The TEA Party laid down a marker regarding NY-23:
We are extremely disappointed that the Republican Party (and leaders like Newt Gingrich) has missed the message of the Tea Parties and continues to take conservative voters for granted. We applaud all courageous statesmen (Fred Thompson, Michelle Bachmann, and Dick Armey) and call on other GOP officials to put America’s values over traditional, often corrupt and morally bankrupt, power structures.
I understand the anger – in fact, I agree in principle with it. On the other hand, we need to have a care here. I’m a Republican and it will only by via the Republican Party that our nation will be rescued from Obama’s socialism and returned to our Founders’ constitutional republic. The Republican Party must stop recruiting RINOs on the theory that any “R” will do. The TEA Party movement must learn to be selective in expressing outrage.
As regards NY-23, this was (and is) an excellent means for the TEA Party to show the GOP establishment just how outraged the base is and how we’re not going to take having RINO’s foisted upon us by Beltway insiders who are afraid to fight it out in the realm of ideas. But to take some of the GOP establishment’s actions regarding NY-23 and apply it to the entirety of the GOP leadership is suicidal. Yes, Gingrich should have thought a bit harder – but he’s still one of us, and if we’re to get in to the game of condemnation for the slightest error, we might as well pack it in, go home and get ready for socialism. Meanwhile, in contrast to Gingrich there are many establishment GOPers who made the right choice – making blanket condemnations of the GOP for the failure of some just means we’d be cutting off the best of the best at the knees.
While our hero Barry Goldwater correctly noted that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, there is a vice in being intransigent. Don’t oppose just to oppose and don’t fly off the handle and condemn just because of a momentary lack of purity. Explain what you want; advise the erring why they’re wrong; work very hard for people who do get it – but leave the political suicide stuff at the door.
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