Horowitz: Saving the Tea Party-GOP Marriage

"Can the marriage between the Tea Party and the GOP survive," asks David Horowitz. His answer is, "It better." In a thought-provoking article at National Review Online, Horowitz argues that the grass-roots Tea Party movement is an essential "equal and opposite force" that the GOP needs to be effective against the Left.
 
Noting "that the basic difference between the Tea Party and the Republican party is a matter of tactics and temperament, not policy and ideology," Horowitz asserts that "a tactical difference is no grounds for divorce."  He urges both sides to understand that "the Republican Party—like conservatives generally—is guided by a business mentality, whereas the Left's mentality is missionary, and that is where the Tea Party can prove most valuable.

A business approach is fundamentally positive. ... Where possible it wants to avoid conflict and the alienation of others; it is looking to maximize customers and expand markets, and therefore to make deals. A businessman would rather buy you out or merge with you than crush you. When obstacles present themselves, it is cheaper, and in the long run more productive, to compromise and find a way around them.

This is the mentality of our Washington insiders. A way of looking at the schism between the Tea Party and the Republican party is that the Tea Party, which is an upstart, is driven more by the missionary mentality, while the Republican party is more of a business establishment with a business temperament and approach. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are dealmakers, not game-changers.

The catch is that this is probably not the best mentality to hold when the opposition is a missionary party that views politics as war and that is out for your blood. In these circumstances, an equal and opposite force — a missionary force — may be required to defeat it. The grassroots understands this, which is why and how the Tea Party was born ...

The very fact that the Tea Party is missionary, that it is organized as a cause, makes its demands and actions seem impractical and even extreme to business-as-usual Republicans. This is inevitable. In order to change things you have to take positions that seem unrealistic and may even seem extreme. It’s the nature of change, and the Tea Party is about change. ... Without the Tea Party, there would be no Ted Cruz, no Rand Paul, no Mike Lee.

Horowitz believes "Cruz's stand on the Senate floor," far from hurting the GOP's 2014 prospects, "lit a fire in the Republican base and showed the rank and file that there are Republicans ready to fight." For their long-term success, though, he argues that both parties in the marriage must remember to focus their efforts on the Left rather than each other:

What would have happened if the Republican party and the Tea Party and the big PACs run by Rove and Koch had funded a $30 million campaign to put the blame [for the government shutdown] on Obama and Reid, where it belonged? There was no such campaign. All the parties on our side failed to take the fight to the enemy camp. The finger-pointing that followed is just another example of the circular firing squad that we on the right are so good at and that continually sets us back."

Read the full article, Why Republicans Need the Tea Party.

Obama 'Legalizes' IRS Abuse of Tea Party Groups

Attorney Cleta Mitchell, who represents several conservative organizations abused by the IRS, told attendees at the Institute's 2013 summer DC Intern Seminar:

I'm not surprised that the agents in the IRS decided it was completely appropriate to single out and target, terrorize, and harass conservative organizations. I think we will learn — because I've had enough conversations with conservative and tea party leaders around the country who were visited by the FBI ... I think it will come out at some point that the FBI classified the tea party groups as domestic terrorists, or at least were investigating them to see if they were domestic terrorists.

Yesterday, in an article titled IRS Targeting, Round Two, Kim Strassel @ Wall Street Journal wrote that the Obama "Treasury and IRS are back at it — this time in broad daylight."

In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.

That this rule was meant to crack down on the White House's political opponents was never in doubt. What is new is the growing concern by House Ways and Means Committee investigators that the regulation was reverse-engineered—designed to isolate and shut down the same tea party groups victimized in the first targeting round. Treasury appears to have combed through those tea party applications, compiled all the groups' main activities, and then restricted those activities in the new rule.

AEI Study: Yes IRS Did Blunt Tea Party Ground Game

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. ... We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum.

The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes—more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 — 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million. [emphasis added]

Read the rest of the article by American Enterprise Institute economist Stan Veuger at Real Clear Politics.

Women Waging War on Big Government

The Tea Party isn't waging a war on women, argues Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express; but its women are certainly waging a war against Big Government, big spending, and big debt policies. 

One of the most recent attempted diversions is the invention of a "Tea Party-led war on women." Ironically, much of the Tea Party leadership is made up of a new generation of powerful conservative women.

The truth is that Tea Party women are leading the charge to tackle the fundamental problems brought on by the ever-expanding Big Government agenda. Women are not only the most protective of loved ones. They are also the most familiar with how policies will affect their family on a micro level.

Common-sense conservative women are now driving the movement to shrink the size of government and rein in the out-of-control spending. We are going to get this country back on track, and thanks to the millions of conservative mothers, sisters, wives and daughters across this nation, we are going to restore the American dream for our children's generation and all future generations to come.

Video: Why Progressive Institutions are Unsustainable

This fast-paced little video does a great job "outlining the differences between the classical liberalism of the Tea Parties and the progressive agenda advanced by the Occupy Wall Street movement." It's based on Richard Epstein's new book, Why Progressive Institutions are Unsustainable.



http://tinyurl.com/75smfq3%29

Tea Party Unveils its Budget Plan for Debt Reduction

On Nov 17 the Tea Party's Debt Reduction Committee released The Tea Party Budget. Highlights:

• Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
• Eliminates 4 Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
• Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don't support us — luxuries we can no longer afford.
• Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART accounts.
• Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
• Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit.

It's a serious proposal, one clearly geared to saving a nation rather than a few political jobs. Check it out.

Tea Partiers Debating Right Question in Debt Crisis, says Brit

America's bitterly divided debt debate got cheers from UK Telegraph columnist Janet Daley, who credits America's Tea Partiers with debating the right question:

The truly fundamental question … is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society?

Daley chastises fellow Brits (and American liberals) for failing to recognize the 'untenable doctrine' of the  post-WWII national welfare model of governance: