Tea Party line. And where Tea Party candidate have won, it has always been Republicans taking the Sharron Angles and Rand Pauls under their wings. And also, as a certain twittering harpy would add, it's hard to find a Tea Party candidate who isn't running on the Republican ticket.

Given that 98 percent of teabaggers say they will vote for Republican candidates, what's the problem here? Don't the two groups overlap enough to actually be considered one group? Yeah, that's the sticky part.

The Tea Party includes a lot of self-identified Independents, most of whom regularly vote Republican, and even a few Reagan Democrats who never got the memo. So the Tea Party wants to tout its own separate and rather meaningless identity. And with that separate identity comes the support of fringe elements like paramilitary groups, racists and other conservative extremists. Oh my! but the rhetoric is scorching, and for the GOP, that's the real problem: how to keep the hatred in the Big Tent at a nice simmer without letting it boil over into a Freak Show the evening news might broadcast.

For the GOP, the trick is to maintain the perfect distance, the LaGrange point that allows the GOP close influence but doesn't allow the Tea Party's more rambunctious hijinks to crater its image.

For Tea Party leaders (let's face it, they're mostly Republican and Libertarian insiders), the trick involves drawing on the resources of the Republican campaign machine while not getting so cozy with it that rank and file teabaggers recognize their movement's been assimilated by the BorGOP. But resistance is futile.

The image of porcupines mating is, in reality, a farce. If the Tea Party is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP, it is a convenient spinoff whose only real stakeholders are Republicans. From the perspective of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Mitch Romney, what's not to like about an organization that bashes Democrats without leaving your fingerprints on their bodies? 

But what dyed-in-the-wool teabaggers really want is an anti-abortion rights version of H. Ross Perot to carry their Gadsden flag before them. Some of them even want to create a third major political party. But they will have to wait for Sarah Palin to declare her 2012 candidacy, and then some.

Assuming that Palin--ever the opportunist and still gravely pissed at the GOP's handling of her in 2008--decides to run, anything could happen. But the parallels run deep between Perot's failed bids for the White House and what Palin is likely to underachieve as a Tea Party candidate. Take a look at Perot's support in the 1992 election, as described by wikipedia:

A detailed analysis of voting demographics revealed that Perot's support drew heavily from across the political spectrum, with 20% of his votes coming from self-described liberals, 27% from self-described conservatives, and 53% coming from self-described moderates. Economically, however, the majority of Perot voters (57%) were middle class, earning between $15,000 and $49,000 annually, with the bulk of the remainder drawing from the upper middle class (29% earning more than $50,000 annually).[28]  Exit polls also showed that Ross Perot drew 38% of his vote from Bush, and 38% of his vote from Clinton, while the rest of his voters would have stayed home had he not been on the ballot.

Those numbers closely mirror the Tea Party's national voter base, income distribution and demographic breakdown: slightly wealthier on average and overwhelmingly Republican and Independent. Perot's base was noticeably less conservative, however.

Nonetheless, Perot rode an anti-Washington wave of anger to eventual failure. His central issue was cutting the deficit. He was anti-incumbent, anti-tax, and pro-gun. Unlike Palin, he was pro-choice.

Read the following and try not to think of the half-term governor's resignation and the reality soap opera starring her daughter Bristol:

By the summer Perot commanded a lead in the presidential race with thirty-nine percent of the vote, but on July 16, Perot unexpectedly dropped out. Perot eventually stated the reason was that he received threats that digitally altered photographs would be released by the Bush campaign to sabotage his daughter's wedding.

So the Tea Party waits for a savior to lead it to unification, legitimacy and power. Will it be the second coming of Sarah Palin? Another incarnation of Ross Perot's first and second attempts to form a viable third party? Very likely "yes" to all the above.

Like Perot's second run for the presidency, Palin's resounding defeat in 2012 will seal the end of her White House ambitions. The Democrats don't want her, and the GOP will blacklist her if she seriously splits the conservative vote. Her role in the GOP's plan is still that of a stooge, and stooges get their comeuppance if they stray too far into the halls of power.

The fate of the Tea Party will be the same as Perot's Reform Party: Like an old soldier in the culture wars, it will fade away. The movement will be swallowed whole by the Republican Party and, in the belly of its host, further transform the GOP into a monster of stubborn idiocy.