George Rebane
We attended the little Tea Party Patriots gathering yesterday afternoon in Penn Valley. As predicted by the lame stream media for such events, we all showed up with our guns and grenades wearing our knuckle pads so they wouldn’t get skinned. Everybody felt good because they had recent appreciation checks from BP stuffed in their shorts, checks which the company issued in lieu of its scheduled dividend. Hell, first things first.
The little gathering attracted over 200 local folks from a Nevada County Tea Party Patriots membership now north of 1,700 and growing fast. The featured speaker was national TPP coordinator Mark Meckler. Mark is an excellent public speaker and absolutely devoted to proselytizing the TPP principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free market capitalism. Principles which scare hell out of the left, and which they misrepresent in their extremes.
The TP movement actually consists of at least three grass roots factions, some being more grassy than others. These are the Tea Party Patriots (the largest and rigorously unaffiliated with any political party), the Tea Party Express (most closely connected with the Republican Party), and the Tea Party Nation (the smallest). There are a number of other similar and smaller organizations that share the conservative/libertarian values and a common view of the socialist/Marxist direction on which the Obama administration is taking the country. The movement’s power draws from its distributed and loosely tied organization – it’s hard to herd millions of independently minded cats.
Mark threw out a few recent polling statistics – 48.9 million or 16% of Americans are declared TP members. Since that 48.9 million represents voting adults, the percentage that really worries the progressives is closer to 30% of American voters. 46% of all Americans believe that the TP movement is good for America. That’s pretty good for a 15-month-old movement.
The movement draws special strength from the frenetic leftwing denials about its size, principles, and activities. Members are encouraged to find common ground with individual leftwingers, rather than having one-on-one debates about how dysfunctional are their collectivist public policies.
The organization strategically refuses to endorse candidates (yes, that includes Rand Paul) but, of course, the individual TPP members naturally have a voting booth affinity with candidates that declare common values and principles with the TP movement. This is different from the SEIU that, as an organization, openly and under the table supports leftwing candidates with money, endorsements, and in-kind services – which, of course, is their right.
The TP movement believes that the Constitution is a living document through the amendment provisions which it already contains, and not through the arbitrary judicial and legislative extensions promoted by the leftwing to bring about their avowed “fundamental transformation” through a death (of liberty) by a thousand tiny cuts.
The TPP acknowledge that healing the country’s fiscal woes (deficits, debt, and entitlements) will require each of us to be prepared to relinquish parts or all of our cherished entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. This is no easy pill for the TP movement to promote or swallow.
The movement indicts the federal government for its unconstitutional maintenance of border security and its address of the illegal entrant problem. Until the federal government again starts executing its constitutional duties, the TP movement endorses states passing and enforcing laws such as the recent actions in Arizona.
Mark also made the important point that he believes we are in a war against a militant Islam bent on nothing less than the destruction of western civilization on its path to an Islamic planet. The ‘war on terror’ is a disastrously mis-labeled effort which promotes misunderstanding of the confrontation in which our nation finds itself. As RR readers know, this has been my little soapbox from the gitgo.
The Founders’ intentions and constitutional designs for the federal model of a republican democracy are sacrosanct within the TP movement. Therefore, it seeks the repeal of the 17th amendment (through constitutional means) to restore the election of US senators by the state legislatures.
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