Posted on 02/05/2010 9:50:07 PM PST by dr_who
In recent months, the most influential political party in the country may not be the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but the Tea Party. This murky, largely leaderless grassroots movement has been the driving force behind the derailment of President Barack Obama's dearest agenda items, notably health care reform and climate change legislation.
What are the goals of this movement? In part, that is the wrong question. The Tea Party effort rejects the notion that a politician or a pundit should define their movement. Rather, citizens themselves will tell us what the movement means.
As their name suggests, these citizens want to revive the ideas at the heart of the American Revolution: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. One chapter in Texas adopted these principles: limited government; fiscal responsibility; personal responsibility and the rule of law.
The quality that gives the Tea Party movement its legitimacy is that it is so fundamentally illegitimate.
Tea Party groups are conducting online polling and deliberations to determine the priorities of the movement. This process will create a "Contract from America" to serve as a template for reforms to come. The most popular ideas now include a flat tax, congressional term limits and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.
Those ideals and policies sound like what the Republican Party once espoused but have not practiced for at least a decade.
Not surprisingly, establishment conservatives have recently tried to make hay of the Tea Party movement's apparent lack of a recognizable face or national headquarters. Grover Norquist, the Rasputin behind countless conservative organizing activities, has offered tips to Tea Party organizers. Old (and perhaps new again) Republican apparatchiks like Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich have proclaimed their oneness with the Tea Party faithful and essentially offered their services as the movement's leaders. No doubt many Republican leaders would like to direct the energy of the Tea Party against the Obama administration and to receive the votes of these idealists come November.
We pray thee, Tea Partiers: Do not go there.
The quality that gives the Tea Party movement its legitimacy is that it is so fundamentally illegitimate: outside the establishment, bereft of representation on K Street, and without an identifiable face to speak for it on Meet the Press. This is a movement that sprang deep from within the viscera of America, not from some political poll or focus group.
It is not Republican; it is not even conservative. It has no interest in debating the merits of No Child Left Behind, abstinence-only sex education or George W. Bush's rationale for going to Iraq. Replacing a "spend and borrow" Democrat with a "spend and borrow" Republican is not the goal of the Tea Party movement.
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John Samples is director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington, D.C., and the author of the forthcoming book The Struggle to Limit Government.
This movement is simply saying: "We are fine without you, Washington. Now for the love of God, go attend a reception somewhere, and stop making health care and entrepreneurship more expensive than they already are."
Machiavelli once said a republic stays healthy by returning to its first principles from time to time. The Tea Party movement is trying to get our nation back to its first principles to prevent our decline. For their trouble, they have been denounced by many in the media and the Obama administration.
But they will continue to fight. They still believe in the promise of America. That faith may spread as Election Day approaches in the second and perhaps final year of what is supposed to be the Age of Obama.
What began as angry town meetings and grew into a political movement may end as a third political party in 2012. Maybe then Washington will finally listen.
Heh, heh.
Yeah. I'm no threat. I can only bring about a "permanent Democrat control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency ... for many elections to come..."
LOL. Yeah. LOL. Voting for a guy just because he had an "R" after his name sure came back to bite us in the ass. LOL.
LOL. Yeah. LOL. Voting for a guy just because he had an "R" after his name sure came back to bite us in the ass. LOL.
You know... the thing that seems to escape the mentality of a certain number of people on this board here... is that if we don't have the "numbers" to vote someone into office -- I don't care how good or pure or conservative he or she is -- we're going to continue to lose, lose and lose -- until the "numbers" of voters are large enough to bring in our own candidates... that's just simple math....
And, unfortunately, it doesn't seem that the mass of the voting public is with conservatives -- by and large... hence, we're losing.
Until conservatives get larger "numbers" of voters in order to win elections... we'll be yapping and whining about it for many elections to come...
Sounds like many Ron Paul Libertarians think they have a new wagon to hitch theirs too.
Amen, bro.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Feel free to join us Conservative voters. We will welcome you with open arms.
LOL... been posting here for over ten years now... :-)
LOL. Though of you right away!
“John Samples is director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington, D.C., and the author of the forthcoming book The Struggle to Limit Government”
Not in my town. Ladies (average age over 70) organized a Tea party in May. Had a good attendance. It was a nonpartisan affair. RTC didn't allow any elected officials to speak. Libertarians crashed it selling stuff and ragging on the GOP. The one libertarian speaker spend 20 minutes trying to convince the Republicans who organized it there was no difference between them and Democrats. He also went on a tirade against Bush and never mentioned Obama. End of tea parties in my town. Those ladies will never organize another one. And the libertarians who were there? Off leeching off what others organize and sowing discord somewhere else I suppose.
