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Dispelling Liberal Myths: The Tea Party is Not Racist and the Right is Not the Realm of Homophobes and Misogynists

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Photo Credit: Irish Central When Niall O’Dowd invited me to be the voice of the right at IrishCentral, I was met with complaints from those who didn’t like having a different opinion disturbing their peace and quiet…. But I was also greeted with welcome from those who felt they had not previously been given a voice. One priest even commented “praise God for Ed Farnan,” after I came aboard.

I have seen the myths put forth by my liberal colleagues, repeating stereotypes to paint all on the right with. If you repeat something often enough, it becomes the truth, even if it is not.

The myths that are particularly galling though, are the ones claiming the Tea Party is a racist organization and the right is a breeding ground of homophobia and waging a “war on women.”

Of course, in any group there will be fringe elements, but that should never be a basis to label an entire political movement with.

For me there is nothing better than to talk to those who are directly involved in a subject in order to get their opinion…..Especially the ones that would be feeling the brunt of the racism and discrimination, if there was any.

I called Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, someone I have deep respect for. Reverend Peterson is the founder of BOND Action and The South Central LA Tea Party, which self-identifies as “a black-led organization that loves and supports America,”

During our phone call Reverend Peterson, couldn’t be more emphatic that the Tea Party is composed of regular American citizens, who only want to see a responsible government and fiscal sanity restored to our country. His Tea Party chapter is:”not only popular in my own community;” he said: “I was surprised at the number of members throughout the US who joined, including many Hispanics and African Americans.”

Reverend Peterson was recently outraged when he saw claims made by Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson, comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan. Reverend Peterson demanded that the “race baiting Grayson apologize to Black Americans and the Tea Party for his outrageous lies.”

“Alan Grayson is playing on the worst fears of Blacks in an attempt to continue the brainwashing tactics of the Democratic Party. He knows that for more than 160 years it has been the Democrats who have used the Ku-Klux-Klan, Jim Crow, and failing liberal policies to keep many blacks on the liberal Democrat’s plantation.” Read more here.

My next contact was Richard Grenell. Richard is a conservative, registered Republican, openly gay and appears frequently on Fox News as a foreign policy/security expert. He has been interviewed on CNN, Fox News, ABC News, NBC News and many other media outlets.

I asked Richard for his opinion as a gay man in the conservative world, if he faces discrimination:

“First of all, I classify myself as a consistent conservative. I consistently want government out of my life. I recognize that government must act when there is no market force but should stay out when there is a desire from the private sector to do something.”

“But generally I say that the far left and the far right are both intolerant. I have experienced it first hand. The far left hates the fact that I am a gay conservative. They want to keep gays in an ideological box. They alone get to decide when we get to speak up and on what issue.”

I contacted Jana Neweley. Jana has co written articles with me in the past and has helped research for upcoming interviews. Jana is a freelance writer of conservative political commentary. Follow her political tweets at PimpingtheUS.

“As a Black, Conservative woman, I have experienced racism and intolerance over the years, encountering both White and Black racists. So, how is it possible for any one group to say to another, “You’re racist?” Yet, the Democratic Party has accused The Right of just that. Well, I accuse The Left of being intolerant, because Liberal-Dems have zero tolerance for me. Sure, they’re okay with the color of my skin, but not with the fact that my conservative values are in direct conflict with their political agenda. If there was anything I could share with the American People, it would be Blacks ARE NOT automatically liberal.”

I had calls in to Carly Fiorina, Melissa Meyers and Meg Whitman, all former and present CEO’s of top American corporations. I wanted to get a first hand account of the conservative’s war on women intended to keep them “barefoot and pregnant”….but their busy schedules prevented a comment in time for this article.

A woman is considering a run for president; hopefully she’s a conservative. Women are governors, senators, members of congress and very powerful in the Republican Party. Women have assumed leadership roles in all strata’s of society, there is no one telling them they can’t do something. It is just another liberal fallacy to claim there is a war on women.

It’s easier to call someone a name or label them as an extremist instead of having to answer real questions about your failing policies.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Biden’s ‘Crass Plea’: Don’t Let Women’s Rights, ‘Collective Agenda’ Fall to Tea Party

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Photo Credit: Cliff OwenPleading for money to help his party win back the House, Vice President Joseph Biden on Friday night took direct aim at tea party conservatives, calling them the biggest impediment to progress in America.

“Everything you worked for and the progress we have made is literally in jeopardy if we lose seats in the Senate and if we don’t gain seats in the House,” Mr. Biden told the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, according to a pool reporter traveling with the vice president. “Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the House back … That’s the single most important thing, in my view, we can do for our collective agenda, is win back the House.”

