Posted on 01/07/2012 10:12:20 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I don't know what happened between November of 2010 and January of 2012, but from the looks of things the Tea Party died.
How else do you explain it?
Rewind to November of 2010, race after race, congressional seat after congressional seat, Governorship after Governorship. Only a little more than eighteen months after President Obama had packed the mall in Washington for his historic inaugural, the Tea Party held it's historic event in which nearly the same size audience had attended--according to maps supplied by the USA Today. That event catapulted a state by state tsunami-like momentum where grassroots, low tax, small government, pro-founding principles, pro-life, pro-national security, and pro-God forces aligned and an election victory of historic equivalence shook America in 2010.
The driving force of that agitation then as it is still today was the effect of a poor economy, government intervention, federal overreach, bureaucratic mandates, and punitive taxes on the nation's beleaguered small business community. Entitlements, bail-outs, and criminally reckless spending ensued.
The Tea Party believed that the buffoons authoring the mess should be dealt a blow. And in 2010 they leveled power in the Congress.
The single biggest example of this overreach was for Washington politicians, behind closed doors, with no transparency, to take a health care reform law--deem it as passed--and force upon the American people the worst piece of legislation to be passed since World War II. Little wonder that even the worst Vice President in our history, Joe Biden, used an expletive to describe it.
"Obamacare" as it would soon become monikered was and is at this very moment--in this election cycle--the singular most visible sign that this nation must take a different course.
Some very good people got elected in 2010 to attempt to help lay the groundwork for the complete repeal of Obamacare. Star-On-The-Rise Governor Nikki Haley in South Carolina, and Senator-soon-to-be-the-next-Vice-President Marco Rubio rode the shoulders of these Tea Party votes, and pledged with their victories to return power to the voice of "We The People." The failed candidacies of Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell were also propped up almost entirely by the support of these first amendment patriots who simply wished to keep government in check.
Former Governor Sarah Palin rallied these troops, showed up and helped them raise cash, enthusiasm, and enlistments. The numbers of the Tea Party were tens of thousands of times bigger than the largest Occupy Wall Street gatherings--combined!
Yet only a little over a year later and the goal of the Tea Party to complete it's work and overturn Obamacare is all but dead.
In 2010 even Ann Coulter was making speeches at CPAC warning that if we chose the candidate who had authored Obamacare to become the nominee, then President Obama would be easily re-elected. She was right of course.
But somewhere along the line instead of being bold, defiant, grassroots, and in control, someone started feeding voters the meme that the man who saw to it that $50 state-subsidized abortions were included in his vision of mandated government health care, was the best of poor choices.
Even Ann Coulter 2.0 drank the kool-aid.
Worse yet the choices that are left in the race are establishment folks who ate earmarks for a living in Pennsylvania, embraced government involvement in the biggest hoax of our time--man made Global Warming, and who could forget the man that as Governor of Massachusetts raised taxes on everything from gasoline to "certificates of blindness." (No it's real... Look it up.)
Your humble correspondant has detailed the easy path that Obama's forces will take to not merely defeat a Romney GOP candidacy, but to pummel him into tapioca.
And according to my sources, campaign strategists who consult for the Obama team confirmed, they are getting the GOP candidate they most want.
I need to remind you that the win in Iowa meant strategically nothing. Those delegates will go to whoever the likely nominee is, and won't even be assigned until the convention. New Hampshire has a puny amount of delegate votes--but at least they will be genuine delegates. This year South Carolina is where the battle truly begins. South Carolina has more delegates than Iowa and New Hampshire combined and Tea Party strongholds from Virginia all the way around the coast to Texas are delegate rich battlegrounds.
The two biggest priorities for primary voters are to decide which candidate can make Washington DC as inconsequential to the life of the average American as possible, and who can challenge President Obama directly on the worst legislation of our time--Obamacare.
Mitt Romney has no track record that would point to being able to accomplish either of these. Even a small whiff of a challenge on Obamacare by Romney will be followed up with an Obama "thank you" note for writing it for him.
It is almost impossible to believe and violently sickening to accept that in light of the clear mandate of the Tea Party that the GOP stands on the cusp of returning to "establishmentism." (Imaginary word mine.) But it appears that for all the big talk, tens of thousands of local rallies, and the single largest non-inaugural event to ever occur on our nation's mall, the Tea Party has died.
Which is sad, for me personally, because I addressed those patriots, on that mall, that cloudy Washington DC day.
That first tea party in DC took place exactly three days after President Obama's joint session, where he had instructed his supporters on Obamacare to go "get in people's faces" if they disagreed with the policy. He told his critics that he was calling them out.
I remember bringing that little point to the attention of the close to 1.2 million gathered on the mall that afternoon. The chants of "Here we are, Here we are, Here we are" rang in my ears for days.
