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Palin Endorsement of Trump Signals Tea Party's Whimpering End
PJ Media ^
| 01/20/2016
| Walter Hudson
Posted on 01/20/2016 9:03:28 AM PST by SeekAndFind
How can you hate TARP, but love Trump?
For all their faults, the Star Wars prequels ride on undercurrents of political insight. In Revenge of the Sith, there's a moment when Padme Amidala tells her husband of growing doubts about their government. "Have you ever considered that we may be on the wrong side?" she asks him. "What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we've been fighting to destroy?"
How Padme felt then mirrors how I feel now. Only my "republic" isn't a galactic government. It's a movement which drew me into political activism, a movement I championed and fought for relentlessly, which has now metastasized into the very thing it once opposed. Charles C. W. Cooke explains at National Review. Reacting to Sarah Palin's recent endorsement of Donald Trump, he writes:
What, we might ask, has become of Palin's beloved Tea Party? What, too, of her purported admiration for limited government, and of her ostensible hatred of heretics and fakers?... All that talk of the Constitution and the Declaration; all that energy expended against the cronies and the rent-seekers; all those purifying voter drives -- and for what? So that Sarah Palin could add a few zeroes to her bank balance and Donald Trump could go from the purchaser to the bought? Today was the day that Rick Santelli's famous yelp finally melted into populism and avarice. Today, at about ten minutes past six, P. T. Barnum beat out Hayek for the soul of the insurgent Right. Today, the rebels became the charlatans they had set out to depose. What comes next will be anybody's guess.
It's a fair point. As someone who has been intimately involved with the Tea Party from its inception, I feel confident claiming to know what the movement was once about. At no point throughout the past eight years would I have told you that the Tea Party was personified by Donald Trump. Sure, concern about immigration has been on the periphery. But it was never the dominant issue overriding all others.
The Tea Party used to be about "fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets." Now, the movement's top media darling has enthusiastically endorsed a man who built his wealth on eminent domain and seeks to "make America great again" by restricting trade. Trump is a crony capitalist of the kind tea partiers once lamented in the wake of TARP and the big corporate bailouts. Author Corie W. Stephens puts it this way:
Both [Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders] believe in protectionism rather than the market on an international scale.
The truth is, there's very little daylight between these two presidential candidates on economic matters. Trump and Sanders are both tried and true authoritarians whose views are antithetical to freedom and prosperity.
Yet here we are, witnessing Palin's endorsement and the support of supposed conservatives from what Cooke calls "the insurgent Right."
It all has the effect of legitimizing many of the worst accusations made against Republicans and tea partiers, that we're all a bunch of jingoistic homogeneous xenophobic racists. For years, I stood as a black man within the movement to vehemently refute that claim. We're about the Constitution, I claimed. We're about free minds and free markets. We're about each man's sacred right to pursue his own happiness. We're about seizing private property for personal gain.
It's a little jarring when you throw it in there like that, isn't it? And yet, here we are, effectively telling exactly that to the rest of the world. What the hell happened?
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 1stcanadiansenator; palin; sarahpalin; tdsandpds; teaparty; trump; usualsuspect
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To: SeekAndFind
I love when individuals try to speak for the Tea Party.
Now this fart-head declares the Tea Party dead.
2
posted on
01/20/2016 9:04:54 AM PST
by
samtheman
(Elect Trump, Build Wall. End Censorship.)
To: SeekAndFind
How about Sarah Palin’s whimpering end...that sounds more like it. From Anti-Crony Capitalist Crusader to Crony Capitalist Enabler...just like that.
She’s done.
To: GodGunsGuts
To: SeekAndFind
when any names associated with your political group get audited by the IRS due to their political opposition to the current administration... it’s difficult to keep going publicly
5
posted on
01/20/2016 9:06:08 AM PST
by
sten
(fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
To: SeekAndFind
Wrong. The Tea Party was always more about populism than it was pure-play textbook Conservatism.
To: SeekAndFind
I am TEA Party and I support Trump!!!
7
posted on
01/20/2016 9:06:44 AM PST
by
CodeToad
(Islam should be banned and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
To: SeekAndFind
If your understanding if the Tea Party hinges on the endorsement of a single person, then you never understood it at all.
