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Has the Tea Party Peaked? (What has been gained stands to be lost)
American Thinker ^ | 02/14/2012 | Perry Fisher

Posted on 02/14/2012 6:38:59 AM PST by SeekAndFind

An 800-pound gorilla in a room otherwise full of Tea Party types needs to be pointed out: people who prefer smaller government tend not to especially like government. Human nature being what it is, we tend to avoid that which we don't like. Which is okay except for the equal and opposite other gorilla: the political left actually likes government and, thereby, governing. It amounts to a built-in default, as if one football team suited up eleven players and the other just ten.

If the typical Tea Party affiliate ignored a building mess as long as she could, dusted off her citizen's mantle as mess became crisis, vented anger in an election cycle, made her statement, rattled Washington, and pretty much brushed her hands off to resume life as before, then what has been gained stands to be lost.

Witness the 2010 midterms. Tea Partiers huffed and puffed and blew the House around. "So there!" they exclaimed. Satisfied that they had made their point, everyone high-fived and hung their mantles back in the closet, next to the tuxedos, to resume life as before.

"I wonder if the tea party shot its wad in 2011, peaked too soon in a real way," says The Green Papers researcher/commentator Richard Berg-Andersson. The Green Papers is a thorough and diligent aggregation of the American electoral process, even if it is a challenge to navigate.

He says Mitt Romney's nomination is all but assured. Asked about a brokered convention, Berg-Andersson, "an amateur historian," says Romney could be denied sewing up the nomination as late as May or early June, if someone else, a placeholder like Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, can remain viable "as a protest vote," but "it's too late" for others.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: teaparty
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1 posted on 02/14/2012 6:39:00 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Well Rino Rick Santorum ain’t gonna do a damn thing to make govt smaller. Newt is the only one with the balls to get anything done.


2 posted on 02/14/2012 6:46:08 AM PST by petercooper (The one difference between Obama & Romney: Obama is only half white.)
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To: SeekAndFind

They’re dreaming. If we can take out Romney, it CLEARLY SHOWS our power. In fact, the PANIC of The Establishment right now shows our power. We are far from spent.


3 posted on 02/14/2012 6:47:29 AM PST by BobL (I don't care about his past - Santorum will BRING THE FIGHT to Obama)
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To: SeekAndFind

F.A. Hayek said, in his book “The Road To Serfdom”, that the politicians who aim lowest in the human psyche, at things like fear, greed, class hatred will get more votes than the ones who aim high with subjects like
Constitutionality, freedom and smaller government.


4 posted on 02/14/2012 6:50:49 AM PST by RoadTest (There is one god, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.)
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To: SeekAndFind

If the Tea Party takes out Romney, the candidates that are left are the most odious to the establishment.

Paul will not be the nominee but his views have become more and more mainstream. He would tear the government asunder.

Gingrich destroyed the status quo, actually cut govenment, eliminated committees, dismissed the seniority system in committees, instituted term limits to committee chairs and also the speakership, reformed entitlements, cut taxes and (gasp) balanced the budget.

Santorum was a senator that was always getting under people’s skin. Unashamedly conservative, he took on Hillary Clinton on the senate floor and does not back down easily. The establishment, after securing their pal Specter’s seat with Santorum’s help, then worked to defeat Santorum.

Any one of these men as the nominee, I will enthusiastically vote for, and what’s more, so will the nation.


5 posted on 02/14/2012 6:58:30 AM PST by cotton1706
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To: SeekAndFind
Yes, the Left loves big government totalitarianism, so they are about their work relentlessly. Their end result is always decay, despair, and poverty, however. The human spirit has a natural resistance to decline, so the spirit of the Tea Party will never have “shot its wad”.
6 posted on 02/14/2012 6:58:57 AM PST by throwback ( The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid)
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To: throwback

One has to wonder if the Tea Party even has an identity... any planks in its platform.


7 posted on 02/14/2012 7:02:40 AM PST by Nice50BMG (There is no place between elite and dolt where you don't look insane to either.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Yes, the tea party peaked some time ago. It was irreparablly damaged by the loss of its erstwhile leader when she failed to mount a charge, the failure of most of the "freshman" class of '10 to remain true to conservative principles, and the absolute destitute group of so called "candidates" almost guaranteeing failure against the stain and the current regime.

In truth, they're tired. Tired of backing the wrong horse, tired of being continuously disappointed, tired of giving their all with no return, tired of being lied to, tired of being cheated.

Just plain tired.

8 posted on 02/14/2012 7:04:50 AM PST by Logic n' Reason ("To keep you is no benefit; to kill you is no loss.")
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To: SeekAndFind

Some recidivism is inevitable. There is always a subset of people who are all for cutting the size of Government, until THEIR particular favorite program is on the chopping block.


9 posted on 02/14/2012 7:05:24 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s always easier to get a group of people together to act or protest AGAINST ‘the establishment’ than it is to get them to propose a coherent replacement.
Be it ‘Occupy’ or the ‘Tea Party’, in this country there is often no problem in getting a lot of people to attack the status quo, or at least one aspect of it; orders of magnitude harder to form a similarly sized number of people into a voting bloc or genuine party.


10 posted on 02/14/2012 7:09:06 AM PST by RedStateRocker (Nuke Mecca, Deport all illegals, abolish the IRS, DEA and ATF.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Sorry I haven't had time or daddy's money to go camping in Washington Square to protest an out of control federal government.

