print• “The first national Tea Party convention opened its doors Thursday night amid widespread interest and some controversy,” reports CNN. I’m not sure what CNN considered controversial, other than that Anderson Cooper and his house boys had not been invited. Naturally, I worry about the direction of the Tea Party’s leadership. I see that no leaders from Ron Paul’s platoons have been invited. On the other hand, since I am unlikely to be asked to partake, having been excluded from at least one of the forums, I don’t intend to sweat the issue.
• When he spent more than he had stolen from taxpayers, Bush simply raised the ceiling on a whopping $6.8 trillion national debt. At the same time, Mr. Bush made a loud commotion about returning plunder to the people in the form of a tax cut. Barack has followed suit. House Democrats voted yesterday to raise the nation’s debt ceiling to more than $14 trillion. This time, Republicans opposed the move.
• The WSJ’s uneasy headline today reads:
U.S. Payrolls Slide;
Jobless Rate at 9.7%
The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 9.7% in January, but the economy shed 22,000 jobs, casting doubt over the labor market’s strength.
* Opinions Split on Job Creation
* Immigrants Top Ranks of Jobless
* CEOs Remain Hesitant to Hire
Unlike Glenn Beck, the WSJ, at least, had not forgotten to add immigrants to the unemployment miasma (I have not read further, but, no doubt, perfunctory excuse-making will follow).
Glenn put on an informative show today, examining “what puts states with progressive policies at greater risk than states with more conservative ideal,” except that Beck omitted the illegal immigrant variable, the expenditure on which would pretty much overwhelm all other considerations.
***
My weekly, WND column will be back next week. In the meantime, do read (which means purchase) my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!
I will continue to support the movement as long as it is fragmented and leaderless. The recently announced PAC will likely not get any donations from me.
I like Sarah Palin but I believe she is an intellectual lightweight and rudderless on principles. Having a ‘convention’ to have someone like that speak at us interests me not in the least. I’m glad they didn’t invite you, Ilana. It would make you part of the circus sideshow.
I’m glad to see more exposure in the media, but I believe having a bunch of clueless neocons trying to jump out in front of the parade will do more damage than help.
It’s not that people like me need the right leader. It’s that we’re impossible to lead. It’s the anger of a bunch of ungovernable individuals that’s got Leviathan scared, and that’s a good thing.
See you in Washington on April 15th. I’ll be there.
Efforts to organize us will either fail or they will succeed only in castrating the movement.
James Ostrowski of Political Class Dismissed was not invited either, in spite of all of his support. The First TEA Party Convention is the idea of a, I think, good man with his heart in the right place, but he, the people who attend the convention, as well as the politicians who support them are spitting into the wind. To become a effective, people need to continue to be educated in what is wrong and maintain a high level of skepticism. Let them become organized and they’ll let their ‘leaders’ represent them. Mr. Danforth is right. Though, I think that your critical voice is what they need more than Sarah’s ‘we can work it out.’
Her speech; shrill, neocon babble. I believe George W. Bush has underwent a sex change and he spoke at the Tea Party Convention.
I am unsure what irritated me most, Palin’s speech or the dreamy eyed look of the crowd as it lapped up her drivel.
I watched most of Sarah’s speech – standard “conservative republican” rhetoric. The Tea Party is apparently just a grass roots attempt to invigorate the G.O.P. I don’t know if Joseph Farah and the other speakers spoke the Republican party line.
James Ostrowski said the same on Sarah’s Tea Party Kenote Speech at the Lew Rockwell website. An excerpt:
“Pure neocon drivel so far. Nothing about making government smaller.
She is more interested in fighting for the liberty of Iranians than Americans.”
Mr. Danforth and I are of one mind on this. The GOP sees a magnificent opportunity here to co-opt righteous anger for their own ambitions. You can’t really blame swines for acting like swines. But if conservative-leaning people fall for it, after all the myriad falsehoods they’ve been told, they deserve what they get.
The Tea Party movement represents the perfect opportunity for conservatives to grab the Republican party by the throat and tell it that it will become a conservative party again or it will be crushed. But I just don’t think they have the will. Living is still fat in America, and people still want desperately to hand over the reigns to someone else so that they can take another paid vacation. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
I still see promise in the Tea Party Movement. I do not think it will be easily organized and bent around standard GOP politics. It sort of reminds me of the Sagebrush Rebellion, which is a decentralized movement in the rural West aimed at preserving the property rights of farmers and ranchers in the face of government aggression. The GOP made several clumsy attempts at coalescing the “Sagers” as well, but ultimately failed.
Sarah Palin is another matter. I always get the feeling that she could be much more than she really is. Worse than that, she will throw just enough bones out there to support that notion, only to fall short at the end of the day.
@Myron: I believe that the ultimate goal of “liberty and democracy” is to bring nations under the rule of a global oligarchy. The reason your government seems more interested in the democratic rights and freedoms of other nations seems to be that they know democracy leads to oligarchy, which in turn leads to tyranny (or a hybrid of the two). Their goal is not democracy, it is merely the next step on the road to global socialism and all the adventures associated with it. I believe that is why they couldn’t care less about the state of democracy in the West: we have passed the point of loving freedom and are just about ready to voluntarily give up our rights in the name of “national security” and polar bears. I believe we will see a central global despotism in our lifetime. I expect it to have the same MO as your stereotypical “helicopter mom”.
@Van Wijk:
Some of us figured out that it is precinct delegates who get to vote, no matter what most people think they learned in school. Precinct delegates get to choose who runs in the elections.
It’s ridiculously easy to become one.
And that’s one ingredient for doing what you said; transform the party back to founding principles.
Sarah was raised in lilly white Alaska. Life is tough up there but not so complicated as life in over populated, government controlled lower 48. I don’t think she is an intellectual light weight but I do think she is learning by an education process rather than by experience. It might work out, it might not. I hope so.