GOP and the Tea Party

NY Times:

As they look to make gains in statehouses and Congress this year, Republicans are trying to harness the Tea Party energy that helped make an unknown named Scott Brown the senator-elect from Massachusetts.

But it may not be easy, as one Republican in Colorado learned the hard way.

When Scott McInnis appeared on Fox News last month underneath a title calling him the “Tea-Party-backed candidate” for governor, he triggered a tempest. Tea Party leaders fired off angry e-mail messages and public statements insisting that he was not their choice.

“Let it be known that we will not be used by any party or candidate!” Lu Ann Busse, the head of a coalition of Tea Party brethren known as 9/12 groups, declared at a “Defend the Republic” rally where she was invited to set the record straight after Mr. McInnis’s appearance.

Mr. McInnis said it was Fox that gave him the description without consulting him. But he was quick to try to make amends, issuing a statement on his Web site, and in the weeks since he and the head of the state Republican Party have toured Colorado meeting with Tea Party groups.

Across the country, many Tea Party activists believe that they have to work within the Republican Party if they want to elect fiscally conservative candidates. But they want the party to work for them — not, they argue, the other way around.

For Republican officials, managing the tensions between the two parties — one official, one potent — can be something like a full-time job.

“I do spend a lot of my time running interference,” said Dick Wadhams, the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

“I’m a big believer in the Tea Party groups,” he said. “I’m not going to claim that every Tea Party or 9/12 leader thinks I’m hunky-dory, but I do think the people who I’ve reached out to would acknowledge that I’ve welcomed them into the Republican Party. It’s a big priority of mine.”

...


One of the memes that has been pushed by Democrats is that the Tea Party movement is a function of the Republican Party. It has been used as a way of denigrating the Tea Party participants and along with a series of homo erotic insults. This story indicates just how unrealistic that meme is.

I have been pointing out for some time that the Tea Party movement sees the Republican party as a vehicle for pushing its agenda and not the other way around. The Tea Party Movement is actively attempting to take over the infrastructure of the Republican party from the ground up starting at the precinct level.

Where the Tea Party is most at odds with some members of the GOP is over spending and earmarks. They are true deficit hawks who want to restrain spending. They also want to restrain government control over our lives and that is one reason why they opposed the Democrats control freak health care bill.

I don't recall the Times engaging in the insults to those in the Tea Party Movement although they may have quoted some Democrats who have. Democrats also insulted those at the Town Hall meeting who tried to convey their opposition to the health care bills. Insulting voters is not a good way to persuade them to your point of view and it only adds to the anger that is now swamping their agenda.

Comments

  1. ClayBarham7:49 PM

    The Tea Party Movement is a part of the American tradition. It is what the elite few who want to rule the many, as the current Democrat Party and many old-line Republicans, would oppose. It comes from a unique tradition of local home rule, where government was no further from the governed than one day’s horseback ride, and individual interests were more important than are community interests. That led to the more involved citizen, the town hall meetings and even the vigilante movement. From the early days, the Tea Party Movement is but an extension of American traditions and perfectly correct. Surely, the Old World, such as England and France, would never permit such a thing, as their traditions were inclined to be bloody conflicts, not peaceful demonstrations. The differences are cited in the Changing Face of Democrats, Our Libertarian Roots Lost, on Amazon and claysamerica.com.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown7:00 AM

    Three interesting books that address these points among others are

    Forced Founders : Indians, debtors, slaves, and the making of the American Revolution in Virginia;

    Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution; both by Woody Holton

    Founding Brothers : The revolutionary generation; by Joseph Ellis

    Unruly Americans is very interesting

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more