I want to give a special shout out to my buddies Craig and Tim, whose enthusiasm and determination to not see their country sucked down into the third world by socialist dogma, was what managed to drag 3 more of us out of our warm beds, to drive down to the big Washington DC tea party last autumn.
The tea party wasn’t made up of the kind of people who usually protest the government. Instead it was made up of the kind of people who typically can’t waste their time on activism because they have businesses to run, or jobs to do, or kids to drive to baseball practice or step dancing class. It was regular people who all believed different things but were joined in their belief that the government does far too much already and that we all need to find some way to make it do less.
For our trouble, we have been ridiculed in the press and among leftists activists. We’ve been called Nazi’s by Nancy Pelosi, fascists by Harry Ried, and radical crazies by the white house press corps and the New York Times. We were treated with the same kind of dismissiveness that people usually reserve for a sit in launched by a bunch of middle school students to protest a no cell phone policy. We were not taken all that seriously to say the least. And the fact is, I’m probably stretching the meaning of the word when I say “We”.
It’s true I was there… but I’m not really all that engaged in politics at the moment outside this blog. I have a business to run and a job to do, and a child to drive to karate class. But Craig & Tim have all those problems too and still manage to stay very much is engaged… they’re engaged enough for all of us.
Since the election of Scott Brown, the entire political establishment has at the very least, begun to take the tea party seriously. The blue dogs are in a panic, Republicans are abandoning ‘compassionate conservatism in droves, and the media is even starting to sit up and listen. Obama and Pelosi are both still pretty clueless, and the editorial staff at the Times still thinks its 1968, but you can only fix so much. One things for sure… the tea party movement is no longer the butt of every inside the beltway joke you can imagine.
They aren’t making jokes or calling us a bunch of crazies anymore. And that’s because of guys like Craig & Tim who go to the trouble of calling their friends, and renting a van, and getting up at 4:00 in the morning to drive 200 miles in the rain with a bunch of grumpy middle aged men, so they can carry around a sign that says ‘leave us the hell alone’!. The tea party movement has gotten some respect now, and the world will be a different place because of it. And its guys like them who have reason to be most pleased about that.
2 comments:
Speaking of ridiculed in the press...
the worst newspaper in the world had this editorial mocking the Tea Party movement this morning. The Worst Newspaper Ever seems to think that fighting a government that raises taxes endlessly and spends beyond the means of all of us while regulating every part of our private or professional lives in just a "pet project". It would serve the Tea Party movement well to use their editorial to take down a small-time, one-market wonder POS paper that is a shill for evil socialist, I mean Democrat, party here in New Jersey.
Here's a copy/paste for the sake of future readers:
Give the Tea Party a little credit. Its supporters have made their mark on the public debate. They've garnered attention by adopting the successful strategies of extremists on both sides of the political aisle — yell loud and make outrageous claims, as they have in town hall meetings and various forums across the nation.
The latest local example occurred Monday night in Marlboro, when Tea Party members shouted down Democratic Rep. Rush Holt to try to steer the discussion toward their complaints about health reform and job creation, among other things.
While the Tea Party movement has an undeniable conservative bent, it's most of all an anti-establishment group sick of just about anything and everything government does.
But at some point all this bellowing and bluster has to turn into more thoughtful discussion about actual solutions, or the Tea Party is destined to become nothing more than a footnote — a tiny one at that — in the political history books.
In short, the "outrage" schtick and the labeling of all Democrats as evil socialists has become terribly stale. If members are serious about making a meaningful difference, it's time for them to grow up a little.
The underlying Tea Party concerns about their pet issues are in many cases valid ones. It is certainly fair, for instance, to question the cost and management of health reform or the proper use of stimulus funding.
But in keeping with standard political discourse, circa 2010, these reasonable ideas too often manifest themselves in petty insults and manufactured anger that creates more division and hardens the positions of those they criticize.
Moving forward, the Tea Party needs more game than it has showed so far. To start, it would be nice to know a little more about how it plans to save the republic.
Well ... the Asbury Park Press is a small town paper ... if they're still rewriting last Year's New York Times editorials you can't really blame them. Their editorial staff probably isn't any smarter than.... well... the New York Times editorial staff.
They probably haven't gotten the 'Holy $-IT what do we do now?!' memo from the Democratic club in DC yet.
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