No surprise. It's the PBS News Hour.
Posted on 02/10/2013 7:33:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Edited on 02/10/2013 7:35:11 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS NEWSHOUR: Well, bring it back home, and talking about politics, pure politics, inside the Republican Party, David, it looks like there are some -- we have seen some evidence of this, but now it looks like it's more out in the open, that some of the traditional -- folks we thought of as being traditional leaders of the Republican Party are openly challenging the Tea Party.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
A discussion between two liberals on Tea Party and establishment Republicans. Pfffft.
I’m in it for the long haul. The Tea party citizens are still fairly new on the scene, Republican establishment, a lot longer. There is no instant gratification here...and it will be a long term effort.
To paraphrase Bush the elder...those who are proclaiming the death of the Tea Party can put the harps back in the closet. Especially if its coming from liberals.
Reagan had tremendous success against the traditional failings of the GOP. He didn't have much to work with. Most of his cabinet came from his California governor days or outside the GOP establishment.
The GOP had been the loser party since Hoover. Reagan changed that for twenty years before it went back to being the loser party. That's more than what anybody else accomplished. Reagan's gone. It's up to us now.
And as long as we continue to send in candidates like that bunch of has-beens and never-will-bes that contended for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, we will continue to be the loser party.
No surprise. It's the PBS News Hour.
The problem is...There is no free lunch over time!!!....inflation will lead every increase in benefits and the faster they do it the more the recipients fall behind....its baked in the cake
Thats exactly what their job is as body guards of the democrats.
Time?
For seniors on Social Security and Medicare, the short run is the long run.
They cannot win an election without US.
So, who needs who?
Either they represent us, the conservative voting element, or they go the way of the Whig Party. There are no other options.
Are we prepared to have Commie Dems forever? I am not.
I can assure you that the Texas GOP is conservative. If you have any doubts, watch Ted Cruz. And for that matter Texas AG Gregg Abott, who needs to be our next Governor.
Wishful thinking on the part of the GOP establishment . . . voters are becoming more self-educated thanks to new media and the internet, and there’s no shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped.
That’s exactly right. how do they plan on turning all of this money and skullduggery against the TEA Party movement into actual votes?
I don't think they want to win. The Democrats are good at building the Big Government they want. As long as they stay large enough to funnel money to their insiders, they're happy.
America's Founders expressed in our Declaration of Independence, and throughout their writings and speeches, a "reliance on Divine Providence."
After decades of neglect, censorship, and outright attempts to obliterate their ideas of liberty from the minds of America's citizens by the enemies of freedom, technology suddenly has brought about a revival of those ideas.
The citizen movement described by Brooks and clueless "progressives" as the Taxed Enough Already "party" may be proof that the 100+-year effort of so-called "progressives" to impose a counterfeit set of ideas on America is encountering and engaging an informed "remnant" in defense of liberty.
Perhaps this Nock piece may serve to remind today's citizens of some things they need to consider, especially the implications of paragraphs five and seven.
Back in the Year 1987, during the Constitution's Bicentennial celebration, Dr. Russell Kirk contributed an essay to the volume, "Our Ageless Constitution," entitled, "The Responsibility of Citizens," a portion of which is reprinted, with permission, below. Dr. Kirk recalls another quotation from Albert Jay Nock which, in retrospect, may hold special meaning today.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF CITIZENS
"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature." - Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787
Background And Original Intent
"A good constitution is the greatest blessing which a society can enjoy." So said James Wilson, in his oration at Philadelphia on July 4, 1788, celebrating the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Wilson, who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, preached startlingly democratic theories - more democratic than the ideas of any other delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
Yet James Wilson emphasized the duties, as well as the rights, of citizens:
"Need I infer, that it is the duty of every citizen to use his best and most unremitting endeavours for preserving it [the Constitution] pure, healthful, and vigorous? For the accomplishment of this great purpose, the exertions of no one citizen are unimportant. Let no one, therefore harbour, for a moment, the mean idea, that he is and can be of no value to his country: let the contrary manly impression animate his soul. Every one can, at many times, perform, to the state, useful services; and he, who steadily pursues the road of patriotism, has the most inviting prospect of being able, at some times, to perform eminent ones."
