CPAC This Week
I'm excited and honored to be attending and participating in CPAC 2010 beginning this Thursday.
I'll be participating in the following panel:
Thursday, February 18th - 11:45am
"Saving Freedom One Patriot at a Time"
Marriott Ballroom
Ginni Thomas, LibertyCentral.org
Dana Loesch, St. Louis Tea Party
Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots
Moderator: Andrew Moylan, NTU
Afterwards, I'll be signing copies of A New American Tea Party in the main exhibit hall. Stop on by if you're at CPAC!
If you aren't already coming, be sure to check out the impressive agenda here. Online registration is closed, but you can show up and register for a few different packages.
The Tea Party Nation
Great op-ed in the Sacramento Bee this weekend on the recent tea party convention, the media spin of same, and the real principles - and people - behind the tea party movement.
Writes Ben Boychuk:
What tea parties represent is a revival of good, old-fashioned constitutionalism and the idea that government needs to get back to basics. There is a great yearning for a return to first principles. Millions of Americans, but perhaps not yet a majority, would very much like to restore the principles of the American Founding Fathers to their rightful and pre-eminent place in our political life.
Read the full piece here.
SOTU Wish: Stop Talking
In my debut piece at The Daily Caller, I outline why Americans are so frustrated with President Obama just one year after his inauguration: the rhetoric and the reality just don't match up. President Obama has broken the trust of the American people too many times in such a short window of time. It's time for less talk and more (substantive) action.
Below, Paul Bedard at US News & World Report has a great wrap-up of the growing discontent across party lines throughout the nation.
Puzzling Media Attention Re. One Tea Party
The New York Times and other outlets that haven’t given the enormously popular and politically potent tea party movement the time of day over the past year are suddenly quite interested in covering it.
Many political and media elites wrote the movement off as “fringe” – an irrelevant, small cadre of disgruntled right-wingers not worthy of their attention. As I told the Washington Times, know that they smell a hint of controversy, they’re suddenly quite intrigued.
Many in the media are quick to point out the missteps of this one group in TN throwing a convention with Sarah Palin as signs that the movement is in trouble. They see one event, one organization hitting bumps in the road and conclude from there that there is a significant rift in the movement.
It is particularly curious given that these very journalists, commentators, and politicians have to date characterized the movement as directionless and leaderless. The former has been proven untrue beyond doubt in the wake of the election of Scott Brown in my bluer than blue home state of Massachusetts. The later is true: this isn’t a top down movement by any means, and I argue that it doesn’t need a leader. This movement’s power comes from the millions of concerned Americans that constitute it. The movement rejects the creepy idolatry exhibited in the past presidential campaign. It represents an important shift away from partisanship and personalities to principles.
If only there was one book out there journos could take for a spin that clearly articulates the history of and principles behind this powerful grassroots movement…
The bottom line is, if millions of people getting involved in the political process through protests, town halls, and marches over the past year weren’t newsworthy, the attention given to a couple thousand in TN is…curious. Maybe I’m just being cynical.
The Electoral Counterrevolution
Last night Scott Brown clinched the MA Senate race with a solid 5 point lead. More from the good folks at the Boston Herald here.
This is a huge victory for the tea party and for the millions of Americans the recognize the threat of ever-expanding government exemplified in policies like ObamaCare, the bailouts, cap and trade, and the rest of the President's radical agenda.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco summed it up best before the final tally. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:
"Regardless of the outcome ... this should be a gigantic wake-up call to the Democratic Party - that we're not connecting with the needs, the aspirations and the desires of real people right now," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
It gets even better:
...But Newsom said the Republican resurgence in Massachusetts suggests "there's real intensity and fervor out there, as represented by the Tea Party" activists expressing anger at government spending and at job losses.
"This is real," he said. "At our own peril, we dismiss these tea parties as ... some sort of isolated extremism. ... It's not."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
The Counterrevolution Continues
More and more Americans are rejecting the empty rhetoric of hope and change and the government-knows-best philosophy of President Obama and his congressional allies.
