The TEA PARTY Movement: How We Got Here

Something curious happened during the summer of 2008. Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, shut down the House and C-SPAN cameras with a resolution that passed by just one vote, smack in the middle of an energy crisis. Afterwards, Madame Speaker jetted off on a week-long book tour while gas prices soared.

The Republicans stood in the dark and refused to leave. A few officials, including John Culberson, took out their phones and began Twittering the action to America,

Their only defense against this strong, informed citizenry is to brush them off as kooks and they’ve leaned heavily on the mainstream media to do so.

Just one problem: conservatives are bypassing mainstream media. Conservatives blogs are on the rise and media is loathe to admit that we’re dominating social media networks and the best sellers’ lists.

The collective consciousness of half the country’s population has changed: we stopped measuring our validity and successes by the media and by our enemies’ criticisms. We embraced the spirit of the underdog. We realized that GOP is not synonymous with conservatism. Some of us are preparing to run for offices ourselves, we’re launching our own conservative groups and organizing petitions, rallies, and lobbyist efforts all around the country.

The tea party movement has challenged the GOP to get back on track or risk losing its grip on the right wing. It’s reminded Democrats that a slick marketing campaign coupled with paid activism isn’t the same as a groundswell of real change and the reason that Democrats are so hostile towards it is because they’ve never before encountered it.

Your own observations about TEA Partiers, the GOP, and conservatism are accurate. TEA Partiers are way ahead of the GOP on identifying the problem and relating it to America's Founding Principles.

Another thread on FR today is a Mark Steyn NRO editorial which contains this commentary on the Left's agenda and the "conservative" response. Steyn observes:

"As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which “conservative” parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can."

Steyn makes a point here which has been the focus of my posts over the past several weeks. That is this: the debate must not be allowed to focus on the peripheral points around the "issue" of health care, the banks, the auto companies, or any other quibbling over who can run the best program!

The liberty of future generations is now at stake. This is a "principles" matter. The debate must be framed around principles and ideas of liberty versus counterfeit ideas which enslave individuals to big government.

True "conservatives," meaning those who want to conserve and preserve the philosophy and principles the nation was founded upon, must frame the debate, and they must force the Left to debate the ideas of liberty versus the tried-and-failed ideas of government control (tyranny). To do less, dishonors those who were willing to sacrifice their "lives, property, and sacred honor" in order to make a Declaration of Independence from such tyranny and to frame a written "People's" Constitution for limiting government power.

Articulating those ideas and confronting every proposed expansion of government power with the "chains of the Constitution" (Jefferson) may require a new cadre of Congressmen and Senators who actually understand the Founders' ideas. If so, then 2010 may provide opportunity for that.

To use the President's term: conservatives need to reset the debate if they are to regain the advantage. In order to do that effectively, however, they must quickly educate themselves to articulate the foundation and source of their freedom to do so.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.