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Poll: The Tea Party Lives

Photo Credit: FacebookA plurality of Americans support “Tea Party principles,” according to a poll released today.

The poll, commissioned by TheTeaParty.net and conducted by NSON, Inc., found that 48 percent of Americans support the principles of “limited government,” “free markets,” and “personal responsibility.”

The poll also found that 21 percent of Americans support “progressive, liberal principles” of “big government,” “higher taxes,” and “more spending.” The poll explicitly tied the conservative principles to the Tea Party, said Niger Innis, chief strategist for TheTeaParty.net.

According to the poll, nearly half of people in the Midwest, South, and West expressed support for Tea Party principles, while just over 40 percent of people in the northeast—the country’s “liberal stronghold,” said Innis—expressed support.

“The mainstream media wrote our obituary after the November elections. Unfortunately for them, the tea party isn’t going anywhere,” Todd Cefaratti, founder of TheTeaParty.net, said in a statement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Banality: RINOs Counter Tea Party With Empty Rhetoric

Photo Credit: MIke Theiler I’m told we’re living in a Moderate Moment. After Mitt Romney lost the election, moderate Republicans started emerging from every corner of the country, from Northwest Washington, D.C. to Arlington, Virginia. It was time, they declared, for calm voices to prevail in the Republican Party. The Tea Party, the right-wing, the “Conservative Entertainment Complex” — all this must be cast overboard for the GOP to win again.

The latest iteration of this came in Wednesday’s Washington Post from columnist Kathleen Parker: RINO, of course, refers to Republicans In Name Only and is the pejorative term used against those who fail to march in lockstep with the so-called conservative base. I used “so-called” because, though the hard-right faction of the party tends to be viewed as The Base, this isn’t necessarily so. My guess is there are now more RINOs than those who, though evangelical in their zeal, are poison to their party’s ability to win national elections.

Parker calls for a RINO uprising, a new faction on the right to counter the Tea Party. That’s all well and good. There are genuine differences of opinion on the right, and a little inward dialectic never hurt anyone.

But how would her brand of Republicanism differ from the conservative base she derides? This is the closest thing we get to a policy prescription in her column: “Most would like the country to rock along without drama — operating within a reasonable budget, with respect for privacy and the rule of law, compassion for the disadvantaged and an abundance of concern for national security, including border control but not necessarily drone attacks on citizens.”

Yes, if only there was a political movement calling for reasonable budgets, more privacy for the individual, upholding the rule of law, and concern for national security. She must imagine hordes of earthy Tea Partiers holding the Post in their gunpowder-stained fingers while recoiling and exclaiming, “Compassion for the disadvantaged?! This paper’s gone to the dogs!”

Read more from this story HERE.

Karl Rove And The Definition Of Insanity

With their attacks on tea party conservatives, Karl Rove and his cohorts have fired the first salvo in the Great GOP War of 2013. The strangest aspect of this is that even as Rove denounces conservatism in favor of his unique brand of watered-down compromise, he appears to be looking to capitalize on conservatism itself.

While he may call his latest super PAC the “Conservative Victory Project,” Rove most decidedly does not wish for conservative victory. The aim of his group is to push moderate candidates while posturing as the savior of the embattled Republican Party. This is what disgraced Republicans do all the time — turn away from the base in an effort to win praise from the liberal mainstream media.

What’s that old phrase? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” If that is true, the GOP’s moderate shot-callers must be a few bricks shy of a full load.

We have tried it their way for two long, frustrating decades — and with limited success. Moderate, supposedly “electable” candidates are often anything but. Just ask President John McCain. Or Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican moderate Rove and others pushed to unseat Governor Rick Perry in 2010. (Perry won handily, and Hutchison was embarrassed into retirement.)

