Most Tea Partiers are just stalwart fiscal hawks worried about our mountain of debt. They hold no party allegiance, and could care less about divisive social issues. That is not the way they have been painted, but being a friend to both the Establishment crowd and the Tea Party crowd and claiming membership in both crowds I have gotten to see realities the media doesn’t want to deal with. Far easier to scream “Racist,” and “extremist” until it sticks, but it may be sticking even without evidence supporting the accusations.
Recently Bill O’Reily attributed the loss of public support to the debt debacle. However he neglected to mention that the Tea Party/GOP House put forward several measures that would have dealt with the matter without a loss of our credit rating , but because they made actual budget cuts and did so without raising Taxes Obama and the Democrats and shockingly Senate Republicans refused to go along with it and the Ryan Plan and Cut, Cap and Balance passed the house only to be demagogue by the media as throwing Grandma off the cliff, demonized by the left as being a non-compromise and prompting John McCain to call us Hobbits… So the Senate pushed through their version which failed to cut anything, established a super committee which won’t get any cuts done, and downgraded out credit rating, but never mind all that… It’s the Tea Party’s fault.
Moody’s and S&P warned repeatedly that we needed to cut 4 trillion over 10 years. Instead Obama and his Senate cronies pushed through a plan that projected 10 trillion in spending increases, and then cut some estimated 2-3 trillion of the projected increases. In other words no actual cuts occurred, just a reduction in projected increases. The Super Committee isn’t expected to do any better.
The Ryan Plan would have cut 6 trillion over 10 years, and Cut, Cap and Balance 4 trillion and not off of projected spending increases, off of current spending. Neither plan were perfect but either would have stopped the downgrade. That was the Tea Party approach, but Obama, the media, the Democrats and Progressive Senate Republicans shot it down because it wasn’t a “balanced” approach. Then when faced with the consequences of their stubborn refusal to make real cuts, they blame the Tea Party... How mature.
But it’s worse than this because the Democrats have had control of Congress since 2007, and in the last several years the failed to pass a budget and could have addressed the debt ceiling increase a long time ago. Instead they set a trap for Tea Partiers, choice one raise the debt ceiling and cause our credit rating to drop, or choice two refuse to increase the debt limit and face possible default. Either way the Tea Party takes the blame.
John Boehner, to his credit, tried to establish a third option, raise the debt ceiling, but with significant spending cuts to offset the increase in debt and move us back toward fiscal solvency. Again, the Democrats and especially the President refused to work with us. In the end Obama got exactly what he wanted, a debt limit increase with no real spending cuts, caps or any sort of balance, just another blank check which he will use to push for new Stimulus, though he won’t call it that, it’ll be a “jobs creation bill.”.
So now the public is mad and Democrats and Progressive Republicans are pouncing. They call us terrorists, hobbits, hostage takers, racists, extremists and then call for civility in the same breath. The hypocrisy is astonishing, but be warned, it is working. According to Rassmusen polling it is now worse to be called a Tea Partier than to be labeled a Progressive. -1 43% view it as a negative, the good news is that this number is about consistent with the amount of people who have always opposed us, the problem is that only 29% now see the Tea Party as a positive label, the rest may be on the fence and it is those people we need to re-convince. I am about to make some proposals that you may or may not like, but hear me out.
29% won’t win the 2012 election, we therefore need alliances. We need to reach out to our neighbors, especially those who are minorities, and we need to start defending ourselves.
I have always been an advocate of Precinct walks, especially over phone calls. People really hate being called, but in my experience people actually receive their neighbors really well. Inviting them to events, outings, activities… like you would trying to fellowship someone for Church, more important be caught doing good deeds, make sure that people in your neighborhood associate Tea Party with positivity, that way the Media takes the hit when they trash us.
Now here’s the part you won’t like, alliances. The general public was almost simpatico that it was time to replace Bennett. Mike Lee has worked out wonderfully, but there is a question of whether or not it is worth spending all our political capital to do the same to Hatch. I disagree with things like TARP and the Patriot act like you, but to me it would behoove our agenda more to start on the left and work our way right. We should be less about ousting incumbent Republicans and more about defeating the bigger problems, in our case, Jim Matheson.
In 2010 Morgan Philpot barely lost his race against Matheson, a race that I feel could have been won if Mike Lee’s race hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the fire. Mike Lee is a great guy and my wife and I love him to pieces, but he would have won no matter what. It would have been nice to see Morgan’s race receive the same kind of attention, as much of the support came in at the last minute as opposed to early. Now Morgan had a team of well over a thousand dedicated volunteers, many of them Tea Partiers, but the national GOP and Tea Party organizations largely ignored him until the 11th hour. Anyone who thinks that beating Matheson wouldn’t be as big a deal as beating Hatch would be is only kidding themselves. What do you think Washington would hear if we send the lone Democrat of Utah’s delegation packing?
Additionally, whether you trust him or not, Hatch has been reaching an open hand to the Tea Party only to get a closed fist in response. Again, there are many votes I’d have cast differently than he, but to me beating the left and ending this nightmare where mere policy disagreements get you branded as a racist is far more important than making sure the Establishment GOP understands we’re mad about Bush. I think they got that message and the fact of the matter is that if we are half the party, and they are half the party we don’t have enough of a party to win in 2012. We therefore aught to consider alliances with the establishment for the 2012 cycle, an agreement that we will help them focus on winning against Democrats if they, in turn, fight along side us to get the fiscal house in order once we have the House, Senate and the White House. We can sort out the differences in 2014 if we have to, but at least for now, let’s drop the anti-GOP incumbent pose for the ends of fiscal solvency.
Lastly we need to start defending ourselves. It is amazing the amount of restraint we have shown. For a group often accused of uncivil behavior we are the first to hold each other’s feet to the fire if one of us does step out of line, even a little, we call each other out. The problem is, to the opposition this is a weakness to exploit. We can and should be willing to circle the wagons around each other (unless someone does say something racist, but in those events they are nearly always progressive plants designed to make us look bad). The Democrats always circle their wagons. Notice no one is apologizing for the absurd and paranoid rants of the CBC? We should stand up for ourselves, and unapologetically.
I believe if we do these three things we can turn these polls around, but we have to act now, 2012 is right around the corner, and I fear that if we do not turn these polls around all we’ll end up with is more of the same, and quite possibly the re-election of the worst president since Jimmy Carter.
-1: 43% Now View 'Tea Party' Label As A Negative, Rassmusen Reports http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2011/43_now_view_tea_party_label_as_a_negative accessed 9-6-11
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