[Cincinatus' Wife]

It's quite something to read the whole piece....

[Uncle Ike]

Am I the only one who remembers the run-up to the passage of Obamacare - when some 40% of the voting population self-identified with the T.E.A. party movement, and of that number, almost half were self-identified Independents, with even a smattering of Democrats??

Since those heady days, the Media, with the willing participation of a gaggle of self-appointed ‘Leaders’ and ‘Spokesmen’, has effectively re-defined our Movement to be a minor, ineffective, offshoot of the Republican Party...

I was a member of the T.E.A. Party Movement - I am *not* a ‘tea partier’.....

[nathanbedford]

Tea Party members ... don't like Mitt Romney because he is not "one of us." He had a rich father and went to Cranbrook and Harvard Business School. He lives in Massachusetts and doesn't feel revulsion while visiting an Ivy League campus. He probably even reads the New York Times. How can he possibly represent us? He doesn't share our background, our hatred of the press, our disdain for New York and Washington.

I don't like Mitt Romney and the author has failed to cite a single reason why I reject him. I do not give a damn if his father was rich, what universities he attended, or that he does not feel revulsion upon treading an Ivy League quad. He can read the New York Times from cover to cover everyday. These are but strawmen.

I do not like Romney because he is not an authentic conservative. I do not like Romney because he would suffer unborn babies to die so the can gain political power. I do not think I am naïve when it comes to understanding the pressures upon politicians who wish to gain public office. I understand the need for party discipline and compromise but murder of the unborn is different matter.

I do not like Mitt Romney because no matter how you slice it he sold out on abortion for public office or he is lying to us now about his true feelings about abortion and is actually, inherently pro-abort.

I draw a clear distinction between a politician who lies about where he puts his little wee wee (Newt Gingrich) and a politician, like Barack Obama, who countenances the murder not only of unborn babies but of babies who by a miracle successfully evaded the abortionist's knife.

Mitt Romney fails this fundamental test.

I do not like that Romney because he is interchangeable with George H. W. And George W. Bush.

I support Gingrich even as I recognize that his chances are fading for the very reasons the author recounts when he describes the frustration of the tea party. Our American heritage is literally being stolen from us and it will require a revolution, rather a restoration, to preserve what was mine by birthright and which I therefore should have a right to bequeath to my children.

I do not support Mitt Romney because I do not think he shares my anxiety, my frustration, or my sense of urgency in the need to save the Republic. If he does, he has exhibited remarkably little fervor. In any event, I am not convinced that he is the man who can go to Washington and actually reverse history new matter what his disposition.

I believe that Santorum will be properly motivated but that he will be swamped and ineffectual if he gains office and sidetracked onto social issues which are largely irrelevant to the larger picture confronting us now. He is not the man who can seize the moment, shape the debate, and leave the country in a whole new direction. Anything less simply will not do.

I don't know if Gingrich can do it, but I do know that he is the only man in the race whom we can identify as having the character, the history, and the hunger to do it.

[Rashputin]

". . . but who perfectly expresses the anger and sense of exclusion that is fundamental to the Tea Party."

The author is either an idiot or someone who has bought into the outer reaches of PC speak. Insisting that principals and values be adhered to isn't anger and not being "inclusive" toward those who do not share the same principals and values isn't exclusion. The author is blind to the reality of the Army of Virginia and sees only a single aspect of the leadership of Gen. Lee (God rest his soul). He skims the surface of the troops in the Army of Virginia the way those see themselves as superior to the unwashed masses they're writing about generally do. He then focuses on only a single aspect of a multifaceted sociological situation that appeals to him about the Army of Virginia in hope of enlisting General Lee (God rest his soul) in his misrepresentation of the reality of the Army of Virginia and it's relationship to Lee.

Those who followed Lee didn't follow along blindly because Lee was from the appropriate class. They knew he had been a hero in the Mexican War and that he was the best of the best among West Point graduates. It was no secret that Lincoln wanted Lee to lead the Federal Army, either.

The Army of Virginia followed someone they knew had the required skills and the determination to see the war through. That he was from a different class and didn't share all their values was not nearly so important to the troops as knowing they had a leader with the experience, skill, and dogged determination to stay the course.

Santorum has neither the skill nor the determination which shows that people following him aren't angry or exclusionary, just people who don't trust those who don't clearly state their beliefs. Wait a week or so and people will wake up and look for someone with the skill and determination to pursue the war that has to be fought rather than someone like Ricky who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

[SMARTY]

I am sure there are many more people sympathetic with the ‘Tea Party’ than admit to it.

The movement is still outside the American political mainstream. That's good and bad, both. The MSM will continue to marginalize Tea Party views and cast aspersions upon its supporters, if for no other reason than that they CAN. That's neither hear nor there.... the movement is alive and well.

People aligned with incipient political movements are typically hesitant to openly express support. Count on it... what you see in surveys and other reports is really the tip of the iceberg.

[Ratman83]

Got this far

There are other people in the country who share their concerns, if not their bitterness.

and decided the rest was not worth it.

[BitWielder1]

The TEA party needs to be true to itself, it's ideals.
No personality cults. No self-proclaimed leaders.
We might agree with someone one week but we don't have to follow when he goes off the rails next week.

[dirtboy]

This idiot missed a key point - Roosevelt and Kennedy shared the ideology of the Dem liberals that pushed them.