Let’s take a look at the most recent example of Rove and his fellow faux-conservatives’ handiwork: America was force-fed Mitt Romney, a good man who was, nonetheless, far from what Americans on the right actually wanted. Romney had many good qualities, but his soft stances on issues that would have made him appealing to conservatives cost him the election. Conservatives just couldn’t get excited about the prospect of a Romney administration. Sure, almost every registered Republican preferred Romney over Obama, but their lukewarm enthusiasm for the Massachusetts moderate did not translate into a GOP victory. Liberals voted Democrat, moderate Republicans voted Republican and some conservatives swallowed the bitter pill and voted Republican while others voted independent or not at all.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party Super-PAC Girds For Coming Primary Clashes With Karl Rove Group

photo credit: donkeyhoteyOne of the nation’s most prominent Tea Party groups has launched a super-PAC that will challenge GOP strategist Karl Rove’s plan to wage primary warfare against other Republicans, opening a new front in the escalating fight between the establishment and grassroots factions of the GOP.

“He sounds like he’s challenging us, and we’re ready to rise to the challenge,” Jenny Beth Martin, founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told The Hill.

Martin’s group last week launched the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, a super-PAC that will be active in House and Senate races in 2014, largely through providing organizational support to help get out the conservative vote.

“I’m going to be engaging with the donors over the next several weeks to let them know what we’re doing and to show them that we can do what the Republican Party is not doing right now, which is building a ground game,” Martin said.
News of the Tea Party super-PAC arrived in Republican circles with substantially less fanfare than the attention lavished in recent weeks on Rove’s new Conservative Victory Project.

The CVP was created specifically to engage in primary races going into 2014 with the aim, Rove says, of backing “the most conservative candidate who can win.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party Express Celebrates Resounding WI Senate Victories!

The Tea Party Express is celebrating state senate victories in Wisconsin today, with election wins for State Senators Harsdorf, Cowles, Darling, and Olsen after conducting a statewide tour rallying support for Republican state senators last weekend.

Despite an outrageous onslaught of fear mongering, distortion and intimidation tactics from the far left and national union groups, the majority of Wisconsin voters were not fooled and voted to support senators who did their job and stood by Governor Walker’s budget reform. Although two Republican state senators were not able to fend off the baseless attacks against them, the people of Wisconsin have defeated the enemies of prosperity and kept the state on a successful path.

Tea Party Express Chief Strategist Sal Russo said, “The facts clearly demonstrate that Governor Walker’s plan is working. The state has added some 40,000 private sector jobs this year and closed a three billion budget gap. The importance of those achievements cannot be overstated – Wisconsin has set an example that the Nation as a whole should follow.

“The union lobby groups have been defaming principled Republicans because they fear the balance of power shifting back to the people of Wisconsin where it belongs. The fact is, these liberal special interest groups are protesting a plan that has already brought greater prosperity to the people. By pouring money into Wisconsin and catching the Republicans off-guard from such an assault, three decent Senators appear to have been defeated.”

But this fight is not yet over. Next week the people of Wisconsin will vote in the recall of Democrat state senators who obstructed democracy by fleeing the state and refusing to engage in much needed debate. Wisconsinites deserve representatives who are willing to make tough decision for the good of the state, which is why Senators Holperin and Wirch need to go.

Read More at Canada Free Press  Canada Free Press

The Great Deconstruction of big government and public union

 

The economic downturn of 2008 – 2009 has been labeled “The Great Recession” for good reason. Eight million Americans lost their jobs compared to six million in the last four recessions combined dating back to 1980. The jobless recovery may trigger a double dip recession in 2011. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimates that homeowners’ equity has fallen by over 50 percent, or about six trillion dollars, during this period. Some 22 percent of all mortgages are now under water. And, economists predict that between eight and 13 million homes will have been foreclosed before the crisis ends.

The eight million jobs lost during the Great Recession were primarily in the private sector. While the private sector was ravaged, the public sector was protected and bolstered by the $800 billion Stimulus Bill (3) in 2008 that sent more than $200 billion to the states to keep public sector employees employed. The Stimulus money that California received allowed California to avoid the job cuts demanded by a state budget more that $20 billion out of whack.