This response to the radical policies of this administration - embodied in the tea party movement - is what I refer to as a counterrevolution in A New American Tea Party. It is a gut reaction millions of Americans are having to the rapid expansion of the size and reach of government and the fiscal crash course our nation is on. These aren't Democrat and Republican issues - these are American issues.
All things considered, it should not be too surprising that my home state of Massachusetts may be 24 hours from electing Republican Scott Brown to the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.
President Obama just visited MA to boost Democrat Martha Coakley's support. The only thing is, President Obama is part of the problem for Coakley, not part of the solution. The underlying factors behind the unexpectedly close race in MA are symptomatic of a larger dissatisfaction with the President's radical agenda. His big government boondoggles have his support at record lows nationally. A mere 26% of likely Massachusetts voters approve of the President's flagship health care plan dubbed ObamaCare. Only 48% approve of his job rating - this in a state that he won handily. Nationwide, a recent Washington Post poll reveals that 58% of Americans favor smaller government.
Massachusetts voters are right to be skeptical. They have had a taste of "universal" health care. The result? Long waits and higher prices. It is no surprise that they appose their own plan and exporting such a flawed policy to the rest of the nation. As Jon Keller writes in today's Wall Street Journal:
Support for the state's universal health-care law, close to 70% in 2008, is also in free fall; only 32% of state residents told Rasmussen earlier this month that they'd call it a success, with 36% labeling it a failure. The rest were unsure. Massachusetts families pay the country's highest health insurance premiums, with costs soaring at a rate 7% ahead of the national average, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.
When the folks back in my home state of Massachusetts - and believe me these aren't "right-wing radicals" - think the government is overstepping its bounds, it is time for President Obama and Democrats in Washington to make a major course correction.
Regardless of who wins this race, the fact that what should have been a done deal for Democrats is this close signals a victory for the tea party movement and serves as a warning shot over the bows of big spending, big government incumbents off all stripes as we enter the 2010 election cycle.
Tonight – Milt Rosenberg Interview
Tonight I'll be chatting with Milt Rosenberg on Extension 720 from 9pm-11pm Central.
You can listen live online and call in in the second hour!
Book Review
Thoughtful review of A New American Tea Party by Warner Todd Houston at RedCounty.com and Canada Free Press:
…The first thing one might notice is that O’Hara writes in a crisp, conversational style with short subchapters. This makes it ideal for reading bits at a time. This is not a dense treatment and I think his style makes the book very accessible to people of all ages — without talking down to the young or dumbing it down for the more advanced reader.
… details every manner of extreme left-wing trial balloon floated by Obamaists prior to the Tea Party movement hitting the streets.
… O’Hara’s tale of the Tea Party movement is worth reading and is the best source of “hope and change” I’ve seen since Obama won office.
See the full piece here.
A New American Tea Party
BigGovernment.com Posts
- Real Health Care Solutions – Letting O Know
- The Leftist Bullies
- Obamanomics: An Advanced Course in Big Government in the Age of Obama
- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Terror Trials in the Big Apple
- Ratner Family Ties: ACORN and Justice Department Plot Thickens
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Brooks’ Strange Brew
New York Times token conservative David Brooks always has an interesting take on the tea party movement (See his previous piece on the movement where he contrasts tea partiers with the "educated class.")
Mr. Brooks' most recent reading of the tea leaves is equally...intriguing.
Take Brooks' summary of the tea party movement which he contorts to fit his cute narrative comparing tea partiers to the 60's radicals of the New Left:
Brooks goes on to characterization of the tea party movement as preoccupied with black helicopter theories:
I'm curious to know how many tea parties Brooks has gone to and how many tea partiers he's interviewed in order to form the opinion that informs his commentary. Based on my experience organizing, participating in, and documenting the tea party movement, Brooks' generalizations of the tea party movement bears no correlation with reality. The tea party movement is in fact a mainstream, grassroots coalition of Americans concerned with the direction of this nation. Brooks would likely draw a different conclusion were he to look beyond the pages of his own paper. Sadly, Mr. Brooks appears to suffer from the same delusion as many of his colleagues: that the reporting on the pages of the Times truly is an accurate portrayal of "all the news that's fit to print."