Tea Parties Giving Some Advice To The GOP

[Kathianne]

I'm glad they're getting out front with this, I'll admit I thought it might wait until January:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45110.html


GOP is urged to avoid social issues
By: Ben Smith and Byron Tau
November 14, 2010 05:53 PM EST

A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.

In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

The letter's signatories range from GOProud's co-founder and Chairman Christopher Barron — a member of a group encouraging Dick Cheney to run for president — to Tea Party leaders with no particular interest in the gay rights movement.

As of Sunday evening, the letter had 17 signatories. They include tea party organizers, conservative activists and media personalities from across the country, including radio host Tammy Bruce, bloggers Bruce Carroll, Dan Blatt and Doug Welch, and various local coordinators for the Tea Party Patriots and other tea party groups.

"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."

...

More here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/Tea-Party-Tally/2010/1115/Tea-party-groups-push-GOP-to-quit-culture-wars-focus-on-deficit


The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Tea Party Tally
Tea party groups push GOP to quit culture wars, focus on deficit

In a letter to Republican leaders, tea party members advise the GOP to avoid culture-war social issues such as gay rights and abortion and to focus on reducing deficit and role of government.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer
posted November 15, 2010 at 2:26 pm EST

Representatives of the loosely organized tea party movement urged GOP leaders in a letter released Monday to abandon their fronts in the culture wars – issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, and abortion – and instead focus their new electoral power on individual liberties and "economic freedoms."

The letter, signed by 16 tea party groups and a conservative gay organization, points to an emerging rift between the tea party movement and the GOP, which still counts social conservatives seeking "moral government" as a key constituency.

The signatories, ranging from conservative commentator Tammy Bruce to local tea party group leaders, say the key lesson the GOP should draw from the election is that Americans are concerned chiefly about taxes and the size of government, not their neighbors' lifestyle choices or personal decisions.

RELATED: Top 10 tea party winners and losers

But the push to quit the culture wars is already meeting resistance from mainstream Republicans, who worry about a rebellion from social conservatives if the party refrains from taking stands on moral issues.

"If the Tea Party wants to remain true to its limited government principles, then it strikes me that the default position would be less government and more personal freedom, whether the issue being dealt with involves economics or so-called 'social issues,' " writes Doug Mataconis on the Outside the Beltway blog. "At some point this unnatural split in the GOP's view on freedom will have to be reconciled."

...

[Kathianne]

I missed this earlier one from a few days ago:

http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/13/tea-partiers-to-gop-fall-in-line-or-face-challengers/


Tea Partiers to GOP: Fall in line or face challengers
By John Rossomando - The Daily Caller 9:20 AM 11/13/2010


...Compromise with Democrats on key issues would be a non-starter for Tea Partiers, and doing so would prompt a Tea Party backlash, Meckler said.

Meckler warns Republican senators up for re-election in 2012 to think twice about voting on compromise with the Democrats because they will face the same fate at outgoing Utah Sen. Robert Bennett or Delaware Rep. Mike Castle.

McConnell’s support for earmarks, for example, could put him in hot water with the Tea Partiers who promise to take him down the next time he runs unless he relents.

“I guarantee there will be primary challenges in 2012 for those folks that don’t hold strong,” Meckler told The Daily Caller. “I guarantee in two years we will vote all of them out and have another celebration.”

Boehner would find himself at the top of the Tea Party’s list of primary targets if he goes back on any of his campaign promises, Meckler said.

“We can’t expect in three months to have ObamaCare repealed; to have the budget balanced, or have our debt paid down,” Kremer said. “That’s unrealistic and we need to be realistic, but we want to see progress.

“We didn’t get here overnight, and it’s going to take a couple of election cycles before we get enough conservatives in there, so that we can completely turn things around.”

Elected conservatives such as Republican Study Committee chairman Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., anticipate the House Republicans
will keep their word. “It is time for us to walk the walk the walk,” Price said.

According to Price, Republicans will make repealing the president’s health care plan, restoring the Bush tax rates if the Democrats don’t act in the lame duck session, and vigorous oversight of the Obama administration’s actions on a host of fronts top priorities come January.

The movement’s leaders say the Tea Party movement represents a new political paradigm in American politics outside the control of traditional political party structures, which will act on a freelance basis.

“You will see people who have been involved in and at the head of the old paradigm fight that change, but I think that change has already taken place,” Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Mark Meckler said. “But I think that people who don’t see that have missed the shift in the paradigm.”

...

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/13/tea-partiers-to-gop-fall-in-line-or-face-challengers/#ixzz15OycxUXq

[Pagan]

Just heed the warnings of "Mr. Conservative" himself -

"If they succeed in establishing religion as a basic Republican Party tenet, they could do us in."

-- Barry Goldwater - U.S. News & World Report, 1994

"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."

-- Barry Goldwater - The Post 1994

The GOP have been given a second chance, let's hope they don't fuck it up by being a bunch of "Progressive Liberals" as they were under 'Dubya's regime.

[red states rule]

and in the liberal media it more of the same

A pity party for Obama and total contempt for the Tea Party

Not surprising since the entire panel on the Chris Matthews show are always 100% liberal and are die hard supporters for Obama and liberalism





Appearing as a panel member on Sunday’s syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the BBC’s Katty Kay suggested that Tea Partiers are willing to go against the "country’s interest" rather than to "deal" with President Obama. Kay: " And if there is going to be a wing of the Republican Party that says, do not on any issue, on any case, even on its merits, compromise with the President, it’s gonna be the Tea Party. And if the Tea Party is driving the energy in the Republican Party ... Republicans in Congress are going to have to look very carefully at how they deal with them. And the Tea Party is saying we don’t care about whether it’s in the country’s interest, in our foreign policy interest, in our economic interest necessarily to deal with the President."

A bit later, as she speculated about whether obstruction by the GOP would be rewarded or punished in 2012, she seemed to suggest that "competence" would involve compromising with President Obama as she used the word as the alternative to standing on "principle" and opposing Obama. Kay: "I think this is the biggest point that, I mean, the point that Dan raises about in 2012. Will voters more reward competence and actions that have been seen to be effective for the country? Or will they reward politicians who stood on principle and oppose the White House expansionist agenda, as they see it?"

And during the "Tell Me Something I Don’t Know" segment, she also spoke favorably of a proposal to use a soda tax to reduce the federal budget deficit: "In both the bipartisan plans that are out there at the moment, that have come out in the last 10 days to reduce the deficit, one item is the proposition to put a tax on sodas. This makes sense in terms of health of Americans. It also makes sense in terms of reducing the deficit. It would, of course, raise revenue. It will go absolutely nowhere because people think that it’s ,indicative of a nanny state, and they don’t want it."



Read more: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/11/21/bbc-s-kay-suggests-tea-partiers-put-beating-obama-ahead-country-s-int#ixzz15wBpJXKE

[fj1200]

Well they are fair and balanced, they give voice to all shades of liberal.

[red states rule]

http://www.newsbusters.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/main_375/cartoons/obama_barack_junk.jpg