See, I'm one of the soon to be minority group called taxpayers. We occupy all forms of businesses day and night.

So just because I'm not out camping or defecating on a police car someplace, don't think that I'm not engaged in what's happening to our once great country.

11 posted on 02/14/2012 7:13:06 AM PST by TexasCajun
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To: SeekAndFind
Sorry I haven't had time or daddy's money to go camping in Washington Square to protest an out of control federal government.

See, I'm one of the soon to be minority group called taxpayers. We occupy all forms of businesses day and night.

So just because I'm not out camping or defecating on a police car someplace, don't think that I'm not engaged in what's happening to our once great country.

12 posted on 02/14/2012 7:13:09 AM PST by TexasCajun
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To: SeekAndFind

Just because we’re not out protesting and crapping out in public parks does not mean we have “gone away.” There are much more effective ways of getting things done than standing around holding a placard. What the MSM is p.o.’d about is that no singular organization has evolved that they can surround and neutralize. It’s much harder to hit a moving target. We’re out here and we are not going away.


13 posted on 02/14/2012 7:18:57 AM PST by ponygirl
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To: SeekAndFind
The tea party is not an organization that could rise and fall with the stock market, it is an attitude shared by many that can be referred to as "a party"

The tea party never wanted nor had a head or president, no board of directors, no backers or finance managers, rather it is, like the militia, a group of like minded people.


If there are some that no longer "see" the tea party, it is because they can't "see" in the first place.



We talk amongst ourselves and "plan" by learning our ideas are the same.


If I'm going to the store to get bread and milk, and I meet you along the way, and you're going the same place for the same things, and we go together ... did we plan this?


Let the lamestream muddle along, they will die after their token 75 years or so, America will survive and thrive, and the internet will remain free ... albeit perhaps a little more cluttered.

14 posted on 02/14/2012 7:25:40 AM PST by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)
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To: knarf

The lame stream media and its pundits just do not get it. Come November 2012, they will!


15 posted on 02/14/2012 7:45:20 AM PST by redflash ("A dog is a dog until you look him in the face, then he is Mr. Dog!")
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To: redflash
I agree. The Tea Party is not an entity, it's a movement. It's like the founders idea of citizen legislators, who would come to Washington, do their work, and return home to their real lives. This is the Tea Party. They did their work (2010), went back home, will return in 2012.

Some still hold meetings etc., but the vast majority are just voters, waiting for their turn to express their power. The only REAL power we have left.

Is a hibernating bear no longer a bear? Just wait until Spring (in this case Fall).

But, but, the primaries. We already have our candidate, “anybody but Obama”. We'll know exactly who it is after the convention.

16 posted on 02/14/2012 8:18:25 AM PST by faucetman ( Just the facts, ma'am, Just the facts)
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To: SeekAndFind

Anyone who thinks the TEA party movement is dead has not been attending caucuses or central committee meetings. At least in CO, this is the most radically conservative and not ready to compromise group I have seen in 12 years. By far.


17 posted on 02/14/2012 8:29:10 AM PST by ModelBreaker
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To: SeekAndFind

Idiotic article. If people expect the Tea Party to be a cheering section for “their” presidential candidate, they are delusional.

The Tea Party is engaged in vetting Senate and House candidates. With a RINO-free house and Senate, you’ll be amazed how conservative President Mitt gets.


18 posted on 02/14/2012 8:31:54 AM PST by denydenydeny (The more a system is all about equality in theory the more it's an aristocracy in practice.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I’ve said it many times. There is no TEA Party, unless you are talking about shared beliefs held by many under one name. It is a movement of fed-up conservatives. Now, there are TEA Party groups all over America and beyond. And, believe me, they are neither inactive nor resigned to defeat. The Lone Star Tea Party, for instance, has a radio show, regular meetings, education, a new online newspaper, and many other activities designed to wake up the public and affect the political process. The MSM, the Dims and the ruling class Republicans want you to believe the movement is dead. It isn’t. And if you think it is, you must never have had the guts to join or at least support a group.


19 posted on 02/14/2012 8:32:11 AM PST by manic4organic (We won. Get over it.)
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To: redflash

The Tea Party arose in response to ObamaCare and an overreaching Federal Government. And in 2010, we elected dramatically changed the composition of Congress. Now we wait until the next chance, 2012, when we will dramatically change the direction in which this country is headed.

In the meantime, we’ve settled for gridlock, not a final solution, but at least a dampening of the Obama madness, which is on full display in his proposed new “budget.”

The Occupy crowd tried, in a way, to duplicate the Tea Party by remaining unorganized, but when you take a bunch of lazy leftist bums and throw them together, you get the expected trash-filled, crime-ridden, mess you’d expect, whether they’ve organized or not. And now, even though they were encouraged by every major news organization in the world, they’re dying out as 98.9% of their so-called 99% refuse to even be associated with such rabble.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party members, unorganized for the most part, and certainly decentralized, many of us not even formally associated with a local organization, just wait, ready to join our friends and neighbors to conduct an orderly rout of both the GOP establishment and the Left in November. And we’ll even clean up after ourselves when we’re done.

They have no idea...


20 posted on 02/14/2012 8:54:08 AM PST by Norseman (Defund the Left-Completely!)
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