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Michael Reagan: Shut Up Tea Party, Your Candidates Are Kooks
http://www.westernjournalism.com ^ | april 10, 2014 | michael reagan

Posted on 04/11/2014 10:01:47 AM PDT by lowbridge

The Tea Party zealots who haven’t learned from their mistakes in 2010 and 2012 are trying their best to screw up the GOP’s chances to win the Senate this fall.

Where does the Tea Party find these people to run in primaries? Most important, why do they offer them up as legitimate Republican candidates?

The Tea Party bosses have been listening to too much talk radio. They seem to think that what makes a good Republican candidate is someone who sounds like a talk radio host.

But talk radio is all about bombast and attracting callers, not about winning elections.

If Republicans are going to win general elections in 2014 and beyond, we’ve got to put up principled conservative candidates who sound like senators, congressmen, and governors — not kooks.

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


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: conservativism; michaelreagan; reagan; teaparty
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To: x

I will say this….when my columns appear at Breitbart or American Thinker, and then get linked or printed a lot of other places - in about 99% of the cases the header is kept exactly as written in the original publication. These headers for this piece are shameful...


181 posted on 04/11/2014 4:48:46 PM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (Tokyo Rove is more than a name, it's a GREAT WEBSITE)
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To: Red Badger

Good, prescient point.


182 posted on 04/11/2014 4:54:03 PM PDT by krunkygirl (force multiplier in effect...)
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To: ansel12

The best way to answer that is this way: the TP movement was started as a reaction to government gone wild - spending, instrusion, bureaucratic control, and taking from the producers and giving to the takers. The Santelli rant was over a mortgage program making payers foot the bill for the derelict mortgage clients. That ignited a building movement, that started 3 years or so earlier with frustration with Bush/Hastert/Frist spending and then really reaching critical mass with Obama’s election and his Obama Care dreams on the horizon - with of course TARP and Stimulus and GM Bail outs along the way. It had almost nothing to do with social issues at this point. It built on the Town Hall obama care protests.

But of course, a lot of people got swept up in it who never saw the Santelli performance and didn’t really know how it started. And, naturally, many of these limited gov folks were Christians. As you said, that is the core audience. Some others were hard core Paul bots. That group had been early to the anti Bush movement. Others still were part of that shifting sand world known as Glenbeckistan.

As some of them wanted to start their local chapters, etc, they put their preferred issues on it, and often, in the small local chapters, those were social issues. In some othrs, it was the more secular libertine type emphases. Most, especially the bigs, were more in the Santelli anti obama care anti big gov mold - which is true to how it was started IMO.


183 posted on 04/11/2014 4:56:21 PM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (Tokyo Rove is more than a name, it's a GREAT WEBSITE)
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To: C. Edmund Wright

Whatever you were answering, that wasn’t a good one.

What was the question that you were answering?


184 posted on 04/11/2014 7:02:13 PM PDT by ansel12 ((Libertarianism offers the transitory concepts and dialogue to move from conservatism, to liberalism)
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To: C. Edmund Wright

Your analogy is fine, but as political parasites and con men, the libertarians try constantly to hijack the movement’s image and demographic make-up.

I have never said the tea party was focused on social issues, but they will if called to, and they will not embrace social liberalism, which is the call of the libertarians, who also try to portray the Christian tea party as a collection of the libertarian non-Christians.

The tea party is not very libertarian at all, they are to the right of republicans on social issues, and that can’t be said enough.


185 posted on 04/11/2014 7:07:37 PM PDT by ansel12 ((Libertarianism offers the transitory concepts and dialogue to move from conservatism, to liberalism)
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To: Lou Budvis

Cruz just wrote a bill and got the senate to approve it that bars terrorist’s from being assigned diplomatic posts in the U.S.

Thankfully, none of em are passing any laws at the moment, or very many.


186 posted on 04/11/2014 7:50:29 PM PDT by Cen-Tejas (it's the debt bomb stupid!)
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To: dragonblustar

“The Tea Party zealots who haven’t learned from their mistakes in 2010 and 2012....”

Yes that mistake of the Tea Party winning back the House in 2010 and that mistake of the GOPe nominating loser Romney in 2012.


187 posted on 04/11/2014 7:50:40 PM PDT by headstamp 2 (What would Scooby do?)
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To: ansel12

Some tea party groups are rather libertarian, and the Paul bots were some of the precursors to the TP - railing againt Bush on several issues.


