LA Times: The GOP's 'tea party' dance

LA Times ^ | February 21, 2010 | by Jacob Heilbrunn

[Oldeconomybuyer]

In September 1960, several dozen young conservative intellectuals descended on National Review editor William F. Buckley Jr.'s estate in Sharon, Conn., to draft a manifesto. Terse but sweeping, it demanded victory over rather than coexistence with "international communism," and declared that when "government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation." Known as the Sharon statement, it helped forge the modern conservative movement.

Half a century later, many of the movement's elders -- including former Reagan administration Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner Jr. and American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery -- are trying to replicate that success. On Wednesday, they assembled near George Washington's former estate to issue a new epistle called the Mount Vernon statement.

Republican electoral prospects may be looking up with the retirement of Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and with a host of other Democratic seats up for grabs, but the statement, which appeared on the eve of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, suggests that the establishment right is shivering -- not so much because of the unusually frosty Washington winter but because of the potential threat posed to the GOP by the insurgent "tea party" movement. As a result, conservatives are going into overdrive to attempt to co-opt it.

As conservative veterans urge the GOP to reclaim the small-government mantle, then, the question hovering over them is whether they will successfully harness the volatile insurgency led by the tea party, or will they themselves be swept aside as part of regime change? It would be no small irony if they were displaced by the very kind of insurrectionist spirit they embodied 50 years ago in Connecticut.

[Diogenesis]

“Western thinking has become conservative:
the world situation should stay as it is at any cost;
there should be no changes. ....
The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support
from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see
communism's crimes. And when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In
our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero
and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with
empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to
withstand the East.”
[Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn at the Commencement, 8 June 1978, Harvard University]

[sirchtruth]

All these so-called republicans including the RNC, GOP, and directly these CPAC perverts are going to have to realize we are coming without regard to their perverted, moderate, rinoistic views. We conservatives do not believe in nilly willy anything goes faux conservatism. The war is with you and your ilk, and we are going to try and regain control of our party by resetting the standards which gave us liberty and freedom and keep this country from sinking down the perverted cultural hellhole of society!

Either join us or get out!

[panaxanax]

“Either join us or get out!”

Well said! You’ve started my day out on a positive note, thank you.

[ez]

Imagine that...the Republicans are going to bend over backward to give the people what they want. You oughta try that for once, lefties.

[Free Vulcan]

I’ve been in the Party for years fighting guerilla warfare against these guys. Glad some people are finally showing up to the battle, we can use all the help we can get.

[Lazamataz]

Yikes.

I am not used to seeing a reasonably-balanced article in the LA times.

[Raycpa]

Conservatives get co-opted by GOP progressives all the time and the progressives in the GOP will attempt anything to co-opt the Tea party. For them the Tea Party must be destroyed any way possible.

[ovrtaxt]

In Florida, the GOP party bureaucrats are trying to infiltrate the tea party groups as quickly as possible. They see votes there, and a motivated group of activists that they would love to make use of.

The problem is, these politicians don’t seem to realize how anti-politician we are. They’re the ones who caused this sorry state of affairs by their former inaction and ongoing corruption.

[MestaMachine]

"...whether they will successfully harness the volatile insurgency led by the tea party, or will they themselves be swept aside as part of regime change?"

[Rodm]

Excuse me, but, how long has the LA Times been doing the “Marxist dance”

[martin_fierro]

[Leisler]

We got a couple, at lease, enemies in the GOP.

1. The usual elite, Harvard, big debt loving, paper money printing, 'moderate' Republicans. Soft on economics, wimpy on attacking social issues ( which means no. Heck Clinton was harder on welfare than most softy Republicans ) Best typified by 'compassionate conservative' GW Bush, his patrician father, Mitt Romney ( the 'can we pull off fake conservative' again bait? ) candidate.

The other enemy. Are the loser conservatives. Best example, David Keene. A total talk the walk loser. His very existance, and obstical to progress. Newt Gingrich, an old Oxygen thief, like some hagged out old actress with trowled on pancake that can not leave the lime light.

We need to fight the RINO's. They won't go away. And we need to clear out the old wood, dead wood. They are a distraction.

Some names I like to see. Palin, of course, Jeff Flake( yeah you Mormon obsessed Mormons. Bring us a real, conservative, not that phony creep, Mitt ) Rand Paul, ..Perry, Barbour. It's too bad about Jeb Bush, he seems like the best of them...but I can not take another Bush.

Anyway, we should always push for the most conservative. We should move the argument to the right. No compromise. The liberal, statist, half way Democrat GOP compromises with us. We get more, they get less. Every. Single. Time.

We conservative are not the problem. We are out working every day to make this country and have our efforts, work taxed away, by force, by idiots and enemies to give money to those that make this a worse country. Our domestic enemies.

All those old conservative? Thanks. Now move aside. We've got our sights on Swamptown and all the other 50 thieves dens. No more Mr. Nice Conservative. No more Fwench wine parties. Buckley is dead and we are mad and we remember.

"Tea Partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again."Pat Buchanan

[sirchtruth]

Very eloquently spoken. There is no question you are exactly right!

Pat's crazy, but he does come up with some cool examples!

[Leisler]

I’ve been listening to the old guy palaver all my life. That we need guys that ‘know the system, can work the system, can defend our’....

Bull. What has it gotten us? I don’t care if the candidate couldn’t find the Capital dome if you dropped him on it from 5,000 feet without a parachute.

Send in conservative animals( as much as we can ).

Rouse the political rabble. No ‘defending’. Attack! Attack! Attack!

And when and if we establish something a bit towards the right....give the left nothing. Tell them that yesterday that which would of been fine, is today too leftists, too out of the question. That, they need to be more ‘bi-partisan’. ( That’s my new favorite phrase. Bi-partisan. Which means we move right, and they move with us. Together, all hand in hand. )

One of the reasons I want McCain to go is I don’t want anybody with dreamy dreams about them and Ted Kennedy and what a fine institution, in this case, the Senate is.

I want all that out. I want as much as possible people who are holding an US aghast Them attitude.

And when they go native, dump them. We should auto-term limit Republicans. It’s not safe nor Christian to have anybody be in congress for so long. Kind of an ‘it’s for the children’ type thing, only this time for politicians.

[Leisler]