Posted on 02/22/2010 12:22:55 AM PST by bogusname
During the Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington, I heard one speaker suggest that the conservative movement had much to offer the tea-party movement.
I respectfully disagree.
The speaker explained how the conservative movement has been around Washington for so long and learned so much that could be passed on to the tea partiers.
And that's exactly why I disagree.
The work of the tea-party movement is not in Washington. It's deep down in the grassroots in all 50 states – natural turf (not the Astro version) that has never been permeated or organized effectively by the conservative movement.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
It's always been permeated. That is where conservatism came from. It was organized for Reagan and take-overs in 1946 and 1994.
Yep, I considered a few things along that line myself. However, he is giving us a shot in the arm. That’s fine.
one speaker suggest that the conservative movement had much to offer the tea-party movement.
I respectfully disagree.
Correct. The TP movement offers the “conservative” movement
a chance at redemption, a rejuvenation, a chance to
shrug off the clinging, cloying,sufficating remnants of liberal “bipartisanship”.
well said
Yes, that is good. But these pundits are frustrating. I wonder if Beck, Farah and others who make such sweeping statements about the GOP and conservatives have ever had contact with heartland social warriors and other grass roots conservatives. I know they read about us but have they ever gone to an RTC or precinct meeting? Have they every been to a politically active conservative church group? Ever hung around NRA or small business people?
Now, we got no tea and we got no party.
So what do we got?
We got people not happy with the direction the federal government is going. They got polls that show that percentage and people are taking the chance to show that in the street.
The Left will have a “protest” and the Right will have a “tea-party”.
Anything that develops out of a tea-party (like a revolution) will need to have its own definition.
My first vote was for Nixon. My grandparents voted against FDR. My uncle passed away at 101 in 1998. He campaigned for Coolidge. My older uncles drove from CT to the Cow Palace in 1964. From your screen name, I assume you know people who died fighting marxists. I do not see why the conservative movement needs redemption. We're been fighting liberals, socialists, communists, Rockerfeller Republicans, Country club Republicans, RINOs or whatever else anyone wants to call them for decades.
Things look good to me today. You probably remember when Democrats had more of a majority in the House than the GOP had seats, when country club republicans were more powerful than they are now and when taking the House was a pipe dream. The conservative movement hasn't achieved as much as I would like but it doesn't need to apologize for itself.
I agree, it needs to be a little more cohesive.
Glen Beck is a bit of an arrogant ass.
The Republican Party is our ONLY hope!
YES, the GOP must stay true to our principles, but -— there is no other organization capable of saving this country.
The GOP needs the help of conservatives, of all stripes.
In fact, getting involved, in Republican Primary campaigns, and running for precinct office, YOURSELF, is the best way to insure a Conservative victory!
See that LA Times article on how the TP is seizing control of the GOP from the inside? I was stunned. 60% to 80% of the precinct committee seats out west were vacant. Probably the same here on the East Coast. All conservatives have to do is walk in the door and take control. Write the platform, elect the county leader, endorse candidates.
When I read that, I could see how the leadership drifted far away. How can anyone lead where there is no one following except when the general election rolls around? I'm surprised KOS and MoveOn didn't sneak people into these slots. They could have (maybe, come to think of it, they have) taken over entire counties. Put in Rinos and loser candidates. Annoy real conservatives so they give up and so on.
Actually, it's to our advantage not to have a top-down leader driven organization.
The minute we adopt that organizational form, the left (reads drive-by media) will begin their all out assault of character assassination and thereby discredit the Tea Party by tying us to the leader and all of that leader's supposed problems.
In fact, the straw poll selecting Ron Paul as the leading conservative at CPAC was most likely engineered by leftist who voted for him in an effort to discredit the members of CPAC.
As it stands, the left has been somewhat foiled when discrediting Tea Party members and have resorted to calling senior citizens Nazis, and portraying them as violent because of their interest in health care at town hall meetings.
To borrow (and modify a little) a famous phrase from the 1948 movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, "We don't need no stinking leaders!"
When we dump McCain, we'll get their attention. Donate to JD Hayworth.
Excellent Post! LOL
What is needed, obviously and painfully, is a voters' bill of rights and the first item of such a bill HAS TO BE runoff elections or instant runoff elections for all public offices.
Nobody should ever fear to vote his first choice, at least on a first ballot, and nobody should ever hold any public office with less than 50% of the vote.
There should also be a None-Of-Above choice on all ballots for public office and if that choice ever wins, then the other candidates should be barred for life from holding any public office and the parties sponsoring them should be barred for at least ten years from sponsoring candidates for that particular office. The penalty for running dead wood for public offices should be severe.
Another item on such a voters' bill of rights should be something which would eliminate voting fraud for all time and if that means getting rid of the secret ballot or at least limiting it somehow or other, so be it, we're paying too high a price for it. Somehow or other it has to be possible to check up on votes when there are questions or evidence of fraud.
One last item on such a list would be a provision that when a president is impeached and removed, his VP goes out the door with him and the office is either vacant until the next election or an emergency election is held to fill the office for the remainder of the current term. Granted removing a president should be difficult but it should not be impossible and if we couldn't remove Slick, we'd not have been able to remove Hitler or Nero either.
What happened in 98/99 was that Trent Lott simply refused to hand the presidency over to Algor with a year to go on Slick's second term, for obvious reasons. The situation should not be possible.
But the most critical thing is runoff elections, for all public offices, everywhere. That would make it possible for a new party to rise up and replace one of the existing parties, should the existing party become disfunctional or antifunctional, as has been the case with the dems for the last 50 years.
Who are these “Tea Party leaders” that pretend to speak for the rest of us? In my State, we neither ask for or accept direction from these “leaders”. Here in Fl. we have many VERY active groups and none of them are looking to some sort of central command to tell us how to vote.
I had to stop and think about all of that for a few minutes (I’m about ready to leave work) but those strong measures are exactly the kind of things we need to do to seize control of the government and put it back under the control of the people. Good ideas.
Yep, Alinksy "freeze it, personalize it". The media wants to identify "A" Tea Party leader so they can crucify that person and the Tea Party at the same time.
So, in the spirit of the followers of Spartacus, I adopt my new tag line.
“All conservatives have to do is walk in the door and take control. Write the platform, elect the county leader, endorse candidates.”
You’re correct, of course. I was involved in local politics for a decade and conservatives rarely ever showed up at local council or county meetings. We’d get the usual 3 or 4 Marxist dingbats at the meetings, but no normal citizens to counter them. For some inexplicable reason conservatives have no interest in local politics.
Then when the local council is taken over by leftists and it passes ordinances forbidding cutting trees on your property, conservatives can’t figure out how that happened. Yet they get all excited about national elections. Go figure.
The founders built organization and found leadership by taking over local governments. Until that’s embraced, we will never clean out the leftist scum. That fact hasn’t dawned yet on today’s patriots. I guess getting their hands dirty in the local manure pit is above them.
Cleaning up garbage starts in your backyard.
I'm not sure it's as easy as walking in and writing the platform, but getting onto the committees is definitely important and quite feasible. I spent several hours this weekend collecting signatures for my own nominating petition. Our township has several wards with both committee slots open. Others have one opening, or a member who is inactive and could be asked not to run (or defeated). When I attended the committee meeting last week, there were two of us visiting and planning to run, and we were welcomed. In past years I've been brushed off. The county leader has also been very encouraging. This is in suburban Philadelphia, where GOP politics are very much an insider game. Things are changing, but we need to individually get involved.
Good idea.
I shall also adopt a version of your tag line. Mine will say, No, I'm the Tea Party leader. That should confuse them. snicker
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