Tea Party Blues

In my travels across North Carolina since February 2009, I have attended patriot group meetings across the state. For various reasons, the idea that we should follow the same principles as our founding fathers is not well understood. The colonists rallied around the slogan “Unite or Die” because they knew the price of freedom AND what they had to do to achieve it.

The Tea Parties across the country were usurped by the Republican Party and TPINOs (Tea Party in Name Only) in 2010. “Leaders” argued against any talk of a third political party or the necessity to join forces to be united. How easily we forget (or wish to conveniently forget) that the strength of our country is that we were the “United” States of America. The forces aligned against our future and freedom understood and implemented the basic transformation of our country into the Divided States of America. This has effectively caused our economic and moral collapse without a single shot being fired. As we maintain a course of individualism and personal agendas, the only focus that we can agree on is who will be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012.

The excerpt from the article below outlines the flaws of the larger Tea Party movements across the county. As shown in Raleigh at the General Assembly, the Tea Party movement in the eyes of the Republican Party has been marginalized and of no further consideration. As I wrote in an earlier article, our founding fathers warned us about political parties and politicians:

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

We are reaping the consequences of apathy and reliance on political parties. Only we can save the future of our society by acting with honor and virtue. We know that Washington has no honor and the notion of virtue inside the beltway is laughable instead of laudable.

David DeGerolamo

Tea Party May Be Weakened 2012 Force: Hunt

The Tea Party movement was a potent political insurgency in U.S. elections last year, and it is a major presence in Washington and state capitols today. It may have a tougher time as an entrenched force next year.

The grassroots, anti-government, conservative movement provided the energy and enthusiasm for the huge Republican gains last November that gave the party control of the House of Representatives. It was driven by the financial meltdown of 2008, the resulting government involvement in the economy, ballooning budget deficits and a visceral dislike of PresidentBarack Obama.

The Tea Party’s influence is pervasive. “We are the dominant force in American politics in Washington, state capitols and at the local level,” says Mark Meckler, co-founder and national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, one of the movement’s major offshoots.

“The zeitgeist of the times is people are concerned about the growing size and intrusiveness of government, onerous regulations and the skyrocketing national debt,” says Sal Russo, the co-founder and chief strategist for the Tea Party Express, a leading financial donor to affiliated candidates.

The Tea Party movement never has been monolithic, always replete with factions: the dominant anti-government conservatives, social-issues advocates, anti-immigration forces, libertarians and others. “There is a wide divergence,” says Russo, a former strategist for Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp.

2010 Mobilization

In the 2010 election, opposition to Obama and the Democrats galvanized all the Tea Party factions to support Republicans. Exit polling suggests about two in five voters were Tea Party supporters and six of every seven of these voted Republican.

To remain as effective next year, the movement faces several challenges. On the national level and in many states, it has to defend or support the policies of politicians it helped elect. That is much harder than merely opposing.

And there are multiple fault lines. One is whether the movement should focus exclusively on eliminating big government and reducing debt or whether it also should take on social issues such as opposition to gay marriage, abortion and gun control.

“A major divide is between a smaller group that says focus on fiscal conservatism and a larger group that includes social conservatives,” says Judson Phillips, of Tea Party Nation, who is disdainful of the fiscal issues-only crowd.

‘He’s a Lunatic’

That sentiment is returned. “He’s a lunatic,” says Meckler, whose Tea Party Patriots emphasizes the fight against big government. “He has no credibility in the movement.”Phillips once suggested the solution to illegal immigration was to take a “planeload” of undocumented workers and “dump them in Somalia.” He also was a devotee of the anti-Obama birther movement.

On the Tea Party Patriots’ criticism, Phillips replies,“If I am a fringe Tea Party person, I’m the biggest fringe Tea Party person on the Internet.”

You get the picture.

Even when it comes to economic issues, there are divisions over priorities between the pro-business elements and the conservative economic populists. Charles and David Koch, who own a huge energy conglomerate, are important, if often secret, funders of the movement. Some local groups, however, express outrage at corporate subsidies.

More…

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