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The Tea Party Is Dead. Long Live the Tea Party
PJ Media ^ | 02/11/2018 | Rick Moran

Posted on 02/11/2018 9:02:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind

Conservatives in Congress and in the hinterlands are bitterly complaining about the massive insult to fiscal sanity the budget deal passed on Thursday morning represents.

Even worse, some Republicans are offended by the pushback. Their target is Senator Rand Paul who, almost alone, tried to stand in the way of the budget deal in the Senate.

GOP political analyst Susan Del Percio said on MSNBC that it was the day "the tea party died."

DEL PERCIO: And it’s amazing we’re not even coming close to talking about entitlement reform, so I kind of look at today as the day the tea party movement died. Anyone who was elected, the majority of Republicans in the House now have been elected since 2010 as part of the tea party movement, it’s gone. There’s no sense in saying you’re a fiscally responsible Republican when you vote for things like that. And especially when you don’t even take a stand on entitlement reform. This president has indicated he won’t go there, which is going to create some real serious problems for us looking down the road.

SCARBOROUGH: And Sam stein, where was Ted Cruz? I would have expected Ted Cruz to be delivering that speech last night. That Rand Paul delivered. Because Ted Cruz, after all, shut down the government in 2013 for far less than this.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens echoed those sentiments.

SCARBOROUGH: Do you agree with what somebody said earlier in this program, that... that last night’s deal really did drive the final nail into the tea party’s coffin? There are no small government conservatives running Washington anymore.

STEPHENS: “I hope that’s true, and I hope that’s true because I hope it’s the end of the era of congressional puritanism or purism, which makes the country ungovernable. This was, you know, a Las Vegas buffet with extra shrimp for everyone. And maybe that’s actually a better recipe for governing the United States and having predictable budgets than the constant sort of succession of shutdowns that we’ve lived with for the past few years. So if you’re having to choose your poison between — I don’t want to say — it’s not corruption, but kind of pork barrel spending that makes everyone happy or stop-and-start politics where the United States is constantly in crisis, I think I’m going to take the former, right? And if it drives a stake into the heart of the tea party, that much the better.

I have criticized the tea party groups in the past for their "take no prisoners" approach to politics. But the tea party's real value to the country is that for the first time since the ratification debates over the Constitution, millions of people across the country were actually reading and discussing our founding document.

These weren't constitutional scholars sitting around some Ivy League lecture hall esoterically discussing the foundations of America. These were millions of ordinary people sitting at kitchen tables, in small church meeting rooms, on front porches and backyards probing the reasons America came into existence.

In 2010 at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, I witnessed and heard some of these debates first hand. Everyone was walking around with pocket Constitutions, reading and trying to understand the relevance of that document. It doesn't matter if the arguments weren't on point or legally "correct." What mattered was that ordinary people had taken a keen interest in preserving the spirit of the Constitution and the essence of our founding principles that are "self-evident" in that document at a time it has been under relentless attack.

In a word, it was awesome.

This side of the tea parties was never widely reported on by the media, for very good reasons. The left hates getting into a discussion about what the Constitution says because they can't defend most of their ideas. Despite the fact that the founders wrote the Constitution so that basically anyone who could read could understand it, the left keeps insisting the Constitution says things that it doesn't.

Any clever lawyer or willing judge can twist the meaning of the Constitution so that it says anything they want it to say to accomplish any end they wish to accomplish. So the budget deal may have killed fiscal sanity in Washington and -- perhaps -- the tea party's political power to some extent. And the GOP may have co-opted most of the larger tea party groups to do the party's bidding.

What remains of the tea party is, to my mind, the best part. The desire of ordinary people to govern themselves, to take personal responsibility for their own lives, and to try to do something about the denigration and increasing irrelevance of the Constitution.

If that spirit ever dies, America dies.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 115th; budget; spending; teaparty; trumpbudget

1 posted on 02/11/2018 9:02:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Again?


2 posted on 02/11/2018 9:14:13 PM PST by CPT Clay
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To: SeekAndFind

We did not die, Congress just gave America the finger, again.

The Test Party does not live in DC.


3 posted on 02/11/2018 9:17:02 PM PST by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The tea party candidates mostly were ineffective or nuts, and either quit or got beat. It is the Trump Party from now on.


4 posted on 02/11/2018 9:21:23 PM PST by bigbob (Trust Trump. Trust Sessions. The Great Awakening is at hand...MAGA!)
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To: American in Israel

The Test party may not live in D.C. but the Testicle party does(Demonrats and Rinos).


5 posted on 02/11/2018 9:21:43 PM PST by HighSierra5
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To: SeekAndFind

I am still here.


6 posted on 02/11/2018 9:35:13 PM PST by Parley Baer
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To: SeekAndFind
Despite the fact that the founders wrote the Constitution so that basically anyone who could read could understand it, the left keeps insisting the Constitution says things that it doesn't.

The Constitution was written by men of great wisdom and education. However, it was written in the language of the common man. The reason it was written in such language was to insure it meant exactly what it said to all in the terms they understood. It really means what it says.

When you start interpreting this very plain and precise language you are destroying The Constitution.

Case in point is slavery. This odious institution was entirely legal and evil under the constitution. Lincoln declared the immacipation proclamation that was a totally unconstitutional act though it was a most moral act. The 13th ammendment is the true law that ended slavery.

"Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States"

The Constitution is holy and not to be changed except by amendment. Otherwise all will have no rights.

7 posted on 02/11/2018 10:19:20 PM PST by cpdiii (DECKHAND, ROUGHNECK, GEOLOGIST, PILOT, PHARMACIST, LIBERTARIAN The Constitution is worth dying for.)
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To: SeekAndFind

If it is indeed dead-—evidence of such NOT in admission-—it served a noble purpose in bridging the gap between insanity and MAGA.

