Congress Spares Incandescent Bulbs in Victory for U.S. Tea Party
Congress spared the 100-watt incandescent light bulb from a government-enforced phaseout in a win for Tea Party activists over manufacturers who said they are already switching to more energy-efficient products. |
Lawmakers cleared legislation today to fund the government through Sept. 30, with a provision barring the Energy Department from carrying out the elimination of the pear-shaped bulb. Groups backing small government urged Republican allies to block the requirement, calling it an example of regulatory overreach in keeping with the health-care overhaul and the Wall Street bailout. |
Kosher Tea Celebrates Victory in NY-9 Special Election
Today, FreedomWorks’ Kosher Tea campaign celebrates fiscal conservative
Bob Turner’s victory in the NY-9 Special Election, a district with a
Jewish population of 40 percent, and three Democrats for every one
registered Republican voter. |
“This underdog victory is evidence that Jewish voters are saying no to
the Obama liberal agenda of big government and out-of control spending,”
commented David Spielman, Campaigns Coordinator for FreedomWorks and
founder of Kosher Tea. “Jewish voters no longer passively participate in
the political process and automatically pull the lever for Democratic
candidates.”
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Kosher Tea and FreedomWorks believe that the tea party agenda of lower
taxes and limited government resonates with Jewish voters across
America, and represents another step in the ongoing process to reach out
to groups not typically considered part of the tea party movement, but
ultimately vital to the success of its free market mission in 2012 and
beyond.
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Tea Party Revolt: Miami Mayor Recalled
“Tea Party Revolt: Miami Mayor Recalled,” proclaims Fox News’ Fox Nation website, while other Tea Party segments of the world wide web take glee in the ousting of Carlos Alvarez. True some of the politics involved share similarities: raising property taxes was the deed that caused Norman Braman to organize the recall election in the first place. Though, to paint this as a victory for the Tea Party movement is a bit of a stretch. |
Meanwhile, the libertarian Cato Institute paints the victory as the work of “the real Tea Party.” Hot Air warns RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) to heed the warning. Meanwhile, crazy message board FreeRepublic also took glee in the news. This most likely won’t be the last we hear of Tea Partiers pointing to Alvarez’s defeat as their victory. |
The real test of whether this was a victory for Tea Party politics will come in who (assuming they get the chance) voters will replace Alvarez with. Will anti-tax, anti-union rhetoric play big in a special election? We’ll see. Read more at blogs.miaminewtimes.com |
CPAC victory in hand, Ron Paul takes on Tea Party
 Libertarian Ron Paul, a godfather of the Tea Party movement, isn’t altogether happy with his political progeny these days.
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Fresh from victory in last week’s CPAC presidential straw poll, the Republican congressman from Texas laments to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that some Tea Partiers aren’t measuring up when it comes to the tough defense and entitlement program cuts he believes are needed to save the United States from economic cataclysm. |
“They don’t want you to touch Social Security. They don’t want you to touch anything but Obamacare,” Paul says. “Some of them are real Republicans and they wouldn’t dare touch Bush’s increase in medical care costs, you know, prescription health programs.” |
A Victory for the Tea Party, But a Long Road Remains
Once mocked as angry racist mobs and “Astroturf,” the tea
parties made their presence known in last month’s midterm
elections. Tonight, they claimed their first genuine legislative
victory when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled the $1.2
trillion omnibus bill with thousands of earmarks, conceding he
didn’t have the votes to pass it. The reason he didn’t have the
votes to pass it was was no doubt a result of the pressure put on
Republicans by tea party activists who have made it politically
untenable to be associated with massive government spending and
special favors. Sen. John McCain took to the floor and called this
a “seminal moment.” I would say that it could be, but that largely
depends on how Republicans behave going forward. Democrats made
Republicans jobs a lot easier this week by providing them with such
a massive target so soon after an election in which voters rejected
out of control spending. But the truer test will be if Republicans
can show the same sort of fortitude on matters that aren’t so easy
— especially when it comes to entitlement spending, which is a
much greater threat to the nation’s fiscal health than earmark
spending. So, this is something worth celebrating — but only as
much as a first down early in the season. There’s still a long road
ahead for those who want to rein in government. |
GOP deciding which direction to go with new authority after midterm victory
In a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised that his emboldened party will try to repeal the health-care law that was passed this year, to block spending increases for most federal agencies and to cut some funding that Congress has already approved.
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He reiterated that his overriding goal is to “deny President Obama a second term in office.”
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Yet McConnell has also spent recent weeks studying Republicans’ 1994 midterm election victory, in which the party won back Congress, and urged his colleagues not to forget one of its lessons: the power of the veto. With every flourish of President Bill Clinton’s pen, Republicans “ended up being viewed as failures, sellouts or both.”
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McConnell warned: “We have to be realistic about what we can and cannot achieve, while at the same time recognizing that realism should never be confused with capitulation.”
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com |