188 posted on 04/11/2014 8:06:27 PM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (Tokyo Rove is more than a name, it's a GREAT WEBSITE)
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To: C. Edmund Wright

LOL, that’s nice, but the tea party as a whole is what conservative politics usually is, Christians and conservative, not libertarian.


189 posted on 04/11/2014 8:19:59 PM PDT by ansel12 ((Libertarianism offers the transitory concepts and dialogue to move from conservatism, to liberalism)
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To: C. Edmund Wright

Precisely. Claire was running ads in the primary touting Akin as the “true” conservative. And when you’ve got both Palin and Allen West telling you to get out of the race, you’ve lost any and all “tea party” bonafides you may have tried to lay claim to.


190 posted on 04/12/2014 12:34:39 AM PDT by chae (The Lannisters send their regards--Game of Thrones)
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To: lowbridge

If you don’t win, you can’t play.


191 posted on 04/12/2014 4:21:19 AM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: ansel12

You can laugh all you want - but you are choosing to ignore several realities…first, that there is a large area of common ground between libertarians and conservative Chrsitians - and that a lot of the libertarians were early to the TP movement, especially the movement prior to 09 before it was widely called TP - but was the anti spending movement. These are both undeniably true.

But yes, libertarian paul bots - and those in the media who want to discredit the TP - will both parrot the line that TP is a Ron Paul movement. And that is not correct at all.


192 posted on 04/12/2014 4:56:49 AM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (Tokyo Rove is more than a name, it's a GREAT WEBSITE)
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To: chae
Precisely. Claire was running ads in the primary touting Akin as the “true” conservative. And when you’ve got both Palin and Allen West telling you to get out of the race, you’ve lost any and all “tea party” bonafides you may have tried to lay claim to.

All true - and I think you can add Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin to those calling for Akin to get out. What really irks me is how so many of the social ONLY cons fell for Akins schtick, fell for McCaskill's psych operation ad campaign, etc. We have some real lo fo folks on "our" side it seems…..

193 posted on 04/12/2014 4:58:55 AM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (Tokyo Rove is more than a name, it's a GREAT WEBSITE)
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To: GeronL

Michael has transformed himself from a fighter to an establishment lackey. At the Pa. Leadership Conference last week, he was a big disappointment. He is NOT the man whom I listened to on talk radio years ago. Maybe he was a phony all along, and now he is willing to do the bidding of the establishment. Bob Grant had said that he is not to be trusted.


194 posted on 04/12/2014 7:43:03 AM PDT by alstewartfan (Now winter moans in old men's bones As the day falls into dark. Al Stewart)
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To: Georgia Girl 2

Reagan went from the guy who said that Sarah was his own father, only wearing a dress this time around, to a establishment shill who trashes her! What’s up with that? Bob


195 posted on 04/12/2014 7:44:37 AM PDT by alstewartfan (Now winter moans in old men's bones As the day falls into dark. Al Stewart)
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To: Cyman

God willing, Ted Cruz will be our nominee. He is head and shoulders above the rest of the field, IMO. Bob


196 posted on 04/12/2014 7:45:54 AM PDT by alstewartfan (Now winter moans in old men's bones As the day falls into dark. Al Stewart)
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To: lowbridge

GOP puts up two losers for President and they want to lecture us on viable candidates.


197 posted on 04/12/2014 10:21:23 AM PDT by drunknsage
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To: GeronL
Excellent summary:

MR jumped the shark a while back!

198 posted on 04/12/2014 11:09:17 AM PDT by Grampa Dave ( Herr Obama cannot divert resources from his war on Americans!)
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To: staytrue

“But when you think everyone has “jumped the shark” maybe there is something wrong with you eyes and ears.”

Is that the same Michael Medved who led antiwar rallies during the Vietnam War?

Thought so.

Is that the same Michael Medved who worked for Red Ron Dellums, the Castro supporting Democrat?

Thought so.

It fits that you consider him a ‘stalwart conservative” I suppose.


199 posted on 04/12/2014 1:19:39 PM PDT by Pelham (If you do not deport it is amnesty by default.)
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To: scbison

I read once that Jane Wyman was a Republican long before Ronald Reagan, but she had little interest in politics.


200 posted on 04/12/2014 2:44:28 PM PDT by Theodore R. (It was inevitable: Texans will always be for Cornball and George P.!)
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