Having taken part in the very first wave of Tea Parties there was no talk of it becoming a Third Party nor was there any official sponsorship by any party including the GOP. It was just a group of concerned citizens, 92% of which vote Republican on a regular bases, with the rest Libertarians and Independents, with a few things in common we wanted Washington to here loud and clear.
• Stop the out of control spending
• Stop the massive growth of Government including Obamacare and Cap N Trade
• No new Taxes. You want out of the recession, look at the Reagan Playbook
• National Security should be taken seriously once again. We are still at war
• Secure our Borders. This is wear both parties are failing miserably. We can disagree and debate on what to do with the aliens already here, but we have to seal up the border or soon there will be no going back.
I hope there is no plan in the works to hi-jack the Tea Party and make it a Third Party because doing so will have the same affect as Ross Perot had. We may feel good about how we voted, but we are going to hate the outcome.
I’m for the “Build It And They Will Come” approach. Make our voices loud and clear and you will see more and more moderate Republicans shift right, and that’s what we are seeing now.
The difference between now and back when Perot ran is that the Tea Party is the popular party and the republican party is much less influential. So if you're suggesting that the republicans and the tea partiers should vote for the same candidates then it's the republicans that need to get in line with the tea party since they're the minority.
Maybe it’s time for the Republicans to bend toward the Tea Party people or they will let Democrats get elected. Not the other way around. Pretty sure there’s more ‘baggers’ than excited Republicans.
I saw CATO at the top and almost no need
to read further. Same crap
Maybe it’s time for the Republicans to bend toward the Tea Party people or they will let Democrats get elected. Not the other way around. Pretty sure there’s more ‘baggers’ than excited Republicans.
I don't know exactly how it will all turn out for the Tea Party and the GOP, but I do know that politics is real practical in regards to winning elections -- and that eventually things will come together for the "winning" of them -- or else -- conservatives will simply wither and die on the vine...
They're either going to win elections (one way or the other, no matter what it takes) -- or they're finished...
The difference between now and back when Perot ran is that the Tea Party is the popular party and the republican party is much less influential. So if you're suggesting that the republicans and the tea partiers should vote for the same candidates then it's the republicans that need to get in line with the tea party since they're the minority.
Being "organized" and structured and having leaders and being able to get masses of your people to all move in one direction at one time for one type of thing -- that's what is going to win elections....
Being chaotic and disorganized and not cohesive, but just dissatisfied and angry and "not going to take it anymore" will not win elections to move a large group of people in a particular direction that they want to go in and succesfully carry them along like that for an extended period of time.
No matter what it takes -- if conservatives want to win elections and have control over this country -- then they are going to have to be cohensive, organized, have leaders that can carry a large group of people through on political goals and keep control of the mechanisms of government and do it long-term.
Until it comes together like that with solid infrastructure and can hold together and get political goals carried out over the long term and control the different facets of the government (from whatever organization this turns out to be) -- whether it's local, state or national -- it's going nowhere... and only the Democrats will benefit.
We'll see how it pans out, in terms of actual political accomplishments and in terms of the control of the infrastructure of out government in this country. That remains to be seen...
These people are so indulgent. Honestly, what have these writers done other than talk and pat themselves on the back for philosophizing about their limited-government utopias amidst a misguided generation. They DO nothing. They’ve CHANGED nothing. I mean yes ideas are important, but actions far outweigh words.
Have they ever organized a Tea Party? Have they run for office? Have they become citizen journalists and done undercover investigations for ACORN? Have they run a state? Have they done ANYTHING to show for their ideas?
Nope.
Yet they want to bash and halt the ONLY people that are actually leading and who’ve already MADE a world of difference in shifting the course of our great country: like Palin and the others at the TP convention.
Extremely well said! Here, here! (pinging a few others)
“We pray thee, Tea Partiers: Do not go there.”
.”..yes, come into obscurity with us....come over here with the .09% and we’ll equal a full percent wahoooo”
Just read post #17 to see the gains of the Tea Parties. I enjoyed both of the Tea Parties I attended and they were in two different areas of the country. People were wonderful and very excited. Patriots all. I might add, if any I talked with were democrats, they didn't admit it...lol.
Nonsense. You who want to split the Republican Party are the Democrats best hope. In case you missed it, it wsa Republicans who saved the day in 1994, after Perot screwed it up in 1992. So, if you can't recruit comparable number of 'Rats as Republicans, what good are you?
Nonsense. You who want to split the Republican Party are the Democrats best hope. In case you missed it, it was Republicans, not Libertarians nor Anarchists nor Tea Partiers who saved the day in 1994, after Perot screwed it up in 1992. So, if you can't recruit comparable number of Democrats as well as Republicans, what good are you?
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