PrintMarch 30, 2010
Establishment GOP still resisting the tea party movement
The left and the mainstream media have sufficiently poisoned the minds of mainstream Republican organizers. Thanks to a year's worth of lies about the Tea Party movement, hammered into the American psyche by the MSM, GOP promoters have swallowed the bait and have opted to stay inside their boxes, resisting attempts to include tea partiers.
If GOP campaigns across the country are too afraid to align themselves with the Tea Party movement, then they will lose to Democrats in November.
An article in the Wall Street Journal today lays out the reasons for the tea party candidates vs. status quo Republican candidates.
[...]the nascent movement [Tea Party]: Should it back fervent long shots who hew to its antigovernment views, or should it rally around more traditional candidates, even if they don't perfectly reflect the movement's distaste for incumbents, taxes and spending?
[snip]
"The problem with the tea-party movement is it has inspired too many candidates," says Patrick Hughes, a candidate with tea-party backing who was trounced by Rep. Mark Kirk in the crowded Illinois Republican Senate primary. "The movement will fail if it can't coalesce behind candidates who can win."
But the WSJ article and Patrick Hughes miss the point. The problem is not whether the Tea Party can get together to back a mainstream Republican; the problem is whether the mainstream Republicans will back a Tea Party candidate.
The GOP organizers who may have an ounce of courage and an open mind about candidates who they are backing in the primaries should stop and take a hard objective look at their pool of candidates. The organizers should throw loyalty, sentimentality, and erroneous conclusions out the window, and bring in unbiased observers to ask the tough questions of the candidates.
What are the candidates' intentions to enforce conservative principles based on the Constitution? How will the candidates handle the crushing pressure from other federal and state legislators once they're in office? Can the candidates produce solid evidence of standing his or her ground against all odds?
According to the WSJ article, Democrats are betting on the dilution of the opposition and its inability to present a united front:
Democrats hope the tea-party surge will soften that blow by diluting Republican campaign coffers and pulling mainstream conservatives to the right, imperiling their chances in the general election.
The Tea Party may still be a nascent revolution, but the Republican Party has the ball in its court. It's time they stopped listening to the poisonous air waves, and start banding together with the Tea Party to win in November..
