Posted on 08/16/2012 4:55:53 AM PDT by rightjb
I’m concerned about the unrestrained euphoria of conservatives who believe that the Tea Party is unstoppable and that the election will be a rout in November. As a Cub fan I haven’t dealt with it often, but I’ve heard that over confidence can lead to disaster. (Somehow the Cubs are able to invite disaster without it.)
The TEA Party candidates lost Tuesday in Florida and Wisconsin. Even after flirting with attractions to elements of ObamaCare, former Governor Tommy Thompson won in Wisconsin. The Queen of TEA herself endorsed Rep. Sandy Adams but even that couldn’t create a repeat of the Texas grassroots tsunami experienced by the Palin/Cruz combo. What happened?
If this brings new calls that the TEA Party is dead, that is just as ignorant as thinking that it can’t be stopped.
I’ve been trashed for trying to bring a little perspective to the real TEA Party power, and no doubt the Pollyannas will think I’m trying to water it down. Nothing is further from the truth. What I’ve learned in 30 years of business is that while faith may move mountains, NOT accurately understanding your predicament can bring a mountain crashing down upon you. Even in Texas where the Cruz win is cited as a TEA Party victory, only 1/3rd of GOP voters would self-identify themselves as with the movement. This fits with national statistics that only about 27% of Americans drink the TEA. The more sobering stat is that 24% support Occupy Wall Street. But you won’t hear that in conservative media. TEA Candidates have not been dominating as some might think. Statistics show...
CONTINUED AT: WARNING Conservatives: Tepid TEA Party Not Boiling In Florida
(Excerpt) Read more at rantpolitical.com ...
There are plenty of tea partiers elected in 2010 who kept their seats in the primary this year.
The defeats the Tea Party faced in Indiana and Texas should serve... as a.. warning....
...oh, wait.
Pardon me, but bullsh#t. Sandy Adams ended up in an unfortunate and likely unwinnable situation. Due to redistricting she was up against Mica, who by and large is a pretty good congressman. He’s been in dc too long, and I would have voted for Adam if I were in her district, but this was not a central tea party battle. Mica had tons of money and flooded the airwaves. He is the biggest figure in national politics in central Florida. Adams is a first termer, running in a district rebuilt to include a lot of people from Mica’s district. I don’t know anyone who thought she had a chance in this one. Mica is no Lugar. There is no groundswell to get rid of him. In a perfect world, both would have been going back to DC next year .
“rightjb” is the definition of “http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2594943/posts";
For example ~ and I hate to keep bringing this one up ~ we had the situation where Hatch was second in seniority only to Lugar in the Senate. When your party takes over the Senate the guy with the most seniority is very important in passing out committee chairmanships.
Obviously you can't have a race between Lugar and Hatch ~ since they're in different states (except when they are both in Washington DC all the time), but a sufficiently aggressive group masquerading as a Tea Party grassroots movement could pop up in Indiana and beat Lugar on behalf of Hatch and his lackeys in Utah.
Lo and behold that's what happened.
The folks backing Lugar kept complaining it was "out of state money" backing Mourdock, but they could never tell us which state it was.
Later on when the primaries were held in Utah, the local TEA Party crowd popped up, declared Hatch was OK (although his voting record looks more like Teddy Kennedy's than it ever did Lugar's) and began flowing the stream of TEA Party funding to the Hatch campaign.
So much for integrity in some TEA Party organizations ~ sure wouldn't trust the crowd in Utah, and now I wonder about the crowd in Indiana.
Might watch Mourdock's voting record next year real close ~ bet he ends up kinda' to the Left of Lugar, and Hatch!
Now this sort of thing will happen whenever you have a freefloating political organization ~ all the cells don't work together, nor are all the cells the ones you want. Some of them are CANCER and need to be irradiated or poisoned with chemistry!
At some point we need some WRITERS to lay out the acceptable standards for the TEA Party acting as a faction or group of factions within the Republican coalition, if not as part of a Conservative coalition.