It deserves America’s eternal gratitude!


8 posted on 02/11/2018 10:52:30 PM PST by Oscar in Batangas (12:01 PM 1/20/2017...The end of an error.)
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To: CPT Clay

I’M DEAD AND NOBODY TOLD ME?

Somebody call the FEEBEE guys, I wanna to know who offed me!


9 posted on 02/11/2018 11:19:14 PM PST by 5th MEB (Progressives in the open; --- FIRE FOR EFFECT!!)
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To: SeekAndFind

The Tea Party was not even close to being about entitlement reform. It was about Obama taking over the health care system. Liberal-tarians have been trying to take over the Tea Party from day two. Well, it won’t work.


10 posted on 02/12/2018 1:32:14 AM PST by SaraJohnson ( Whites must sue for racism. It's pay day.)
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To: cpdiii

The Emancipation Proclamation was an immoral act because Lincoln only declared the freedom for slaves in an area he had no control over. Lincoln made no attempt to free the slaves in the area he actually controlled. In effect, Lincoln said that is was OK to keep slaves as long as you swear fealty to me.


11 posted on 02/12/2018 1:35:23 AM PST by PTBAA
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To: PTBAA

I’ll have to think about that statement.

Are you saying doing good to one set of victims requires you to do good to all other victims?

I understand the big picture of the War Between the States had to do with sovereignty; but an issue within that larger context was slavery. From what I understand, slavery within the northern regions was becoming less popular—indeed the institution was dying. Where the most resistance to ending involuntary non-criminal servitude was among Democrats in the south.


12 posted on 02/12/2018 2:35:21 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
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To: SaraJohnson

TEA was for “Taxed Enough Already”; I suspect all government spending was up for review (including entitlements).


13 posted on 02/12/2018 3:46:33 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: SeekAndFind

IMHO...the “TEA Party” was a futile exercise in the GOP-borrowed, “Symbolism over Substance” ploy.

It was a great marketing idea, a “catchey” theme, and the early manifestations of the TEA Party scared the bejesus out of the libs and the media.

Patriots - their hearts in the right place - went out and spent a fortune on patriotic clothing and plane tickets to D.C.

The city was inundated with the TEA partiers, marching, and rallying about taxation, and one thing or another.

Cars everywhere had little American Flags streaming from their windows and radio antennas.

MSN news panels were filled nightly with the least intelligent TEA party members, so-placed as to be made fools of by the MSM.

Then...it happened; Obama notified Lerner, and her IRS, to sharpen their pencils and bring it to an abrupt halt.

The libs, stopped running, turned around, stomped their little footsies, and the heretofore TEA party ran for the hills. In the dying throes they made some noise, but the rallies and meets died down, flags slowly disappeared and most of the initial excitement waned.

All of a sudden you didn’t hear much about the TEA party; the fact is, Obama stopped them in their tracks with tax threats and media distractions.

For a while, everyone was wondering, “Where the hell is the TEA party?”. Several “look-alike” “tea partys” emerged, but disappeared faster than a Mentos in a bottle of diet coke.

And then one day, it was quiet. No TEA party to be seen or heard anymore. I’m sure there were behind-the-scenes holdovers, frantically putting out columns and periodicals from their kitchen tables, but for the most part...it was gone.

Scampered to every hiding place and IRS shelter they could find; Congress - RINOs - did nothing about anything, giving Lois Lerner a permanent, paid, vacation, and Obama installing a same-ol’, same ol’ to take her place.

The movement was great, admirable, patriotic, and visible...but was intimidated to death by the left.

Truthfully, by that time I was angry at them for clutching their pearls and grasping their smelling salts as the fled in fear.


14 posted on 02/12/2018 4:21:40 AM PST by FrankR (The 'Land of the Free' is inversly proportional to the 'Home of the Brave'.)
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To: FrankR

thousands of tea partiers in DC scared the crap out of Obama and he reacted by illegal weaponization of the government

Obama must be punished for his crimes against the government

off with his head


15 posted on 02/12/2018 4:26:03 AM PST by Thibodeaux (The FISA judge is corrupt)
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To: Parley Baer

diito and still pissed off.


16 posted on 02/12/2018 4:57:12 AM PST by tom paine 2
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To: SeekAndFind

Every day as they spend a few more billions per hour I come to the amazing conclusion that it really does not matter.

If we were going to spend the country into bankruptcy it would have happened by now. The fact that it hasn’t indicates that everyone who matters, in every corner of the globe, is okay with continuing the printing press funny money fiction.

The consequences of doing anything else are apparently too horrible to contemplate. And so long as they all remain in closed ranks on that the balloon can stay in the air indefinitely.

That offends my basic sense of logic, but increasingly it appears to be true.


17 posted on 02/12/2018 8:24:39 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: kearnyirish2

I organized a big group in Texas and they were there over the health care mess - not spending on Social Security and Medicare (which retired Americans paid for all their working lives).


18 posted on 02/12/2018 8:39:24 AM PST by SaraJohnson ( Whites must sue for racism. It's pay day.)
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To: SoFloFreeper

Thank you for being open to another viewpoint.

My point is that if Lincoln truly wanted to ascend to the moral high ground, we needed to free the slaves in the area he controlled. That would have totally cut the moral legs out from under the South. To me the Emancipation Proclamation was more of an attempt to punish and cause chaos behind enemy lines than it was an act of morality. I always thought it strange that it was ever seen as anything more than that.


19 posted on 02/12/2018 1:52:32 PM PST by PTBAA
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To: SaraJohnson

ObamaCare was a great motivator - and definitely a tax; that is why it is administered by the IRS, and part of your income tax forms now. I guess it was the primary mover.


20 posted on 02/13/2018 2:14:50 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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