Posted on 12/01/2010 1:48:10 PM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips recently hosted a radio program where he declared that Americans who do not own property have less of a stake in the community and suggested, in the past, it made sense to deprive such citizens of the right to vote. The tone-deaf statement is not significant because it represents the view of the Tea Party at large (it doesnt), but is important because it evidences a serious problem for the movement: without a formal hierarchy, various leaders associated with the Tea Party can quickly damage the larger brand with their absurd comments.
The Tea Party Nation is one of the most prominent organizations in the Tea Party movement, having sponsored the National Tea Party Convention last February that was criticized for its $550 attendance fee and where Sarah Palin was paid $100,000 to speak. Thus the influence Phillips has is legitimate, yet like other prominent Tea Party members before him who ended up in hot water for indefensible statements, Phillips offensively opines on an issue with which no rational person is concerned.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
Limiting the vote to property owners does not make sense ... but I think limiting the vote to taxpayers does, with the caveat that we need to make sure everybody who can pay, pays something.
People who are living off the government shouldn’t have the opportunity to vote themselves benefits from other people’s pocket ... only people footing the bill should have such a vote.
SnakeDoc
Only if Property Owners are the only ones paying tax's or are the major source of taxes
....As we now pay income tax...
Only allowing people that support themselves To Vote....
Of course the Tea Party will get beat over the head about this.
MSNBC Headline: Tea Party to disenfranchise poor, details at 11:00
I could go with tax payers only being allowed to vote. Make it a condition for receiving welfare; sign away your right to vote. Double as a form of ID. Shown federal and state receipt to vote. Too bad it would never fly.
Net taxpayers within the last year or who completed a military service honorably.
I think people might support this and it would fer sure drive the moonbats out of their minds.
THESE are the people voting who have a STEAK in the game:
Such a measure would also exclude those who choose living arrangements and careers that require simple lifestyles and perhaps even outright poverty . . . members of some religious orders, for example. There would certainly need to be some consideration for how this should be accommodated.
LLS
I'd also like to amend that statement to include active servicemembers as well as honorably discharged retired servicemembers, regardless of tax status. Someone who is willing to take a bullet to keep me free should at least have the right to vote (which sadly, they don't when Democrats run things).
This was basically the position of many of the Founders, and they kinda had a point, ya know: the people who own the country will care the most for it.
At the least this ought to be enlarged to the group of all people who would be hurt by rising taxes, including all non rent controlled apartment dwellers, owners of significant business related non-real-estate property, those who have a part or full time non government job, etc. No free riders voting on their free riding representatives.
LLS
Add to that, my mother said that giving women the right to vote was the dumbest thing that ever happened.
She said that she always had the right to vote in the bedroom and at the diner table.
Walter E Williams proposed that every net taxpayer gets a vote but for every additonal $5K you pay in income taxes you get an additonal vote!
Brilliant!
A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for those candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest democratic nations has been 200 years.
Each has been through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith.
From faith to great courage.
From courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to complacency.
From complacency to selfishness.
From selfishness to apathy.
From apathy to dependency.
And from dependency back again into bondage.
The GI voting system is so 18th century.There should be secure ways to poll from a submarine or a mountaintop.
“What about conservatives who rent or conservative seniors who live in retirement villages where they rent??? “
They shouldn’t have the right to vote since they aren’t the ones paying the bills!
Go back to the origional criteria for voting!!!
Male, white, property owners.
Prepare for INCOMING!!!!!
I would like to see one person, one vote and some form of proof of identity to vote.
Maybe suspending voting privileges to those on the gov’t dole should be considered, too.
I’m not sure I go along with the “Property Owner” idea. In this case, if a person couldn’t vote, do they have to pay taxes? This whole idea, I believe, goes back to ancient Rome. Only property owners could vote.
No one has ever or ever can say anything that will hurt my feelings, because i don’t give a shit what anyone says or thinks of me!!!
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