Wilson's argument is quite as sound now as it was two centuries ago. The success of the American Republic as a political structure has been the consequence, in very large part, of the voluntary participation of citizens in public affairs - enlisting in the army in time of war; serving on school boards; taking part unpaid in political campaigns; petitioning legislatures; supporting the President in an hour of crisis; and in a hundred other great ways, or small-assuming responsibility for the common good. The Constitution has functioned well, most of the time, because conscientious men and women have given it flesh.
The Premises of Americans' Responsibility Under the Constitution of 1787
The Framers' first assumption was that all just authority for government comes from the people, under God; not from a monarch or a governing class, but from the innumerable citizens who make up the public. The people delegate to government only so much power as they think it prudent for government to exercise. Government is the people's creation, not their master. Thus, if the people are sovereign, it is the citizens' responsibility to take upon their shoulders the task of seeing that order, justice, and freedom are maintained.
The Framers' second assumption was that American citizens would undertake responsibility for the ordinary functioning of the civil social order and that local communities would manage their own affairs. Under their system, the roles of the various levels of government would be minimal and would not unnecessarily intrude into the day-to-day lives of the citizens.
In the matters which most immediately affect private life, power should remain in the hands of the citizens, or of the several states - not in the possession of federal government. So, at least, the Constitution declares. Americans have no official cards of identity, or internal passports, or system of national registration of all citizens - obligations imposed upon citizens in much of the rest of the world. This freedom results from Americans' voluntary assumption of responsibility.
In matters of public concern, it was the original intent to keep authority as close to home as possible. The lesser courts, the police, the maintenance of roads and sanitation, the levying of real-property taxes, the control of public schools, and many other essential functions still are carried on by the agencies of local community: the township, the village, the city, the county, the voluntary association. Citizens' cooperation in voluntary community throughout the United States has been noted and commended in the books of Alexis de Tocqueville, Lord Bryce, Julian Marias, and other distinguished visitors to the United States, over the past two centuries:
America's citizens, most of them, have believed in a moral order ordained by divine wisdom; and so they have assumed moral responsibilities, including personal responsibility for constitutional government. The more thoughtful citizens have seen society as primarily moral in origin: a community of souls. Behind the outward forms of American political structure lie the old convictions that citizens have duties toward a Creator and toward other members of the society, and that a just government must recognize moral law.
In family, church, and school, until the middle of the twentieth century, the rising generation of Americans were taught that they must be personally responsible for their own welfare, for the care of their aging family members, for the security and prosperity of their community, for their patrimony of order and justice and freedom, A sense of responsibility is developed by severe lessons, by private risk and accountability, by a humane education, by religious understanding, by knowledge of the past. Once upon a time, this sense of responsibility was diffused throughout the American nation. If it drains away, the consequences will be dreary.
A republic whose citizens - whose leaders, indeed - are concerned chiefly with "looking out for Number One," and ignoring their responsibilities of citizenship, soon cannot "insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare" - or carry on the other major duties of the state. When the crisis comes, the people may turn in desperation to the hero-administrator, the misty figure somewhere at the summit. But in the end, that heroadministrator will not save the republic, although he may govern for a time by force. A democratic republic cannot long endure unless a great many of its citizens stand ready and willing to brighten the corner where they are, and to sacrifice much for the nation, if need be.
Has The Consciousness of Responsibility Withered in America?
For the past five or six decades, several perceptive observers have remarked, an increasing proportion of the American population has ceased to feel responsible for the common defense, for productive work, for choosing able men and women to represent them in politics, for accepting personal responsibility for the needs of the community, or even for their own livelihood. Unless this deterioration is arrested, the responsible citizens will be too few to support and protect the irresponsible. By 1978 there were more people receiving regular government checks than there were workers in the private sector.
What follows, if we are to judge by the history of fallen civilizations, is described by Albert Jay Nock in his book Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943):
"... closer centralization; a steadily growing bureaucracy; State power and faith in State power increasing; social power and faith in social power diminishing; the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income; production languishing; the State in consequence taking over one 'essential industry' after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency, and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labor. Then at some point in this process a collision of State interests, at least as general and as violent as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic [weak] social structure to bear; and from this the State will be left to 'the rusty death of machinery' and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution."