Romney doesn't share ours. I could care less about whether he is wealthy or not. I do care that he has no core convictions other than feeding his own ego and pursuing political power.

[winkadink]

This is another one who does not, or does not want to, understand the TEA Party. And after being told I am bitter (no mention of my guns or religion or it could be Obama writing this), I had read enough.

[SaraJohnson]

His premise as to why the rebellious ones - the Tea Party - reject Mittens is totally wrong. Mittens is an out of touch Mormon rich guy who runs around in limos but that is not why he is not popular with the tea party. He is a croney capitalist; a limo liberal, both culturally and economically. I don’t think “maybe” he is that. He has demonstrated that when in power as Gov. He pushed the radical gay agenda on families and children and he enacted socialized medicine in the State which came to haunt the whole nation.

The way Newt grew the conservative movement to toss the limo libearls out of leadership in the Republican party was to create a platform of reform that connected groups of people into a majority. We need that today.

The only message from the Tea Party that has made it’s way out is that they want to “cut spending.” That is not totally true. They want to cut the scope and size of government and although that will reduce spending; less spending is the result of main goal of cutting government influence and operation. So Ryan’s effort to cut social security with no government reform is off the mark. And it is not a popular message.

Other issues I have learned weaves the Tea Party together are:

Reclaim our individual constitutional rights from homeland insecurity and the Department of Justice. The domestic war on terror is for Muslims - not the elite’s American political and social enemies. Seriously, turn back the KGB. Street crime is rising and the criminal justice system is not keep the thugs in prision. The elitists have made too much of life illegal.

Bring the elite under the rule of law; both the government and Corporatists. No more bail outs. No more corruption; influence buying for foreign interests, monopolies and US Treasury access.

Bring the globalists and their agenda to heel. Kill their dreams of creating a global government to transfer wealth and bring nations under their legal rule. Stop transfering our wealth to foreign countries and enterprises in the name of foreign policy.

Stop pushing smut, thugs and other garabage on the American people as if immorality, disease, crime and welfare it is the defination of freedom - the American dream. The elitists’ culture is currently, downright dark and scarey. We are a majority Christian nation. We are not thugs, queers, sluts and whores and don’t want the elite pushing that ghetto crack on the public through entertainment, advertising and power. We are not morally relative; there is right and wrong and the elitists are generally aggressively wrong today.

Redefine progress as American constitutional freedom; not change to centralized power - National or international communism or fascism. That is for the Europeans. Not Americans.

Stop with the poltical correctness in the “war on terror.” Either we are fighting a war against a wacky religion - Islam - that has targeted us and our allies for destruction, or pull out of it. Don’t switch the war to focus on Americans and worship Islam in the name of political correctness.

Stop the watermelons. We have seen them in action before and know their central purpose is communism. They hate human life and freedom. Smack around some destructive globalist billionaires.

Something has to be done to stop the transfer of our jobs and opportunity to India and China. Global trade is not working to our advantage and we have the right to have our own economic interests as a nation even if the international corporatists and elitist global ruler wannabes don’t like it.

We have borders; keep them and enforce them. We are overwhelmed with too many needy people from illegal immigration. We are crashing.

There are many more issues upsetting the American public. The Tea party must reach out; but reach out in a productive way and not to the Rinos like Mittens who have wrecked everything they touch. They are the ones who have brought the GOP to a permanent minority devoid of American constitutional ideology, moral principals and reform ideas. They are a minority of losers. They won’t reach out because we are their only poltical and social enemy. They have to be defeated and sidelined again.

[BO Stinkss]

“When the alliance of labor unions, urban Catholics, and Southern rednecks combined to take over this country in 1932, they didn’t do it by nominating Huey Long or Al Smith for president. They did it by choosing a Hudson River aristocrat who had so much blue blood in his veins that he didn’t mind becoming a “traitor to his class” and trashing a few Wall Street plutocrats along the way.”

Remind me again how that worked out?

[LZ_Bayonet]

"a natural ally might be Mitt Romney, or someone very like him."

Milton Friedman: "People have a great misconception in this way, they think way they solve things by electing the right people. Its nice to elect the right people, but that isn’t the way you solve them. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things!"

Well, if you agree with Friedman and if, as many here believe, Romney will do the right thing if it is "politcally profitable", then Romney would be that natural ally. (Romney - "I believe in a lot of things the Tea Party believes in.")

[Excellence]

The whole article is a setup to this sentence:

Once Santorum starts spouting about banning birth control and abolishing public schools, he will be like those Populists who were suddenly heard sprinkling their calls for free coinage of silver with vegetarianism and mystical interpretations of the Bible -- the things that historian Richard Hofstadter said reflected "too many long nights on the prairie."

The author knows this is a completely false analogy but wants to make it anyway, and in doing so completely loses his argument.

[stevie_d_64]

“In other words, a natural ally might be Mitt Romney, or someone very like him.”

In other words...

Nahhhhh...I’ll pass...

And anyone very like him...Pass...

Why would Mitt Romney be the political standard that the Tea Party needs to emulate???

If anything, people who have genuine/honest uncompramising conservative beliefs will eventually disengage from the increasingly politically moderating/compramising Republican party and form their own political force, that will have the weaker moderates caucusing with the Tea Party, or whatever it may eventually be called...

It is only a matter of time, and it will not be the end of the world if the Republican party disintegrates, as many opther political parties in this country have done...

It is nothing to be fearful of either...

Just my opinion...