The Tea Party: Extreme or Mainstream in 2012?
Since its birth, the Tea Party has challenged traditional Washington thinking, especially its spending habits. |
While many voters support the movement, its critics are resorting to labeling it as extreme and stubborn. |
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. told CBN News its principle first no matter what. |
“I think the future of our country is more important than a deal. I think a solution is more important than a deal, and I don’t think anything we did approaches a solution,” he explained. |
The question in 2012 is — can the Tea Party continue to elect constitutional conservatives on Capitol Hill? Strength in numbers may be the only chance to change the Tea Party conversation from extreme to mainstream. |
Progressives and tea party lawmakers pressure leaders on debt deal
As a heightened sense of anxiety spread across Capitol Hill, rank-and-file legislators broke off into partisan factions. They lashed out at their leaders in private and public, signed pledges and delivered ultimatums — for Republicans, no fresh tax revenue; for Democrats, no changes to Medicare and Social Security benefits. |
“They’re making a grievous mistake if they think they can just present anything to us and assume that because we’re Democrats, we’ll go along with what the president has capitulated to,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told reporters. |
Most Republicans say increasing taxes is off the table. Some prominent Republicans are open to eliminating corporate tax loopholes as long as overall rates are lowered and any deal does not result in a net revenue increase. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) called this the “sweet spot,” adding that “there is an understanding that we need to do both: reduce the spending and reform the tax code.” |
Tea Partiers Like Bachmann, But Want Others to Enter the Race
A gathering of tea party activists near Capitol Hill this morning suggested members of that demographic are still very much up for grabs. Representatives of about 60 conservative activist groups were in town this weekend to talk organizing strategies for the 2012 elections with FreedomWorks, the conservative advocacy group that helped kick start the tea party back in 2009. |
Ms. Bachmann received loud applause when a reporter asked those in attendance to take an informal straw poll on the 2012 field. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is still debating whether to run, also got robust applause, while Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) appeared to come in third. Pizza magnate Herman Cain was applauded but one audience member shouted out, “He can’t win.” Still, that was better than Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who were booed. (Too liberal, those in attendance said.) Few in the crowd of about 100 wanted to give it up for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. |
Democrats Efforts To Fracture Tea Party
Only one entity stands in the way of business as usual in Washington. And that is the conservative grassroots uprising known as the “Tea Party.” Since its inception in early 2009, the political establishment and its media propagandists have sought to undermine and ultimately, neutralize this insurgency of the peasantry. From its early mischaracterization as a tiny fringe group, to the childish and disgraceful derision of it as “Tea Baggers,” America’s leftists, both in the media and on Capitol Hill, believed they could simply revert to their standard tactics of mockery and ridicule to dispirit and diffuse the movement. But despite such efforts, last November’s stunning elections proved the liberals’ arrogant assumptions of political hegemony were flatly wrong. |
Once again however, the Alinskyite minions of the Democrat Party have completely underestimated the strength and resolve of their opposition. While real America is currently livid over both the budgetary backtrack by the Republicans, as well as their pathetic attempt to “thread the needle” on the abortion issue (the “compromise” plan maintains the flow of tax dollars to Planned Parenthood but eliminates expenditures for abortions within the District of Columbia), it is obvious that the solution to this despicable state of affairs is not to further empower the liberal establishment. |
Tea Party Start on Shaping 2012
The Tea Party doesn’t want to be a one-election pony, and is starting early to make sure candidates heed their call for budget cuts and limited government ahead of the 2012 election. |
One faction of that movement, the Tea Party Patriots, held a small but vocal rally Thursday on Capitol Hill to pressure Congress to hold down spending for the rest of the year. The rally of about 100 people was a rather mild reminder of the Tea Party’s might. Elsewhere, the strategists behind the multi-headed movement are plotting once again to make waves in the primaries and general election. |
How much leverage does tea party have?
The latest from Capitol Hill is that there is an agreement in principle on a budget that would cut $33 billion from domestic spending. |
A band of the first-term members of Congress demonstrated their legislative maturity Wednesday by announcing, in a news conference outside the Capitol, that they wished to deliver a message to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But rather than merely send him an e-mail or hire a courier, the lawmakers instead marched up the East Front steps and presented themselves at a seldom-used ceremonial door. |
Being a ceremonial door, it was locked and alarmed — and so the freshmen used two strips of their blue tape to affix the letter, enclosed in a large manila envelope with the words “MR. REID” handwritten in four-inch letters. |
“We’re doing our job in the House of Representatives,” announced Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), a member of the blue-tape brigade. “We put forth a proposal that would cut $61 billion . . . and yet Senator Reid won’t even, uh, consider that. That is dereliction of duty.” |
Tea Party Pushes For Deeper Cuts
The Tea Party has emerged as a bogeyman of budget negotiations on Capitol Hill with Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accusing its members of introducing “extreme demands” on spending and some Republican leaders unsure of how to treat the influential movement. |
Despite what looks like the outlines of a tentative agreement on $33 billion in spending cuts, the grassroots group, the Tea Party Patriots, plans to hold a rally in Washington today to ask Congress to slash even more from this year’s budget. |
Many Tea Party-affiliated GOP lawmakers are pushing for $100 billion in cuts, and as Patriots leader Mark Meckler told the National Journal, the group’s purpose is to “‘show that our support is behind’ those lawmakers who are ‘actually trying to make significant cuts,’ and send a message to other lawmakers that they ‘better get serious about it.’” http://bit.ly/dWxsP4 |
Senate Tea Party Caucus Meets - Washington Post Mocks
The first ever meeting of the Senate Tea Party Caucus was convened yesterday on Capitol Hill and it was a great success. The left wing media is doing everything they can to demonize the Tea Party movement. It is not going to work. |
The Heritage Foundation sent a camera and here is a video of the proceedings for those who could not make the first meeting which was open to the public. |
Why would being a member of the Tea Party be a “scarlet letter?” I think Tea Party members agree that there is infighting between the major Tea Party groups, but the Tea Party movement is unified by an ideology. All Tea Party groups want to shrink the size and scope of the federal government. |
Abortion as a Tea Party Issue
Has our financial mess brought us to the brink of getting beyond the culture wars? |
It’s a question that we might see play out on Capitol Hill in the coming months as the new majority seeks to make the late pro-life congressman Henry Hyde proud, by defunding Planned Parenthood and prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion. |
“Hell no,” Speaker John Boehner said when he was in the minority, to the conscience-offending comprehensive health-care legislation that congressional Democrats and the White House insisted on. Now that he’s speaker, the first big vote under his watch was to repeal the president’s signature piece of legislation. Read more at www.nationalreview.com |
