The first tea party rebellion was the Barry Goldwater movement. When it triumphed at the Cow Palace, Nelson Rockefeller denounced the movement as riddled with radicals, baited the Goldwater people at the convention and refused to endorse the nominee.
A decade later, Vice President Rockefeller got his payback, when conservatives demanded that President Ford drop him off the ticket as the price of renomination. Ford agreed. ..."
The question may be framed in the context stated in another thread today--"lesser of two evils," or it may be framed on the basis of a contest about the nature of liberty versus the nature of tyranny by coercive government power. One may also examine the Castle/O'Donnell matter as one grounded in questions about constitutional principle versus compromise on political issues.
If we just fill a Senate or Congressional seat with a candidate who bears the letter "R," unaccompanied by a strong determination to adhere to the Founders' ideas of liberty, then we risk damaging, rather than helping, the Republic. On questions essential to liberty, that candidate may compromise away the liberty of our posterity and help to snuff out the light of liberty in the world.
If we keep doing the same things we've been doing (electing RINO's), then we can expect the same results we've been getting--compromises that throw away the liberty of future generations.
On the other hand, if we nominate candidates who can articulate and explain the Founders' ideas throughout a single election cycle, even if that candidate loses the election, he/she will have planted the seeds of liberty in the hearts and minds of potential voters. Those seeds will bear fruit for the future, because once the ideas of liberty are understood, individuals may no longer voluntarily submit themselves to slavery to government. The RINO candidate is not likely to plant those seeds, because if they understood them, they would sacrifice their "lives, liberty and sacred honor" rather than compromise on issues of limiting government, spending, taxation, etc.
Short-term gain, numbers wise, may lead to long-time loss.
I repeat here a statement from Senator Zacharias Montgomery which I posted on a thread earlier, and will follow it with Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural remarks on "essential principles" and what should be done if we depart from them.
Montgomery: "If I have learned anything from the reading of history, it is that the man who, in violation of great principles, toils for temporary fame, purchases for himself either total oblivion or eternal infamy, while he who temporarily goes down battling for right principles always deserves, and generally secures, the gratitude of succeeding ages, and will carry with him the sustaining solace of a clean conscience, more precious than all the offices and honors in the gift of man."
Thomas Jefferson:
"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
I greatly respect and undergird the desire of many simply to focus on changing the balance of the House and Senate immediately. For too long, however, our public discourse has been based on "issues" and short-term political goals, with not enough emphasis placed on how this or that question relates to a principle essential our very liberty as a nation. We must return to the "road" described by Jefferson as he took office if liberty is to survive the assaults by Progressives in both major Parties over the past 100 years.
Wow. The old fella can still deliver a wicked thrashing! Nice work, Pat!
George Romney stormed off the convention floor in 1964, to protest conservatives, he took his 17 year old son Mitt with him.
They hate us, while their all "My good friend" "My friends across the aisle", "My special lover" (Barney Frank) to all Democrats.
ML/NJ
Ah, the elephant in the living room that no one at Free Republic wants to talk about. It’s simply math people. It’s not a matter of the country club being wrong and the Tea Party being right. It’s a matter of the right needing to unite in order to win in November. If the GOP stays divided the Democrats will at the very least minimize their losses.
The question is: Will either the Tea Party folks or the establishment Republicans be willing to admit that each needs the other? Personally, I’m thinking not. To be blunt, both sides are way to arrogant and stubborn, and interparty division will hurt us badly in November.
The first tea party rebellion was the Barry Goldwater movement. When it triumphed at the Cow Palace, Nelson Rockefeller denounced the movement as riddled with radicals, baited the Goldwater people at the convention and refused to endorse the nominee.It would be best to remember this as events take place over the next two years.
On election night we were invited to watch the results in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton and it was great time.
Good read.
Lobbyist financed Washington Republicans and Washington Democrats are the two wings of the same bird of prey. Every candidate who rises up to challenge them are smeared relentlessly. That includes Perot, Buchanan and now Tea Party candidates. 3rd party types were told to work within the party. Now that they are doing this, the smear is the same. No outsiders may apply. Lobbyist’s rule.
I still have my elephant pin with the Goldwater glasses. It was my first campaign and vote for POTUS.
“In its grand strategy to recapture a Senate that George W. Bush and Rove lost in 2006,”
GW Bush and Karl Rove were NOT formulating and running the GOP Congressional campaigns in 2006.
The GOP Congressional leadership and the GOP Congressional campaign committees needed no help from GW Bush or Karl Rove to lose GOP Congressional seats in 2006;
and the vast majority of the reasons for those loses lie with the GOP Congressional leadership and the GOP Congressional campaign leaders and committees - NOT GW Bush and Karl Rove.
What was GOP voters and supporters MOST fractured over in 2006? GW Bush and his policies? No. The largest sense of dissatisfaction of GOP voters in 2006, with the GOP, was with the GOP Congressional leaders and THEIR handling of GOP Congressional positions.
The GOP base felt that THEY were more with GW Bush than was the GOP Congressional leadership, more often than they felt they were behind the Congressional leaders and opposed to Bush.
Blaming GW Bush and Karl Rove for GOP Congressional loses in 2006 is simply not founded in the facts.
I’ve always said, politics aside, I’d rather go out like Nelson Rockefeller, with a smile on my face...not like Megan Marshack, screaming, crying and gasping for breath.