Purges marginalize tea party and hurt its natural allies in GOP

SAcramento Bee ^ | May 6, 2010 | Kathleen Parker

[rockhardo]

No one doubts the sincerity or power of the tea party movement anymore. We get it: free market principles, limited government and individual liberty.

Those are the three fundaments of the tea party's "Contract from America," to which any serious Republican must subscribe, nay, sign in blood. Make it real red.

Nowhere is this new power-to-the-people imperative in starker relief than in Utah – one of the nation's reddest states – where three-term conservative Sen. Bob Bennett seems likely to lose the Republican Party nomination this weekend.

This, despite the fact that Bennett earns an 84 rating from the American Conservative Union, an A ranking from the National Rifle Association – and is nothing like a liberal.

But Bennett committed the ultimate sin in tea party circles. He voted for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a.ka. "bank bailout," during the George W. Bush administration. And he advanced a market-driven health care reform bill as an alternative to the Democratic plan that, alas, also included an insurance mandate.

[rockhardo]

Frum syndrome sufferer. The Tea Party must avoid any association with the GOP if it doesn't want to be co-opted and neutralized by the GOP elites.

[caver]

I just love the use of the word “purge”. Now we are getting compared to Stalin.

[Paladin2]

Shouldn’t “representatives” actually represent the interests of the People?

[rightwingextremist1776]

Must be another RINO going down....

[harpu]

Consider the source...this bitch is beyond brain dead

[Navy Patriot]

Oh dear, the TEA party is doomed unless they heed advice from the oh-so-concerned Suck Bee and empathic Kathleen Parker.

[traderrob6]

Her and Meghan McCain should get a room.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

""We were on a precipice. … Now we can sit back and say, 'Oh, it wasn't so scary.'"

Actually, many of us were saying this during the TARP vote. However, our representatives did not listen to us. That is why some of them are being shown the door like Senator Bennett.

[ontap]

I love it when a nutty liberal gives us advice on how to stay in power forever. We had eight years of Rhino power and where did it get us.

[Texas Fossil]

Kathleen Parker

http://www.postwritersgroup.com/parker.htm

Parker started her column in 1987 when she was a staff writer for The Orlando Sentinel. Her column was nationally syndicated in 1995 and she joined The Washington Post Writers Group in 2006. Along the way, she has contributed articles to The Weekly Standard, Time, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan and Fortune Small Business, and she serves on USA Today's Board of Contributors and writes for that newspaper's op-ed page. She is a regular guest on "The Chris Matthews Show" on NBC. Her book "Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care" was published in 2008 by Random House.

As an undergraduate, Parker studied in both the United States and abroad, including the University of Valencia in Spain. She holds a master's degree in Spanish from Florida State University, and is writer in residence at the Buckley School of Public Speaking in Camden, S.C.

Parker is married and has three sons. She divides her time between Camden and Washington, D.C.

[originalbuckeye]

Kathleen Parker just wants to be loved by the Left. She is/was? a good friend of Laura Ingraham. I wonder what Laura has to say about her now?

[MestaMachine]

obama

Next question.

[Texas Fossil]

Note- She went to college in Spain.

Note- She appears on Chris Matthews.

Note- She is an academic.

Note- She is a elitist bitter jealous, Palin Hater.

[Daisyjane69]

Can we just go “all in” and buy a roll of duct tape for this broad’s mouth?

Seriously?

[ontap]

I just had a sense there was something about her!!

[kabar]

Kathleen Parker is an a**hole. I don’t know why you post her crap here.

[Rummyfan]

Ugh, Kathleen Pareker. Palin hater and definition of a RINO. WGAD what she says about conservatism?

[Rummyfan]

She's got man hands.

[Yardstick]

One of the Powerline guys responded to her piece here:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/05/026236.php

[GeronL]

Voting against an incumbant is now a purge?

What kind of idiots think that way?