Musing About Tea Parties and Party Affiliation

Michael Barone tries to figure out Tea Party affiliations and link them to some other movement in our past. This makes no sense to me. Tea Partiers want smaller government, lower taxes and the founding father's principles adhered to. Since Democrats want none of the above, why is there a question about how Tea Partiers will vote. Could they vote Democrat? Not in this current day. Would they vote Libertarian or Independent. Quite possibly.

But if they stay involved, the tea partiers are likely to gravitate to the Republican Party, just as the antiwar fold gravitated to the Democratic Party, on which they had a long-lasting and pervasive effect...

Tea partiers have caused some internal party splits (see the New York District 23 special election) and some may launch primary challenges or theird-party efforts that will elect Democrats. Any time a large number of motivated people inject themselves into electoral politics, they cause a certain amount of chaos.

Exactly. By not injecting ourselves into electoral politics, we have insane Democrats running the country. New York 23 is a good example of what really got the ball rolling for conservative activists. The GOP did what they too often have done...picked a RINO as a candidate, gave her money...lots of money. Tea Party watchdogs picked up on it when a conservative candidate challenged the RINO. The conservative didn't win, but then he had zero support from the Grand Old Party. Still yet, it was a victory for conservatives. We expect the GOP to be more discerning and actually do some research before future endorsements. It's laughable to think we would expect the same from the DNC.

Barone believes the lash back from conservatives is mainly about spending, but I maintain that it is equally, if not more, about freedom and liberty:

It's not clear whether the tea partiers' influence on Republicans will last as long as the antiwar cohort's imprint on Democrats. But their concern -- the fact that government spending is on a trajectory to increase far beyond revenues -- seems likely to persist. In which case a spontaneous movement that no one predicted and that no one person led could end up again, reshaping one of our great political parties.

I believe if the vigor for smaller government, lower taxes and adherence to the vision of the founding fathers ever diminishes, now that it has been re-founded, it will be a very, very long time. That's the gift Barack Obama's election gave us - the knowledge, insight  and vision to understand what the wrong choice for leadership, by an uninformed citizenry and criminally-complicit press, can do to a freedom-loving people, their children and generations beyond.

I don't see the fascination with decrying a Tea Party connection to Republicans, as long as the Tea Party quest is to advocate for smaller government, lower taxes and adhering to our founding documents. How out-of-character it would be for a Tea Partier to vote Democrat?