Posted on 12/08/2010 4:58:45 AM PST by The Duke
DISCLAIMER: One reading this article might wrongly conclude that the Tea Party is exclusively aligned with the Republican Party – a belief that I would like to dispel immediately. I have met some very decent and principled Democrats at Tea Party events, and would like fewer things better than to see them bring the universally-applicable principles of the Tea Party to their own side of the political spectrum. The references to the Republican Party in this article only reflect my own personal experiences and affiliation.
For the past many months I have been attending various Tea Party and other similar conservative political activist events in my city, and have seen a lot of good ideas shared, and actions undertaken for many good causes. However, in this last election cycle I’ve also observed far too many “old guard” leaders preserving their stranglehold on leadership. These old guards of the Republican Party bring an excess of old, failed ideas and approaches to the table, and their retaining hold on office is a lost opportunity for positive change. They are, in fact, the ones who’ve helped to bring us to our current miserable economic state of affairs (sometimes though active participation, and other times through inaction when action was warranted).
At the urging of our local Tea Party leadership my wife and I joined the local Republican Party Executive Committee (RPEC), where we have watched all this unfold. And, during that time I have asked myself, “How can the Tea Party activists begin to exert strong influence within the Republican Party?”. Last night, amid defeat, I saw the answer.
Last night was the bi-annual election of officers at our RPEC, and I observed two outstanding candidates from the Tea Party challenge the leadership for the highest leadership offices. One of those candidates secured only five percent of the vote, while the other secured a more respectable thirty-five percent. Neither of them won the election, and our RPEC left the building with the same leadership that walked in. A great opportunity to bring about some positive and exciting change during this next election cycle had been lost. While those leaders who won were very fine and upstanding individuals, the opportunity for the Tea Party to take greater ownership was missed. And, it is these elected officials who heavily influence the field of candidates that run for office during each election cycle.
My own post-mortem analysis of this defeat came easily, and it related to the original encouragement we had received from our local Tea Party leader to get involved in the Republican Party Executive Committee. You see, only a small percentage of us Tea Partiers took her up on that invitation – and we were the ones last night who stormed the proverbial castle gates only to be hurled back by the old guard. Had many more Tea Party members accepted that challenge then we would have seen some radically positive change last night – the kind of change that can truly shake (and shape) the world.
If the Tea Party continues to confine itself to monthly meetings at the local pub then Republicans (and all Americans) can expect to experience more frustration as we approach Gomorrah. If, however, Tea Party members begin to find their way to the venues of the existing mainstream political parties then we may yet extricate our nation from the dangerous vortex that draws us ever downward.
How can you really be a Democrat and believe in limited government?
Or to put it another way: If you believe in limited government, what Democrat Party principle is attractive to you?
I’m not trying to pick a fight here, I just don’t see it.
It’s kind of like saying, “not every Code Pink Activist is anti-war”.
Well, the fact is, EVERY Code Pink Activist is anti-war.
And EVERY Democrat wants the government to “do more to help others”.
How does “do more to help others” fit in with “taxed enough already”?
Seriously. I don’t see how a single Real Democrat can be a Tea Party activist.
This too-brief article is exactly what I’ve been thinking;
oddly enough I too, because of my involvement, “pre”-Tea Party, in local activism, have been asked to join the local Republican Club.....I may or may not, but a number of other Tea Party informal post-election get-togethers have convinced me that the way to go is OUTSIDE of the Republican establishment, which will only keep doing what it has always been doing, following the same self-defeating templates which will NEVER be enough to mount a serious challenge to the incestuous relationship of the Dem and Repub Establishments: here in lower New York the potted plant incumbent Eliot Engel once again won over challengers
by an even wider margin than he did for all 8 terms, when there wasn’t even the unpopular President backlash to count on. This new re-orientation is the hardest thing we have to do, and I recognize that NY is a case IN EXTREMIS, but as such it could serve as a model for how to organize around local issues, with a truly grassroots effort to think outside the box and attack the establishment (and here the “conservatives” and the “republicans” are indistinguishable from the Democrats—the only difference is rhetoric. I can think of one local issue that is juicy enough to mobilize Tea Party sentiment against, and that’s what we’re doing. There is nothing abstract about this,on the face of it, but success on this level is what will truly change the Old Established Ways of self-dealing and inherent corruption that both parties are mired in.
I don’t either, and as to the thread title “How the TEA Party could lose” We just won a landslide.
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All I can say is that I’ve met a few Democrats at Tea Party events that shared the desire for limited government and fiscal responsibility.
The Republicans just won a landslide, but the Tea Party has PLENTY of room for improvement.
Articles strewn with the word “might, could, may” are speculation and the world deals in facts.
A battle, yes; but by no means the war.
All I can say is that I’ve met a few Democrats at Tea Party events that shared the desire for limited government and fiscal responsibility.Did you ask them what it is about the Democrat Party, even the "old" Democrat Party (of say, Scoop Jackson) that they identify with?
Just curious.
CRITICISM_FOR_THE_SAKE_OF_CRITICISM_PING!
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