Sad little man.
8
posted on
01/20/2016 9:07:28 AM PST
by
freedumb2003
(Don't mistake my silence for ignorance, my calmness for acceptance, or my kindness for weakness)
To: SeekAndFind
Palin is just trying to stay in the spotlight.
9
posted on
01/20/2016 9:07:51 AM PST
by
Durbin
To: SeekAndFind
GO TRUMP!
10
posted on
01/20/2016 9:07:58 AM PST
by
IC Ken
To: SeekAndFind
I sent money to Cruz when he ran for senate and he didn't let me down. He moved into beltway society and stuck to the promises he made. Few can say that.
Trump has pledged to support and even increase ethanol subsidies- Sarah claims Tea Party allegiance and backs that idea? She's gone silly IMO.
But the biggie for me is the possibility of the next president making two, or even three Supreme Court nominations. Between Cruz and Trump on this issue there is no comparison.
11
posted on
01/20/2016 9:10:11 AM PST
by
Baynative
(If socialist democrat ideas are so good for people why must they be mandatory?)
To: SeekAndFind
Someone please tell this guy:
1. No one has to say they liked the prequels anymore
2. His feetie pajamas are in the bottom drawer
12
posted on
01/20/2016 9:10:18 AM PST
by
Read Write Repeat
(Not one convinced me they want the job yet)
To: Durbin
Palin is just trying to stay in the spotlight.
*****************
What’s the criteria for being allowed in the spotlight
during election campaigns?
Link or list?
13
posted on
01/20/2016 9:10:39 AM PST
by
deport
To: freedumb2003
A buddy of mine who was very active in the Tea Party laments that in his mind it ended when they failed to turn out an angry pitchfork mob of 1 million to stop the Obamacare vote.
To: SeekAndFind
Trump. Trump. Trump. How many articles are about Trump today? Almost all. Even when the media writes anti-Trump articles, they are crowding out the other candidates.
That magnificent bastard has done it again!
15
posted on
01/20/2016 9:11:55 AM PST
by
joshua c
(Please dont feed the liberals)
To: SeekAndFind
Well stated summation of the bewildered depression so many of us are feeling. When I have scores of FR posters telling me that conservatives can’t win elections and that they know Trump is not a conservative but just don’t care, I have to wonder how it all went wrong.
Hillary needs to send Trump a thank-you note. He single handedly killed the vast right-wing conspiracy.
16
posted on
01/20/2016 9:13:45 AM PST
by
brothers4thID
("We've had way too many Republicans whose #1 virtue is "I get along great with Democrats".")
To: SeekAndFind
Yes. The Tea Party is dead. Now if Trump gets the nom, conservatism is dead.
17
posted on
01/20/2016 9:16:15 AM PST
by
demshateGod
(Trump: We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity)
To: CodeToad
RE: I am TEA Party and I support Trump!!!
Which ones of Trump’s past statements are Tea Party values?
* Trump supported the bailouts.
* Trump helped finance the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006, which put in place the liberal majority that passed Obamacare over the objections of congressional Republicans. And he continued to support a Democratic Senate majority after Obamacare.
* He has supported eminent domain when it benefits him.
* Trump supports ethanol subsidies.
*Trump would tell Apple that it should manufacture its products in the US which means that iPhones would cost much more than they do now.
Look, I am not a Trump hater. I’d vote for him if he were a candidate.
But I find it strange that a Tea Partier would overlook his past stances....
This sounds like a triumph of hope over experience.
To: SeekAndFind
I have a gut feeling that this election will not end well, and by that I mean that I fear for the future of this country no matter who wins. There is something uncanny - in the sense of spooky - about an election that is boiling down to a choice between Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.
19
posted on
01/20/2016 9:17:53 AM PST
by
Steve_Seattle
("Above all, shake your bum at Burton.")
To: SeekAndFind
- I like Ted Cruz and will support his presidency.
- I like Donald Trump and will support his presidency.
- I like Sarah Palin and her faithful devotion to the U.S.A.
20
posted on
01/20/2016 9:18:20 AM PST
by
Blue Jays
(Rock Hard, Ride Free)
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