Posted by
Steve on Saturday, April 18, 2009 11:20:47 AM
The Tea Parties are now in our past. They were wildly successful as far as participants are concerned. There were a lot more people that turned out than anyone expected. A partial count had the total at about one million people. That count only included about one third to one half of the sites that had Tea Parties.
The main stream media and the liberals are trying to downplay the Tea Parties any way they can. The worst was from a Clinton era holdover Janeane Garofalo on the Keith Olbermann show. She declared that all Tea Party attendees were racists. Her reasoning went this way: Barack Obama is a black man. All of the people at the Tea Parties were protesting against the government and Barack Obama, so therefore, all the people at the Tea Parties were racists. That is flawed reasoning. It is true that Barack Obama is a black man. It is true that all of the people attending the Tea Parties were protesting against the actions of the government and Barack Obama. Nobody was saying that Barack Obama should not be President. They were just saying that he was not acting in a responsible manner. There is a huge difference. But, Janeane Garofalo was not talking to the attendees or even liberals. She was talking to the black audience. If she could convince blacks that the Tea Party attendees were racists, then she could defuse the issue for blacks. Anyone with a brain could see through her arguments. Keith Olbermann could not see through her arguments. He treated them as if they were absolutely true.
I read some comments from participants in the Tea Parties on Lucianne.com. All of them were positive and saying that we now need to continue to work to change things. The consensus was that we need to work from within a major party, probably the Republicans as they are the closest to our position. There was some talk of a third party, but that was rejected because it would guarantee another term for Barack Obama and that cannot happen.
Right now, there is a lot of energy about the wrong direction the country is headed. There is no single group or person that is leading the charge. Until there is a single person or group, the movement will continue to be scattered on the issues. The central issue of taxation and spending is agreed on, but the rest of the agenda is unfocused and blurry for most of the participants in the Tea Parties. In the comments I read there was a lot of talk of a Reagan stepping forward. There will probably not be another Reagan in my lifetime, but there can be a strong leader. Some of the previous leaders, like Newt Gingrich, were discussed and dismissed. Most of them had too much baggage from past encounters. Newt’s problem was sitting on that couch with Nancy Pelosi. He will never be forgiven for that mistake.
The strong leader that steps forward has to be sure of what needs to be done. The message has to be clear and simple. The message has to be consistent. The message has to be positive. The leader has to be inclusive of all people. The Mike Huckabee example where he trashed a strong segment of the Republican Party because he did not like their religion cannot be allowed to be part of this leader’s character. Right now, there is a vacuum that needs to be filled. There are many people that have tried to fill that position and failed. We do not need a RINO, we need a true conservative. In fact, the message from the Tea Parties was loud and clear. If you are supporting wasteful spending and excess taxation, you are a target of the Tea Parties. The politicians in power got the message; it is up to us to make sure that they continue to hear it.