Richard Viguerie: Why leaderless Tea Parties are beating the GOP

American Thinker ^ | December 10, 2009 | Richard Viguerie

[neverdem]

Rasmussen reports the Tea Party Movement, which percolated only months ago, is beating the Grand Old Party.

That's amazing -- and good -- news. A nascent grassroots movement is more popular than a long-established political party.

Republican Party leaders should be embarrassed. Instead, the Republican establishment disdains this populist uprising. Rather than embracing this genuine movement, establishment politicians and consultants are calculating how to co-opt, sideline or even defeat the newest phenomenon in politics - tea partiers.

That would be arrogance, not leadership. It could be the downfall of Republican leaders, who have taken the Party of Reagan to the Party of No -- meaning, No Ideas, No Leadership, and No Principles.

What's driving the Tea Party phenomenon? Robert Stacy McCain writes at American Spectator about one tea partier, Rhonda Lee Welsch, who says, "‘It's a systemic problem,' discussing the top-down approach of leaders in both parties who seem indifferent to the concerns of ordinary Americans."

People realize that big-government, career politicians aren't going to save America, if it's not too late for that already. Like a modern-day court of Louis XVI, our leaders are disconnected from the people. An uprising is taking place, yet our political leaders seem more interested in playing a good round of golf.

As I wrote not long ago:

Americans are concluding more and more that many of the current problems we face are caused by unrestrained and corrupt government. It is becoming apparent to millions of voters the solution lies in electing officials who understand, respect and abide by the Constitution as much as we citizens are expected to follow the law.

The Tea Party Movement, however, is about more than electing new politicians, although that will be one of its consequences. What's happening in the tea parties is that people are actually using the Constitution to ground and form policy choices, and as a constructive means to hold the political establishment accountable.

Our constitutional system of checks and balances is currently in shambles. Congress refuses to hold the President accountable constitutionally, and the courts refuse to hold the other two branches accountable. 

This is why the 10^th Amendment is becoming so popular within the Tea Party Movement, and why that Amendment is becoming the bane of statists in the political establishment.  The 10th Amendment, intended as a fundamental, "systemic" protection of our constitutional form of government, says that all powers not given expressly to the federal government by the text of the Constitution are reserved to the States or to the people. It is a failsafe against tyranny.

The 10^th Amendment, which has been in the closet and is dusty, is a natural resource for the "leaderless" Tea Party Movement. The way to restrain the abuses of power, and create a culture of freedom and economic prosperity, is within the Constitution itself.  Tea partiers will use the Constitution, which has been so disregarded by the three branches of government, to tame the beast of tyrannical big government. The 10^th Amendment is one key to overcoming what Ms. Welsch articulates for all of us as a "systemic problem."

One of the best books I've read in recent years is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.

Read it, and you'll better understand why the Tea Party Movement is surging, and the Republican Party isn't. The book describes the success of leaderless organizations using the analogy of a spider, which is killed when its head is cut off, versus the starfish, which, when a tentacle is cut off, grows a new one.

The great Aztec civilization existed for centuries before the Spaniards arrived on the continent. Cortes told the Aztec leader, Montezuma, give me your gold or your life. Montezuma gave Cortes his gold, and Cortes killed him anyway. The Aztec civilization did not survive the loss of its leader. The head of the spider had been cut off.

The Apaches, a leaderless "starfish" society, survived hundreds of years of the Spaniards' trying to do what they did to the Aztecs. As Brafman and Beckstrom write:

You wanted to follow Geronimo? You followed Geronimo. You didn't want to follow him? Then you didn't. The power lay with each individual.

We are seeing the "starfish" Tea Party Movement with candidates running in both Democratic and Republican primaries. When they are shut out by the party establishments, as happened in New York's 23^rd congressional district, they are running as independents, or under third parties.

"Starfish" tea partiers are learning how to organize, raise money, and utilize the alternative media in record numbers. They are voicing their opposition to unaccountable Big Government, and promoting productive policy alternatives, through the guiding principles of the Founders.

From the tea parties, the grassroots, and the alternative media, we are seeing new leaders emerge. Like our Founders, they understand their strength of leadership does not come from a political party, but from consent of the governed. That is why they don't hitch their wagons to one person or one party.

Talk radio host Mark ‘The Great One" Levin discussed recently how Reagan spoke not of "his" administration, but of "this" administration. Levin noted how Reagan understood his power came from the people, not from the office he held. Reagan didn't read The Starfish and the Spider, but he understood its principles. The successors to Reagan's GOP do not understand those principles, and seem more beholden to staying in Washington than saving America. They are "spiders."

The Tea Party Movement is determined to save America. Republican Party leaders would be unwise to try to co-opt, sideline or defeat it. Perhaps they should welcome the new leadership into the Party as their single most important survival tactic.

[kabar]

bookmark

[ImpBill]

Bookmarked - However, I don't think the GOP is capable of really understanding what is going on, much less the Democrat’s!

[nutmeg]

bookmark

[dsc]

“It could be the downfall of Republican leaders”

It better be.

[Dragonspirit]

Hopefully the tea parties will pull the Republican party to the right filtering out the Dedes and Arlens and subsequently the Republican party will trash the Democrats in the next election.

[onyx]

Of course, Richard Viguerie’s intent is to co-opt the Tea Party movement into a Third party to defeat the Republican party.