He added that his one “crass plea” to the group is to raise more money for the upcoming 2014 congressional elections.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fort Hood Soldiers say Army Warned them Off Tea Party, Christian Groups

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Photo Credit: AP/Jack PlunkettDon’t donate to the tea party or to evangelical Christian groups — that was the message soldiers at a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood said they received from a counter-intelligence agent who headed up the meeting.

If you do, you could face punishment — that was the other half of the message, as reported by Fox News.

The briefing was Oct. 17, and about a half-hour of it was devoted to discussion about how perceived radical groups — like tea party organizations and the Christian-based American Family Association — were “tearing the country apart,” one unnamed soldier said, to Fox News.

Among the remarks the agent allegedly made: Military members who donate to these groups would be subject to discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the soldier reported.

Read more from this story HERE.

A War That Might Happen

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Photo Credit: National Review Conservatives with long memories had to laugh at the recent New York Times front-page headline: “Fiscal Crisis Sounds the Charge in GOP’s ‘Civil War.’”

That diagnosis largely hangs on the judgment of 1970s New Right direct-mail impresario Richard Viguerie, whose ears have been ringing with the thunder of Fort Sumter for a quarter-century.

Within a week of Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, Viguerie was denouncing the Gipper as a traitor to the cause. The Associated Press ran a story headlined “Conservatives Angry with Reagan.” Viguerie was the centerpiece: “Almost every conservative I have talked to in the last two months has been disappointed in the initial appointments to the Reagan Cabinet.”

By July of that year, the Washington Post ran a news story, “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over,” which included many anti-Reagan barbs. After the 1990 midterms, Viguerie told USA Today, “You just heard the opening shots of a civil war within the Republican Party.”

Then again, just because Viguerie is predicting something doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’ve always loved the story of the British intelligence officer whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century: “Year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Tea-Party Plan to Delay/Defund Obamacare Was Not Only More Realistic, It Was More Compassionate

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Photo Credit: APOne of the more irritating aspects of the recent government-shutdown unpleasantness has been the “I told you so” lamentations of the defund/delay plan’s critics — as if they had anything approaching a workable alternative. I highly recommend Andrew McCarthy’s weekend column. It’s a devastating takedown of the notion that Obamacare repeal is just a multi-election Republican winning spree away. Even if we were able to achieve a Republican perfect storm, sweeping the Senate in 2014 then taking the White House in 2016, does anyone foresee a filibuster-proof Republican senate majority? Isn’t the best-case outcome of that strategy a tweaking of the law not unlike, say, welfare reforms in the 1990s — positive changes that still leave intact a trillion-dollar-per-year, failed entitlement superstructure?

As Mr. McCarthy notes, the tea-party plan was a Hail Mary pass, but those sometimes work. I will note, however, that unlike in every football game I’ve ever watched, in this case members of the offense actually joined the defense in batting down the pass.

Not only did the tea-party plan have a chance, it was far less cynical and far more compassionate than the Republican alternative. The Republican alternative to the tea-party plan boils down to this: Let the people suffer (also called ”let Obamacare implode”), then they’ll come to us, we’ll win a bunch of elections over several cycles, then we’ll make it better.

Read more from this story HERE.

Zombie Republicans

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Photo Credit: The American Spectator Staggering, without direction, not quite dead and in search of brains, the Republican Party is giving a really good performance as the Zombie Party. According to the media’s current narrative, it has to rid itself of the Tea Party’s influence or die.

That narrative tells us the state of the Party is entirely the fault of conservatives, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in particular. They — with Cruz’s filibuster — led Republicans into a battle they couldn’t win. If only the House Republicans had gone along with the strategy of the Republican Establishment, they’d have come out of the latest round of crises stronger than they’ve been since, well, we’re not sure when.

If conservatives had obeyed their betters, there would be a chicken in every driveway and a piece of Ted Cruz in every pot. Or at least that’s what the media narrative — propelled by the Republican establishment and the Dems — would have us believe.

There are a few problems with that narrative. To dissect it, we need to be energetic in a way we can only feel if we’re really angry. Anger and frustration are permitted here. Whining is not. And context is important.

The context of the current round of crises — and the temporary solution to them — is that President Obama has never yet been compelled to compromise. Not on Obamacare, not on tax rates, not on individual budgetary items or overall spending. Heaven forbid that any government spending be limited. On none of those things will Obama bargain. He simply won’t negotiate any compromise, so Republicans have spent the past two years trying to find a way to force him to negotiate with them.

Read more from this story HERE.

Wisconsin Professor tells Students Tea Party, Republicans at Fault for Slimdown

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Photo Credit: UWLAX.EDUA Wisconsin college professor warned her students they wouldn’t be able to get all of their homework done because of the partial government shutdown, and put a partisan spin on the bad news.

