The author obviously doesn't understand the Tea Party movement or the anti-incumbent mood of the electorate. It will be up to the GOP to decide if it wants to "join" the Tea Party movement, which has no intention or desire of taking over the local Rep party or establishment. The Tea Party movement is a non-hierarchical confederation of many local grassroots groups. It has some basic principles and beliefs that the GOP must gravitate towards or face the prospect of an eventual third party movement. It is up to the GOP to tap into the movement, not the other way around.
To be merely anti-incumbent without understanding the issues and probable outcomes of ones choices is to be intellectually derelict because, for one, that viewpoint often enables the greatest of possible evils.
I got the impression that the GOP didn’t really help Brown out that much. I’m sure Steele will be on T.V. taking credit tomorrow, though.
Absolutely right. The GOP needs the tea partiers worse than the tea partiers need the GOP.
After all, the GOP left conservatives first and gave us window dressing losers. Well I’m tired of being on the losing side, or compromising way beyond my normal ideology so some party who panders to special interest can say they are for the little guy.
A little compromise is acceptable because nobody can be everything to everyone. But the GOP has sold us out one too many times for me to trust anyone they try to pass off on us as a candidate.
I disagree. The Tea Party movement got behind Scott Brown within the Republican Party because he espoused their views of smaller government, lower taxes, opposition to obamacare, etc. They, in effect, took control of the Republican Party on the grass roots level, in spite of the state republican leadership, and directed statewide support toward Brown's conservative view points.
This is what must happen in every state - Tea Party movement people, or just people who empathize with their views must simply “take over - get involved and get to work” within the republican party and direct it themselves. Scott Brown demonstrated how this can be done. The republican party is the most open to conservatism, but it must be directed by conservatives within the local precinct, district by district. Weed out the rinos - it can happen. We just saw this happen in Massachusetts.
In Power Push, Movement Sees Base in G.O.P. (Tea Party Movement)
HOLLAND, Pa. — The Tea Party movement ignited a year ago, fueled by anti-establishment anger. Now, Tea Party activists are trying to take over the establishment, ground up.
Across the country, they are signing up to be Republican precinct leaders, a position so low-level that it often remains vacant, but which comes with the ability to vote for the party executives who endorse candidates, approve platforms and decide where the party spends money.
A new group called the National Precinct Alliance says it has a coordinator in nearly every state to recruit Tea Party activists to fill the positions and has already swelled the number of like-minded members in Republican Party committees in Arizona and Nevada. Its mantra is this: take the precinct, take the state...
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Conservatives took the Republican retreat as a victory, but also saw the power of the party structure in deciding who the candidates will be. The rallying cry for more local involvement has been “No more NY-23’s.”
“We don’t want to see what happened in New York happen here,” Ms. Przybylski said.
The forum here drew nine candidates and a standing-room crowd in an auditorium built for 1,200. The questions organizers had drawn up for the candidates hinted at the issues important to so called Teapublicans.
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Each was asked to define the 10th Amendment, and to cite examples of where it “might have been violated.” “It’s my favorite amendment in the Constitution,” exclaimed one candidate, Ira Hoffman. “I can’t believe it!”
--snip-- Ms. Stefano, a stay-at-home mother and former television reporter, will have to get 10 signatures and put her name on the ballot to run. But the National Precinct Alliance estimates that about 60 percent of the roughly 150,000 local Republican committee seats are vacant and can be filled by essentially showing...