He literally dreads the emergence of a revived, CONSERVATIVE Republican party.

Don’t believe me? Look back to 1976. Ronald Reagan’s challenge to sitting president Gerald Ford was not good enough for Richard Viguerie, who mounted his own Third Party run again Ford.

Richard Viguerie backed the failed presidential aspirations of Ron Paul. Richard Viguerie is a Third Party man all the way.

So while he laments CONSERVATIVES like Mark Levin and dares to use the words of Ronald Reagan against Republicans, he cares not a thing about CONSERVATIVES who wear the Republican banner, only about defeating their party, as if that advances his own.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Steele is an embarrassment. I have seen NO improvement in conservative support from the established GOP leaders since they got shellacked and put through the sausage grinder in 2008. It would only take a half a brain to realize that playing “Democrat light” is not going to win elections. If Steele is the best they can do for a leader, the socialist Democrats stand to hold power for a long, long time.

[fish hawk]

Yep. A lot of us are leaving the old reach across the aisle and get our hand spit on party. Time to leave the pantywaist Lindsy Grahams, Newts, yes and even Steele behind and get us some back bone and substance. Right now Sarah is the big star but there are a few others out there that believe in Conservative Values. I'll tell you who is OUT: McCain, Graham, the Huck, Newt and Romney. Looking for new blood who don't think like politicians.

[onyx]

Vote out the incumbents in the primaries.

Arlen was afraid of the GOP primary so he switched parties and now it looks like he’s going to lose the democrat primary too...lol.

[Ronin]

Let’s be honest here. The leadership of our current “two party system” has, over the years, been fully co-opted by two groups of predominantly inherited millionaires, one claiming to help the poor, the other claiming to help the middle class, but neither actually concerned with doing more than ensuring their own privileged positions and power remains predominant.

Young charismatic upstart leaders in either party are either seduced and co-opted themselves (like Obama) or shunned and ignored (like Sarah). The Tea Party movement itself scares the holy living HELL out of the entrenched millionaires currently running both parties because at the top levels, their ideological differences are secondary to their primary interest, which is themselves and their own privileged position in the system.

If the Tea Party movement and politicians like Sarah succeed in prying the Conservatives loose from the Republican establishment, it will shock the nation down to its very foundations and just might possibly restore our constitutional republic to the path our Founding Fathers intended it would take.

But make no mistake here. That type of success would be just as much of a threat to the millionaires running the Democrat Party as it would be to the Republican fatcats because it would end their currently mutually supportive relations whereby they vilify and denigrate each other publicly while remaining on intimate terms privately.

An invigorated, robust and genuine Conservative Party would go after the Democrat hypocrites with even more glee than they would the faux Conservatives, and since there are even MORE Democrat millionaires than Republicans, they stand to lose even more.

[neverdem]

Totalitarian Sentimentality Strange title, but MUST READ!

The Libertarians' Chance to Matter

The 35-Year War on the CIA

Russian General: China Is a Potential Enemy

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[Freedom2specul8]

Bookmarked for tomorrow

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[Nextrush]

I am not going to vote for business as usual Republicans anymore that’s for sure.

I’ve been seduced and abandoned by the GOP since the days of RIchard NixOn.

Nixon was shafted by the liberal media to be sure, but his war against them used the Fairness Doctrine.

In the end, a radio preacher who led marches for victory in the Vietnam War had his radio station taken off the air by Nixon’s FCC on Fairness Doctrine ground.

Nixon had his enemies list that included all those lefties but also included this “win the war” preacher.

Nixon was president when the Environmental Protection Agency was set up. Now the EPA will be used to destroy our economy by Obama.

[rdb3]

Instead, the Republican establishment disdains this populist uprising.

I'm not one for populism. The Tea Party is great, however.

[onyx]

Are you speaking to National Elections exclusively or also to your local elections for US Congress and statewide elections where there are primaries?

The Rasmussen poll about the Tea Party, was misconstrued by several talking heads who presented it as a national poll, when in fact, it was a poll on CONGRESSIONAL RACES. Tea Party Tops GOP on Three-Way Generic Ballot

Your mnetioning Nixon and the EPA got me to thinking about war time presidents. GWB's dedication to the WOT and Nixon's attention to Vietnam may have burdened both men to the extent that domestic issues didn't get the attention in hindsight that those issues may have merited at the time. The road to hell *is* paved with good intentions.

My concern for the Presidential Election 2012, is centered around the nominating process: i.e. the first states of Iowa and New Hampshire in the nominating process. Iowa and their "caucus" and NH and its geographic location as well as its demographics. Neither state is conservative by any stretch, which is not to say conservatives do not reside in those states or that they're not active in politics.

What I am saying, is that those first states are not representative of the West or the South, and yet, the candidate field is often narrowed shortly after those two primaries, and *that* has to change if Republicans are going to have the chance to nominate the conservative of our nationwide choice.

[rawcatslyentist]

>"Looking for new blood who don't think like politicians. "

We need representation!

Does your employer sign checks to you?

Who signs their checks?

It ain't US!

Why do we even pretend to think they "represent" US?

[Earthdweller]

Where did you find the information about how many millionaires there are in the REP/DEM oligarchy? It’s fascinating that the Dems are actually leading the limousine crowd now.

[onyx]

Richest Members of Congress

[onyx]

Direct page, complete with other years. This page can be easily accessed from previous posted link.

Richest Members of Congress