Posted on 05/22/2014 6:31:05 AM PDT by Moseley
Yes, you heard that right. The tea party is (still) winning, even during and after this year’s 2014 Republican primary season.
The tea party is not a political party. It never has been. The tea party never set as its goal defeating every single incumbent Republican officeholder. The fact that the tea party has taken the scalps of about 50 House Democrats in the 2010 election and several giants in the Republican establishment during 2010 and 2012 is a bonus. That is far in excess of what the tea party movement ever expected to accomplish.
The tea party movement was born in the Spring of 2009, out of Rick Santelli’s famous rant on CNBC on February 18, 2009, calling on citizens to gather and throw tea into Lake Michigan near Chicago as a tea party protest. A few activists claim credit for hatching precursor efforts earlier than that, mainly supporters of Ron Paul. But Rick Santelli’s nationwide television broadcast was the rocket’s blastoff.
The purpose of the tea party was to protest financial irresponsibility, excessive regulation strangling liberty and the economy, and business as usual in Washington (voting for bills no one has read, for example). The tea party was always about promoting issue positions for financial responsibility. The tea party was not primarily about running candidates.
The tea party continues to dominate the Republican Party. Although there are many enemies of the commonsense goals of the tea party, they mostly have to scheme behind closed doors. The few exceptions get pounded with criticism.
Yet in 2014, many candidates favored by the Republican establishment have survived primary challenges. Is this the test for whether the tea party is successful or is fading? No.
First, as Christine O’Donnell tweeted, the winners of these primary candidates are (more or less) conservative Republicans.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I think 2016 could be a formative year.
If the GOP turns against the Tea Party, the Tea Party could stand up for the 2016 election.
If the Tea Party did so, and turned for real into an America-once-again party advocating a complete return of American jobs, both parties would lose a big base of voters, who would jump to join the Tea Party.
America once again.
Just saying. I don’t know if it would possibly happen, but I would enthusiastically jump at the chance.
Just saying GOP. You have my vote for now, but not my enthusiasm.
Tea Party you could make a difference.
Just saying. Bring back US jobs.
GOP candidates always go Right in the primaries, Left in the General, and do nothing for limited government while in office. Until that changes, one cannot declare progress for the TEA party movement.
Extensive WIKI article on the TP, undaunted by marxist monitors.
Yep, various opinions abound amongst the world at large.
Oddly enough, in many ways the Republican party is faced with the “old schism”, by which the Whig party turned into the Republican party.
The Whig party was very business oriented. Almost fixated, until it all came crashing down, because “slavery was good for business”. The majority, however, were adamantly anti-slavery, so rejected the “moderate” candidates who supported the status quo.
Today, the Republican establishment are not just business oriented, but the bigger the business, the better, even multinationals who owe no particularly loyalty to America. It has reached the point where they imagine businesses to be their constituency, not the people.
Unlike the socialist Democrats, the Republican leadership embrace internationalism, and all its derivative evil, because they imagine it to be “good for business”.
This is why they strongly embrace issues that are abhorrent to the majority, like amnesty, open borders, trade agreements that work against America, and multinational tax avoidance. All of it as the “status quo”, the “moderation” they imagine in themselves.
They just do not grasp that these things are almost as bad as slavery, in many ways. They have the potential to destroy us as a nation.
The majority have the clarity to see otherwise. We want America to be first. We do not want there to be agreements with tyrants that compromise our nation. We want American industry to make goods and provide services here, even if it is somewhat more expensive.
This is our country, and if there are to be immigrants, we want them to follow the process. We do not want open borders. And hopefully we do not even want foreign entanglements which are of no pressing interest to us as a nation.
We get this, but the Republican leadership do not. And this is why the Tea Party is slowly and methodically taking these people out; because their interests are not those of our nation.
/echo. The Tea Party is an idea! The Left can try to abort this idea, but it will be like trying to kill a ghost.
Barry Farber a conservative voice on radio before Rush, started a campaign to mail in tea bags to our congressmen in the mid eighties.
In San Diego we had a tea party event at the docks, led by Roger Hedgecock, in the 1990s.
Palin exploded on us, and created something new, and while most of us were discouraged and the party broken by the Obama takeover, Palin never wavered, she never even took a breath, she instantly went to campaigning for a Governor's race within weeks of that election, and then kept up the fight, until something came from her inspiration.
For many months she was taking all of the medias's hate, and doing it alone, and proving that it wasn't fatal, from her courage, we started seeing other's slowly emerge, and testing the waters, getting bolder, remember how Perry and DeMint, seemed to gain boldness from watching her, Palin was injecting a swagger and confidence into what had at first been a fairly timid and splintered conservative movement, Palin nationalized us, united us, gave us a symbol and a feeling of being a coherent national force. We should not overlook the fact that her being a sitting Governor, and the recent Vice Presidential candidate, gave us a lot of instant weight.
Palin wasn't the leader of the tea party, or the founder/creator, but we all sensed and knew, that she was our girl, our mascot, or unifying symbol, our publicist, I don't know the word, but she was a giant force related to the tea party, I just don't think it would have gone so well without a Sarah Palin proceeding it, and as a part of it. Palin was the crowd and media drawing phenomena, everywhere she went it was 10,000 people and overflow crowds.
Remember events like Searchlight, Nev. March 27, 2010 when about 20,000 showed up, Where CNN reported
"Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin there in Searchlight, Nev., was the backyard of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but today it's the backdrop of this Tea Party Express - making a stop here," Whitfield said. "Hundreds of people, at least dozens of people - we haven't gotten a count of how many people turned out there. We heard Sarah Palin talk about everything about the campaign, to unseat Sen. Reid to what she calls ObamaCare, on the heels of that health care vote and even talking about her definition of her love of America."
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