“Some of the data gathering assignment will be impossible to complete until the Republican/tea party controlled House of Representatives agrees to fund the government,” University of Wisconsin La Crosse Assistant Geography Professor Rachel Slocum told students in an e-mail.

“The Census website, for instance, is closed,” she continued. “Please do what you can on the assignment. Those parts you are unable to do because of the shutdown will have to wait until Congress decides we actually need a government. Please listen to the news and be prepared to turn in the assignment quickly once our nation re-opens.”

At least one student in the online course reported the professor’s political spin to the education blog The College Fix, which first reported the story.

Slocum could not be reached for comment, but a school official told FoxNews.com the issue was addressed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Emails Show IRS’ Lois Lerner Specifically Targeted Tea Party

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Photo Credit: Tea Party

Photo Credit: Tea Party

Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the Internal Revenue Service scandal over special scrutiny of conservative groups, specifically targeted tea party applications and directed that they be held up in 2011 in order to come up with an agency policy, according to several of Ms. Lerner’s emails released by a House committee Thursday.

In one 2011 email, Ms. Lerner specifically calls the tea party applications for tax-exempt status problematic, which seems to counter Democrats’ arguments that tea party groups weren’t targeted.

“Tea Party Matter very dangerous,” Ms. Lerner wrote in the 2011 email, saying that those applications could end up being the “vehicle to go to court” to get more clarity on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.

In another email, from 2012, Ms. Lerner acknowledges that the agency’s handling of the tax-exempt applications had been bungled at the beginning, though she said steps had been taken to correct problems.

“It is what it is,” she wrote in the email, released Thursday by the Ways and Means Committee. “Although the original story isn’t as pretty as we’d like, once we learned [that we were] off track, we have done what we can to change the process, better educate our staff and move the cases. So, we will get dinged, but we took steps before the ‘dinging’ to make things better and we have written procedures.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party House Members Take on Establishment Senators in Fight to Defund Obamacare

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Photo Credit: majunznkBy Elise Viebeck. The Tea Party is ready to take a stand on defunding the divisive healthcare law and willing to risk a government shutdown in the process.

Establishment Republicans worry the strategy will repeat the Clinton-era government shutdown showdown, which hurt Republicans in the 1996 elections.

Tensions will reach a boiling point after the August recess, when lawmakers start negotiations over how to keep the government open.

In the meantime, old-guard Republicans are sending a clear message to conservatives: The shutdown isn’t worth the risk.

On Friday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said that a plan to shut down the government to block funds for ObamaCare would cost the GOP control of the House and could destroy the party. Read more from this story HERE.

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Sen. Cruz: Defund Obamacare before Americans become ‘addicted’ to subsidies

By Valerie Richardson. Sen. Ted Cruz urged conservatives Saturday to join a petition drive to defund Obamacare, calling it their last chance to stop the national health-care plan before its implementation in January.

“On Jan. 1, the exchanges kick in and the subsidies kick in,” said the Texas Republican in a speech Saturday at the Western Conservative Summit. “Once those kick in, it’s going to prove almost impossible to undo Obamacare. The administration’s plan is very simple: Get everyone addicted to the sugar so that Obamacare remains a permanent feature of our society.”

He asked foes of the Affordable Care Act to sign a national petition launched Saturday that calls for Congress to approve the Sept. 30 continuing budget resolution only if it eliminates funding for Obamacare.

The online petition, called Don’t Fund It, is located at www.dontfundobamacare.com

Opposing Mr. Cruz’s defunding plan was Republican strategist Dick Morris, who urged Republicans to “let the consequences of Obama’s policies happen.” Read more from this story HERE.

OFA Embraces Tea Party Blueprint for August Push

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Photo Credit: APIf Organizing for Action’s plans come together, 2013 will be its turn to make trouble for members of Congress back home in their districts.

Four years after the tea party surprised Democrats at town halls that led to the Republican wave of 2010, the political action group formed out of the remains of President Barack Obama’s campaign laid out its plans Monday for Action August, a month of activity meant to break congressional opposition to the White House agenda.

OFA’s preparing a range of under-the-national-radar tactics in conjunction with heading for town halls. Rallies, distribution of fliers and district office demonstrations will be aimed at drawing the same sort of local attention that tea party groups managed four years ago, hoping to spook members of Congress worried about the 2014 midterms.

But with Obama off to a sometimes disappointing and dispiriting start to his second term, the question is one the president himself asked volunteers Monday night: “Are you still fired up?”

The crowd cheered “Yes!” but they’ll need more than that.

Read more from this story HERE.