Right now, watching this same faithless crowd telling us how great it's going to be with Hatch back in the Senate, I'm pretty sure they aren't really TEA Party folks ~ more like people who simply wanted their guy, Hatch, to be in a very powerful position in the Senate.
That's pretty standard politics ~ usually doing a bit of rent seeking to get in charge of the national budget. You watch, there will be some major government buildings going up at the base of The Front.
Your posting history dictates that all you do is pimp your blog over and over and much of it is anti-tea party, anti Paul Ryan and mostly garbage lefty crap. You never comment. You never debate. Surprised you are allowed to post your garbage here.
The TEA Party has come a long way in a short period of time.
Heck, even Babe Ruth struck out once in awhile.
The TEA Party movement is just beginning.....dems and RINO’s, you’ve been warned.
Tommy Thompson was a very successful Governor in WI, and while tea party activists have had some gripes about him, those that remember what WI was like before he came to office were not going to write him off over them by and large.
National movements don’t make or break on 1 battle. Indicator, maybe, but I sure wouldn’t be writing Thompson winning a primary as an indication the Tea Party is defunct, or failing.
Not YOU again. Get out of here with your fake “right”ing.
No matter what happens in Nov., Paul Ryan is positioned to be the next leader of the GOP. That’s a victory for the Tea Party.
Its becoming increasingly apparent that the true purists are the so called moderates. Washington is riddled with evidence like a cancer. If it weren’t for conservatives doing all the compromising there wouldn’t be any moderates in the GOP.
It is foolish to think the current situation will be “fixed” by the TEA Party in one election cycle, and then we can all go back to playing Halo IV. The current environment took generations to create, and it will take generations of tireless work to fix.
The following is the complete article and the real title
WARNING Conservatives: Tepid TEA Party Not Boiling In Florida.
I’m concerned about the unrestrained euphoria of conservatives who believe that the Tea Party is unstoppable and that the election will be a rout in November. As a Cub fan I haven’t dealt with it often, but I’ve heard that over confidence can lead to disaster. (Somehow the Cubs are able to invite disaster without it.) The TEA Party candidates lost Tuesday in Florida and Wisconsin. Even after flirting with attractions to elements of ObamaCare, former Governor Tommy Thompson won in Wisconsin. The Queen of TEA herself endorsed Rep. Sandy Adams but even that couldn’t create a repeat of the Texas grassroots tsunami experienced by the Palin/Cruz combo. What happened? If this brings new calls that the TEA Party is dead, that is just as ignorant as thinking that it can’t be stopped. I’ve been trashed for trying to bring a little perspective to the real TEA Party power, and no doubt the Pollyannas will think I’m trying to water it down. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I’ve learned in 30 years of business is that while faith may move mountains, NOT accurately understanding your predicament can bring a mountain crashing down upon you. Even in Texas where the Cruz win is cited as a TEA Party victory, only 1/3rd of GOP voters would self-identify themselves as with the movement. This fits with national statistics that only about 27% of Americans drink the TEA. The more sobering stat is that 24% support Occupy Wall Street. But you won’t hear that in conservative media. According to RedState last week, TEA candidates have only about a 46.6% success rate in elections. That’s quite good compared to ANY movement, but it also highlights some realities. It is not a big enough constituency to overcome infighting. Both of Governor Thompson’s challengers in Wisconsin could be considered TEA Party candidates, but they split the vote three ways, must like they did in the GOP Presidential Primary. There is no way around the fact that the TEA Party has influence. I’ve been meaning to blog about a local Texas “conservative” who tried to dismiss the Cruz win as political opportunism instead of riled up grassroots patriots who turned out in record numbers. It’s simply not true. In Texas, the TEA affiliates turned out over 75% of their “members” as opposed to the rank and file GOP who turned out less than 50%. It made the difference. But just as Reagan’s wins didn’t mean that the “blue dog” Democrats became Republicans, we TEA types can’t assume our numbers are greater than they are. They still require us to keep focused