Sadly now I wonder, "Where'd we go?"
I’m afraid that reports of our death are rather premature.
If the TEA party was dead, it would be the first group in human history, after having won the biggest political battle in our time did it just say ‘well, that was fun, but we’re sure not going to try THAT again.’
RATS are whistling past the graveyard.
The Tea Party is a way of life, like being a 60’s hippie but the opposite. It can’t die as a party, it just means FOLLW THE US CONSTITUTION for once.
There are other avenues for activism and protest beyond mass demonstrations.
It’s just astroturf anyway. We will be organized by Spring and everywhere by Summer. The left is going broke.
I remember bringing that little point to the attention of the close to 1.2 million gathered on the mall that afternoon.
I was there, the number and pictures showed that amount or more, the MSM had it at a couple hundred thousand.
We’re here and it ain’t over yet.
We are working underground!!
Having been to several Tea Party events in the last few years in the WDC area, I can attest that it is not dead. It is just law-abiding. It is under the radar of the MSM and the politicos. The Tea Party will elect conservatives down to the dog-catcher. If worse comes to worse Tea Party folks will maintain the Constitution and freedom.
No, he is not right. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will not vote for Romney under any circumstances. Even if he is the candidate facing Obama, I will not vote for him. I will write in the name of Sara Palin or someone else, but I have, for the last time, voted for a candidate I Do Not Want.
This is a decision that hasn’t come easily to me. The prospect of another four years of Obama’s rule is frightening to comprehend, but I ask my self if Romney would really be all that much better, if he actually could win, which he can’t. I say he would not be all that much better, he might even be worse.
I plan to vote for the “D” facing my own congress-critter, Cantor, and I’m urging all of my friends to do likewise. I think that it will be much easier to fire the “D” in two years than Cantor after he has another two years to dig his trench a little deeper.
I’m sending money and volunteering to make phone calls etc. for candidates all over the country. I want to see so many U-Haul’s being loaded in Jan. that they have to bring them in from out of state. I no longer care a whit wether someone has a D, R, I, or any other letter in front of their name, it doesn’t make any difference anymore. A skunk by any other name smells just as foul, to borrow a phrase.
Is the Tea Party dead? Well, I may be a party of one, but I’m still here.
First, because the tea party is a collection of ideas and not a political party, there was no death of those ideas.
Second, there is however a realization on the part of many that this is not a one or two election fight. The progressives were at this for over a hundred years before they got a dictator in power.
Finally, without a change in the indoctrination of our children, there is really no one left out there who would know freedom if it were given back to them.
Franklin said that they had given us a republic only if we could hold on to it.
I’m not dead, but I am pissed beyond belief.
You Rearden are "the first bull who speaks".
AN AESOP FABLE
A fable that every Conservative voter in 2012 should read and think about.
* * *
A cattle dealer once drove some bulls to the slaughterhouse. And the butcher came with his sharp knife.
"Let us close ranks and jack up this executioner on our horns," suggested one of the bulls.
"If you please, in what way is the butcher any worse than the dealer who drove us hither with his cudgel?" replied the bulls."
"But we shall be able to attend to the dealer as well afterwards!"
"Nothing doing," replied the bulls firm in their principles, to the counselor. "You are trying, from the left, to shield our enemies -- you are a social-butcher yourself."
No, he is not right.
Rove and Romney have attempted to destroy the Tea Party.
They are evil and their minions are Legion.
Even when the Republican nominees have the facts about “RomneyCare” receiving millions in Federal money they do not attack. Romney’s argument about the 10th amendment & State’s rights does not hold water since from the beginning RomneyCare has been supported & continues to be funded with MILLIONS, over a billion total in Federal funds. It sickens me to see Romney pushed by so many people I once had some respect for.
Tea Party is an idea NOT an organization but rather thousands of small community groups of independant like minded NON partisen active voters. The GOP who thinks IT is the tea party died a long time ago, the establishment is going to spend billions trying to keep it on life support under the “care” of Dr. Romney-care.
Just say NO and let the GOP GO away.
Paging Rick Santorum..... Rick please pick up a white courtesey phone the REAL Tea party patriots are calling to invite you to the White House.
Is the time overdue for such methods? The politicians of both parties have stacked the deck to keep their power. The corrupt cesspool of Washington, DC is destroying man's last, best hope for liberty and freedom. Perhaps these scumbags need serious reminding that all power is fleeting?
I just don't know if anyone would have this kind of courage and guts.
Thanks for saving me the trouble - folks are feeling despair over the thought, but the Tea party is alive and well.
I’ve warned my state rep several times that the encroaching federal government is threatening his job. So far, it has fallen on deaf ears.
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