By: Christian Malone
When you hear someone talking about the “fortune” of the Republican Party, you might think that I’m talking about corporate donors, or the provisions thrown out of McCain-Feingold recently by the Supreme Court. no, not at all.
Their great fortune is that the “Tea Party” movement, the grassroots libertarian conservative movement which is turning into a pseudo-party and is currently polling higher than the mainstream Republican Party when compared as an election between these two and the Democrats (I’m assuming that not too many Democrats will be swayed by the “Tea Party”), has not decided to eat the Republican Party alive.
http://whalertly.com/wordpress/2010/01/22/the-republican-party-and-its-grand-fortune/
Scott Brown, Senator-elect (R-MA) [just saying that makes me happy], is a man on a path to great things in national politics because he defeated Goliath, securing the seat of the late Edward Kennedy, a great champion of modern American liberalism, and hero to many in the Democratic Party. He secured a seat that was held by a progressive incumbent Democrat for 49 years. An extremely popular progressive Democratic incumbent in a state where Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans (but both are outnumbered by unaffiliated voters). He deserves much credit, and he also should be feared by Republicans, such as John Boehner, because right now he commands the respect of having a mandate from the people of Massachusetts to really stop “politics as usual.” And that means you, House Republican Leadership, and you too Senators. And you, John McCain.
That means: stop the politics of attack and negativity. Noone wants to vote for you, they just don’t want to vote for Democrats. Those that do hold up being a Republican, as if it were a value. Republican is mostly a way of saying I’m not a Democrat, and I lean right. The same way as the Democratic Party is mostly a way of saying I’m not a Republican, and I lean left. It’s a term of division, and of partisanship. I know I just stated the obvious. But that’s my point, division is nothing to celebrate. I am a libertarian, conservative, single-payer supporting, right-wing leaning American, who votes with the Republican party because they usually value firearms rights and generally restrict government intervention.
The Tea Party movement is a movement which rejects the notion that party should be the reason why representatives vote for or against issues and bills. They seem happy enough to elect Republicans for the time being, but eventually they will realize that the Republicans are still just following their leadership in a lot of cases. They still have a Whip, whose job it is to coerce, albeit gently, Republicans to vote with the party line.
This may be the death of the Republican Party. I actually hope so, because that would leave the Democratic Party in a convenient place for me: as a dinosaur; an obsolete mechanism of a long forgotten era of partisanship.
Yes. Before you ask out loud, yes. I realize this is all very ambitious to assume that a grassroots organization which is supposed Republican astroturf could become a major political party and upset the system as we know it. But as a student of history, as well as politics, it is not difficult to conclude that it could happen, and has happened, sometimes with bad results, sometimes good. For the best, but also the worst example I can think of, look at the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. They gained support because they had what the people wanted: prosperity in the face of ruin. The Tea Party may hold the same prospect to a conservative and moderate majority that is tired of the machinations of the two-party system and the implications of constant, highly partisan elections for the House, local offices, Senate, and President to top it all off. And, to prosperity, we add another value that they carry as a banner: Liberty. Combine this with the noble traditions of the United States, and you have a force to be reckoned with.
Finally, the NSDAP had pride. They were proud of being German. They had nationalism on their side. They made defeated Germans feel good about being German again. This is coming from a Political Science major. I’m not analyzing their societal norms, or their morals, i’m analyzing their electoral behavior, so make sure to chill out here. They made people so proud to be German they were willing to persecute anyone who wasn’t Germanic, and wanted to “liberate” their “German” brothers in the Sudetenland, Austria, and so on. This may be what the Tea Party does to a conservative base who was denied anything resembling a spot at the table when the Democrats gained a supermajority in the Senate (Thanks Arlen, you son of a…)["I thought you were a lady! So act like one." (AKA sit down and shut up, or go back to the kitchen. That's what it sounded like to me, but Michelle was very patient with him, more than I would have been. Act like a gentleman then, if you want her to act like a lady.)].
The thing that saddens me is that the reason the Democrats no longer have a supermajority is the death of Ted Kennedy. I pray for his family, and I commend him to the Lord happily, because I really do think that he was trying to fight for the people all those years. God bless you Ted, rest in peace with the Lord. If I had a choice, I’d rather Ted still be here. And Scott Brown could defeat him when the time came. No political gain is worth a life.
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