on a few core issues or we will continue to let less disciplined and conviction minded candidates into power who are much more likely to be usurped by the establishment. The GOP establishment is in control as witnessed by Romney’s clear delegate advantage and the nearly-invisible absence of even one TEA Party affiliate on the 168 member GOP governing committee. Ted Cruz was right in saying that if we can get from 4 or 5 reliable TEA Senators to 10 or 12, you can start making changes. The TEA Party 22 wasn’t enough to stop the O-Boehner-nation in the debt ceiling debate (Paul Ryan was with the GOP establishment) and even a 2010 increase still might not be enough to make a difference. It will take time. It’s a shame we lost two opportunities yesterday. There are still some candidates to support. Martha Zoller is one of those that has Gingrich/Palin TEA support and is neck and neck with another CINO. Please help her before her August 21 runoff. The difference will be in DELIVERING real spending cuts and reforms. Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and John Boehner made a Pledge to America and broke it almost instantaneously upon taking power. No apologies. Just typical rationalizing rhetoric. Even the freshman TEA class of 2010 ended up being baby RINO’s as a whole, further tarnishing the “conservative” brand. It was the same GOP leadership under George Bush that turned a 60% Congressional approval rating under Newt Gingrich, into the depths that let Pelosi and Reid into power. It turns out RINO Senator Trent Lott was right. Once they get in Washington they turn them. And it is why we can not settle for those who capitulate to the big government, GOP establishment or cheer them too loudly. The TEA party IS enough to put the fear of Good Government into them. But if you hop and board and cheer endlessly as if they were Ronald Reagan or Milton Friedman, they will continue to think they can say what they want on the stump, and soften their stance when it really counts. When they have they have the power. Moreover, Florida is the swinging-est of swing states and needs to coalesce around whoever the nominee. But I feel it poetic that the TEA party couldn’t get it done in the state where the GOP Presidential convention is being held. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a few remaining patriots will actually stand up to the establishment and not make it so easy for Romney and company to bamboozle the assembly with a watered down platform and key elected positions.
I voted for Clark Durant to run against Stabenow here in Michigan but Hoekstra won. While Hoekstra isn’t ideal, he’s a very acceptable compromise.
Liberals here are patting themselves on the back in the belief that tea partiers won’t vote for Hoekstra but their confidence is premature. Hoekstra is still well to the right of guys like McCain and Graham.
Here in Wisconsin I voted for Mark Neumann, the Tea Party candidate. Neumann finished third for among other reasons he was relentlessly negative and most of his ads consisted of throwing mud at the other candidates. Add that to the fact that Thompson is still very popular in Wisconsin and maybe the most well-known state pol. Tommy still only got 35% of the vote. I find it more curious that Tammy Baldwin ran unopposed in the Dem primary. Not one Dem challenged her for an open seat while four Pubbies ran in their primary.
I guess that’s why Ted Yoho beat the smack out of long-timer Cliff Stearns.
Give me a break.
///
...and things like that, get the attention,
of old Rhino’s.
if they don’t get on board, eventually, they’ll be gone too.
so, even if true conservatives don’t always win,
we still get indirect benefits.
the tide IS turning...
No one bats .1000!
Here’s an historical analogy:
Pearl Harbor- defeat
Wake Island- defeat
Bataan- defeat
Singapore, Burma, Nanking- defeat after defeat
Air Raid on Tokyo- sacrificial, minor win
Midway?
Coral Sea?
Iwo Jima?
Hiroshima?
Perseverance and one swing of the bat...can change everything.
27% is huge. Moat of these people will vote, 50% of the nation won't bother. Initially only about 33% supported the idea of independence from England, so that's getting close. I wouldn't poo poo 27%. Consider what gay "rights" activists have done with less because they fanatically promote their cause. The key is ambitiously doing something.
rightjb's postings have stirred up discussion ~ much of it enlightening. He may be a blogger, but he's hitting the Mittbots right where we like it.
The GOP-e doesn't think that's a significant number either, although they're barely 15% themselves.
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