Ironically, it will be the actions of the Tea Party, a movement that had no significant affect on California’s 2010 election, that will impact California’s future. While the Tea Party swept more than 60 Democrats out of the Congress in 2010 and replaced them with freshman conservative Republicans, there was no such sweep in California. Democrat Governor Brown easily won his election as did Barbara Boxer and literally every Democrat running for state-wide office.

The vote in the House of Representatives, led by the freshman Republicans, will reduce Federal spending by $2.1 trillion over ten years. The framework would immediately cap domestic and defense spending. These changes will find their way to California and signal the end to Sacramento’s budgetary fiction that the Federal government will bail out the wasteful spending of state politicians. California will be forced to solve its budgetary shortfalls the same way as their federal counterparts – with less money than before.

The period following The Great Recession will be known as “The Great Deconstruction” and will usher in draconian cuts in public sector jobs and a reduction in size of California’ s government. Deconstruction is defined as the wholesale elimination of entire programs, their permanent funding and the jobs involved.

Read More at CA Political Review Robert J. Christiano, California Political Review

John Kerry-Media Should Not Give Equal Time to Tea Party

The bigots of big government such as Senator John Kerry are upset about the Tea Party. Here he takes to the airwaves and calls for the media to stop giving the Tea Party equal time and voice with the advocates for growing government.

Sarah Palin Defends Tea Party

Sarah Palin has become one of the most effective defenders of the Tea Party. Last Night on FOXNEWS she took after Democrats that have called them terrorists. Her best line was when she attacked Obama asking: “If We Were Real Domestic Terrorists, Shoot, President Obama Would Be Wanting to Pal Around With Us, Wouldn’t He?” Go Sarah Go.

Angle to McCain: Wait a minute, you campaigned for me in 2010. Now you’re insulting me and the Tea Party?

Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, blasted opponents of the Boehner plan yesterday, borrowing a phrase from a Wall Street Journal editorial that described such opposition as representing “the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.”

Angle has now released a response, which, among much else, reminds McCain that in the end the Hobbits actually won the day and saved the world. The former Nevada GOP senate nominee called herself a “TEA Party Hobbit.” This could be the start of a new branding movement among Tea Partiers:

“One man in Washington, who chose Sarah Palin to be his VP running-mate and came to Nevada to campaign for me last year in the Senate race against Harry Reid, is now promoting attacks against TEA Party activists, ordinary American citizens, and fiscally conservative members of Congress – all of whom are adamantly opposed to continuing the deficit-spending strategies proposed by some congressional members and the president.

“Ironically, this man campaigned for TEA Party support in his last re-election, but now throws Christine O’Donnell and I into the harbor with Sarah Palin. As in the fable, it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land. This Lord of the TARP actually ought to read to the end of the story and join forces with the TEA Party, not criticize it.

It is regrettable that a man seeking dialogue, action and cooperation for votes on the floor of the United States Senate has only one strategy to achieve that effort: name-calling. Nice.

Read More at the Washington Examiner By Mark Tapscott, The Washington Examiner

Why the Tea Party is unyielding on the debt ceiling

The liberal media have gone to warp speed in their defense of President Obama and their attacks on the Tea Party. We are “extreme” and “dangerous.” Republicans are “afraid of” the Tea Party. And more.

The narrative in the media is that Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner were close to a deal last week that would have resolved the debt-ceiling crisis. It would have allowed for continued borrowing and more “revenue,” the euphemism of the day for tax increases. And the Tea Party said no.

The Tea Party did say no. Unfortunately, Boehner is not listening to those who elected him and is now pushing a plan with almost nonexistent budget cuts.

Why is the Tea Party intransigent on the debt ceiling? Why is the Tea Party pushing congressional Republicans so hard that we have a crisis?

As the founder of Tea Party Nation, I feel confident in saying that the Tea Party understands what so many in Washington seem to have forgotten: We do not have a debt crisis. We have a spending crisis. There is only one way you get to a debt crisis — you spend too much money.

Read More at The Washington Post By Judson Phillips, The Washington Post