Sowell: Tea Party at the Crossroads

Creators Syndicate ^ | November 12, 2013 | Thomas Sowell

[jazusamo]

Third parties have had an unbroken record of failure in American presidential politics. So it was refreshing to see in the Tea Party an insurgent movement, mainly of people who were not professional politicians, but who nevertheless had the good sense to see that their only chance of getting their ideals enacted into public policies was within one of the two major parties.

More important, the Tea Party was an insurgent movement that was not trying to impose some untried Utopia, but to restore the lost heritage of America that had been eroded, undermined or just plain sold out by professional politicians.

What the Tea Party was attempting was conservative, but it was also insurgent — if not radical — in the sense of opposing the root assumptions behind the dominant political trends of our times. Since those trends have included the erosion, if not the dismantling, of the Constitutional safeguards of American freedom, what the Tea Party was attempting was long overdue.

ObamaCare epitomized those trends, since its fundamental premise was that the federal government had the right to order individual Americans to buy what the government wanted them to buy, whether they wanted to or not, based on the assumption that Washington elites know what is good for us better than we know ourselves.

The Tea Party's principles were clear. But their tactics can only be judged by the consequences.

Since the Tea Party sees itself as the conservative wing of the Republican Party, its supporters might want to consider what was said by an iconic conservative figure of the past, Edmund Burke: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavours."

[Hot Tabasco]

If that didn't help to clarify my previous statement then let me know.

It didn't......This was a column about the Tea Party. Maybe you should contact Mr. Sowell and properly advise him on what he should write about in accordance to your interests..............sheesh!

[GOPJ]

Sowell has our best interest at heart - he’s one of us... That said, sometimes a tactic is to move the conversation on an issue to the right... and the Tea Party has done that.

[jazusamo]

Well said.

[GOPJ]

Thanks jaz.

Also Sowell’s more than just ‘one of us’ he’s also a guide and an important intellectual leader of the movement.

[Reddon]

I disagree with Mr. Sowell on this one. It is probably equally impossible for an attempt to impeach Barack Obama to be successful. But it embarrasses me as an American that we won’t even try for that reason, we just sit on our butts and watch him destroy our great country because impeaching him is “impossible”. Ted Cruz is no dummy, he knew the odds as well as Mr. Sowell did about his efforts being successful. Yet I believe there is more honor in what Mr. Cruz did than what his gutless coward senior Senator John Cornyn did. I imagine John Cornyn will get some good mileage out of Mr. Sowell’s column today. Thank you for that Mr. Sowell.

[diogenes ghost]

So, you are questioning whether Mr. Sowell is a low-information commentator, and if he is a RINO?

Simply asking the question puts you in the low-information column.

[sickoflibs]

Sowell “The principle would justify repealing ObamaCare. So the only reason for the Tea Partyers’ limiting themselves to trying to defund this year was a recognition that repealing it w...as not within their power.
....With the chances of making a dent in ObamaCare by trying to defund it being virtually zero, and the Republican Party's chances of gaining power in either the 2014 or 2016 elections being reduced by the public’s backlash against that futile attempt, there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose.
However difficult it might be to repeal ObamaCare after it gets up and running, the odds against repeal, after the 2014 and 2016 elections, are certainly no worse than the odds against defunding it in 2013. Winning those elections would improve the odds.”

Sounds like Thomas Sowell lives on the Planet Earth.

I heard part 1 of Mark Levin's rebuff a few minutes ago:

It went :

1) Those guys we hate said the same thing (???)
2) Wasn't the US Revolution impossible too? (???)

Oh brother!

[dsc]

“So like most other celebrity conservatives, Sowell”

Professor Sowell, or perhaps I should say Dr. Sowell, is not a celebrity. He is a scholar. More accurately, a prodigious scholar and a staggering intellect.

If he has celebrity, as opposed to being a celebrity, it is because he can be counted upon to speak the truth with great clarity.

[Amendment10]

Why don't "conservative" professors and celebrities at least try to get low-information voters up to speed with Congress's constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers every once in awhile? I'd like to see such people make a 3 minute video similar to the one referenced below.

Judge Napolitano & the Constitution