Modem civilization offers a great variety of diversions, amusements, and enticements - some of them baneful. But modem civilization does not offer many inducements to the performance of duties, except perhaps monetary payment, and certainly it does not teach people that the real reward for responsible citizenship is the preservation of a free society.
It is not money that can induce citizens to labor and sacrifice for the common good. They must be moved by patriotism and their attachment to the Constitution. And patriotism alone, ignorant boasting about ones native land, would not suffice to preserve the Republic.
Thus it is that on the occasion of the Bicentennial celebrating of the Constitution, a mighty effort ought to be made to restore the American public's awareness of the principles of their government, of their responsibilities toward their country, their neighbors, their children, their parents, and themselves to be sure that their patriotism is based on this solid foundation. No one knows how late the hour is; but it is later than most people think. Love of the Republic shelters all our other loves; and that love is worth some sacrifice. . . ." (End of excerpt - Essay may be downloaded here).
The seedbed of ideas which produced the Declaration of Independence may yet yield its harvest, as it is kept alive in the minds of citizens.
The Republican “establishment” may well win the fight against the Tea Party - but lose the war against the Socialist Democrats. - Or is that their true aim anyway?
I contribute to the Texas GOP, but not one dime to the RNC.
That could change, but not soon.
It is their choice the direction this moves.
They fight the fight and stop being traitors, or go the way of the Whig Party. No other options.
The GOPe may win the struggle to remain the Stupid (out of power) Party.
Every time you here about “change” ever notice, it is the Conservatives in the Republican party that need to change (moderate) their positions! when the leftist were kicking out their “blue dog democrats” in their party, not a word about [moderation]!
Time for the American people to rise up (tea party) and push a third party. They may not win elections at first, but, as the Country continues down the path of destruction, the third party will begin to look more and more as a viable party to lead this great nation back from this socialist nightmare!
Ask yourself exactly what does the establishment Republican party stand for? Does anyone know? Every time they are elected to office with the support and direct participation of the Tea Party (2010) they (RINO's) simply become leftist Democrats, voting with them and blaming the tea party for any failures they encounter along the way, giving Obumbum and his socialist ilk anything they wants making deals behind closed doors, kissing each other on the lips and patting themselves on the back for a great job.
Enough is enough! I say third party now, get it over with. The Tea Party cannot work with the establishment who are committed to obtaining more and more power, not in bringing this Nation back under the limitations placed on it in the Constitution. The establishment RINO's are hand and glove with democrats, the old media, and socialist who all are after “power” and could care less about the American people who work hard everyday to make this Country the greatest Nation on the earth! Americans are seeing just how hated the American Tea Party is with this jihad actively working (Karl Rove) to defeat them in the primaries. Americans can rise up just like they did in 2010 and instead of backing the Republican Party, back a third party candidate that will actually make a difference in reestablishing our Constitutional Government, for the people and by the people!
Eight Deuce on the Loose!!!!!
NOT MANY OF US IN THE TEA PARTY who are on Social Security are opposed to biting the bullet and taking any cuts necessary to heal the abominable, dishonorable mountain of debt that Obama and Congress keeps piling up. - (We paid into that “system” for many years, our employers paid half of it to a hefty tune. When we were young, we upkept YOUR Mammies & Grandaddies with SS after they got old; WE WORKED, and STILL work; most NEVER retiring any more - even into our late 60’s and 70’s.) Your adamant assertions are BOGUS!
Only reason establishment republicans are winning is because the tea pay is letting them.
Vote Constitution Party! Forget the Republican Party it is has been co opted by liberal/moderate faction that is not going anywhere.
How much of a cut in SS checks do you recommend? Fifty percent? Thirty percent?
Do you recommend that we cut Medicare benefits? How about fifty dollar copays to see doctors? How about repealing the prescription drug benefits?
Are you sure that's what seniors in the Tea Party want? Do you really think that you can get many of them to show up at a rally to cut their own benefits?
Maybe you're right, but I doubt it. They came out to oppose Obamacare, but I don't think that they'll show up to cut Medicare or Social Security.
Getting the government completely out of health care would be great, but I'm not sure it's really doable.
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