“Why not? You’re not taxed enough?”
Oh, certainly.
I just think that the TEA Party’s efforts to work within the system to improve it will prove ineffectual at the expense of much time, energy, and money. As long as most or a significant plurality of TEA parties buy into the existing two party system things will remain the same.
I consider the TEA party to be in fact good faith emissaries to intractable enemies, perhaps even existential enemies. The formalities of attempted parley are proper preliminaries, but they will prove futile; a cease-and-desist letter to career criminals. Just wait until the 2016 Republican convention to see just how excluded any TEA party, paleo-con, libertarian or Reaganite influences will be. Conservative and liberty interests, positions and candidates will be locked out. Hard.
What percent makes up a majority?
>> Why not? You're not taxed enough? <<
I agree with Psalm 144. I've been to a handful of "Tea Party" events, and I share the goals and objectives of the Tea Party (I've certainly been 'taxed enough already', thank you), but I don't consider myself a member and never joined a Tea Party group.
Why? The self-appointed "Tea Party" leaders were gung-ho on running candidates like John Raese, Richard Mourdock, Sharron Angle, Justin Amash, Mark Neumann, Christine O’Donnell, Marco Rubio, Milton Wolf, Liz Cheney, and Bruce Rauner. I absolutely DO NOT agree with those choices. In fact, the only clear "Tea Party" candidate that turned out to be great was Ted Cruz. That's a pretty mediocre track record and I see no evidence they learned from the mistakes of 2010 and 2012, now that it's 2014. I have to totally oppose them when they say we should waste a bunch of time and money to purge a guy who has stood shoulder to shoulder with Ted Cruz, for a guy whose only talking point is that he's "Obama's conservative cousin". Ironically, the Tea Party makes many of the same mistakes the GOP establishment does -- they opt to run empty suits for U.S. Senate races because the candidate is a slick talker and tells them what they want to hear. I totally agree with the goals and objectives of the Tea Party, but completely DISAGREE with the ways they think that can be achieved (it's not by running RINOs who scream "TEA PARTY!" the loudest and purging conservatives who do what we want).
If there's any party organization that comes closest to where I stand, it would probably be the Constitution Party. But even there, I don't agree with their isolationism and anti-17th amendment fetish.