Within the last few years, a phenomenon emerged to become among the most formidable forces in contemporary American politics.\u00a0 It goes by the name of \u201cthe Tea Party movement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Supposedly, the Tea Party movement is not affiliated with either of our two national political parties.\u00a0 Rather, it is composed of millions of ordinary Americans who, jealous as they are of the liberties bequeathed to them by their progeny, find intolerable the gargantuan proportions to which the federal government has grown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This, at any rate, is the conventional account of the genesis and character of the Tea Party movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I once endorsed it.\u00a0 Sadly, I no longer can.<\/p>\n
It is my considered judgment\u2014a judgment, mind you, from which I derive not the slightest satisfaction\u2014that the Tea Party movement, like the so-called \u201cconservative media\u201d of Fox News and talk radio, has become, if it hasn\u2019t always been, an organ of the GOP.<\/p>\n
Those who would convict me of treating the Tea Party movement unfairly on this score shouldn\u2019t be so hasty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contrary to the assertions of their leftist critics, that the glaring profligacy of George W. Bush and his Republican dominated congress failed to give rise to the Tea Party most certainly is not <\/em>the function of a lack of sincerity on its members\u2019 part.\u00a0 Still less can this be attributable to some racial animus that the latter have toward the current occupant of the White House.\u00a0 As far as broadening the scope of the federal government is concerned, it is true that Barack H. Obama exploited the trends initiated by his predecessors, both Democrat and Republican alike; yet, understandably enough, both the rapidity and the aggressiveness with which he sought to strengthen this Colossus provoked the backlash that is <\/em>the Tea Party movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Republicans spared no occasion, and no expense, to feed Leviathan\u2014and yet the Tea Party never came.\u00a0 But it is a mistake to think that this <\/em>is what warrants concerns regarding Tea Partiers\u2019 declaration of neutrality vis-\u00e0-vis political parties.\u00a0 The suspicion that the Tea Party movement is essentially an arm of the Republican Party is not rooted in what it may or may not have done in the past<\/em>; the suspicion is fueled by what self-identified Tea Partiers are doing right now.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t been uncommon to hear Republicans, whether politicians or \u201cconservative\u201d media personalities, wax repentant over having \u201clost their way\u201d during the years that the vast apparatus of power was at their disposal.\u00a0 In reality, though, the only thing for which the Republicans are sorrowful is that they lost the dominant position that they once held.\u00a0 This, at least, is by far the most reasonable conclusion that we can draw, for genuine repentance demands that the penitent come to terms with his specific sins.\u00a0 This Republicans have singularly failed to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n And yet, Tea Partiers continue to give them a pass.<\/p>\n Anyone who doubts this need only consider the GOP\u2019s presidential primary contest.<\/p>\n If <\/em>Tea Partiers really <\/em>are concerned about affecting a dramatic reduction in the size and scope of the federal government; if <\/em>they really <\/em>want to deprive the government of much of its sustenance\u2014i.e. \u201cspending\u201d; and if <\/em>they really <\/em>want to restore the Constitutional Republic to which our Founders gave birth and, thus, the liberty that this entails, then it should be obvious to all with eyes to see behind which of the candidates they should be throwing their unqualified support.<\/p>\n That candidate, of course, is Congressman Ron Paul.<\/p>\n In fact, truth be told, if it is the substance of a candidate\u2019s ideas and his or her determination to realize them to which they ascribe importance, there isn\u2019t a single other contestant in this race at whom Tea Partiers should glance twice.<\/p>\n My sympathies lie with Dr. Paul, of course, but it would be a grave mistake for his detractors to dismiss my verdict simply<\/em> as a function of those sympathies.\u00a0 There are some very good reasons\u2014<\/em>i.e. considerations that, whether they ultimately embrace them or not, reasonable people must concede are legitimate\u2014for the judgment that, by the professed standards of the Tea Partiers, Dr. Paul is their candidate par excellence. <\/em><\/p>\n As of this juncture, it seems that there exists a chasm of considerable depth between, on the one hand, Tea Partiers\u2019 rhetoric <\/em>of \u201climited government,\u201d \u201clower taxes,\u201d and \u201cless spending\u201d and, on the other, their resolute failure to specify<\/em> so much as a single program from the Bush era that they wish to revoke.\u00a0 In this respect alone they are indistinguishable from the Republicans who they support.<\/p>\n This brings us to our second premise: to judge from the presidential primaries, one could be forgiven for thinking that Republicans haven\u2019t changed their spots at all.\u00a0 <\/em>True, thanks to the tireless labors of Dr. Paul, some Republicans, like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, now recognize the need to make the occasional derogatory reference to the Federal Reserve; but outside of that, none of the candidates sound any differently now than the GOP presidential candidates of 2008.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ron Paul, however, is an entirely different matter.<\/p>\n The doubling of the national debt; No Child Left Behind; Faith-Based Initiatives; the Home Ownership Society with the sub-prime mortgages that it required (and the economic collapse to which it critically contributed); endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan and, in principle, the entire Islamic world; a prescription drug benefit that is unprecedented in its scope and cost; federal funding of embryonic <\/em>stem cell research; the ominously named \u201cPatriot Act\u201d; bailouts; and TARP; these are just some of the measures that Bush 43 and his fellow Republicans appropriated to consolidate the federal government\u2019s power and authority over our lives to an extent that hasn\u2019t been seen since Lyndon Banes Johnson\u2019s Great Society.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet, besides Ron Paul, no other candidate has even hinted at regret over any <\/em>of this.<\/p>\n Some candidates certainly sound<\/em> better than others, but unless Tea Partiers are being dishonest about their desires to \u201cshrink\u201d government, they must be naively trusting to accept at face value these Republicans\u2019 words in light of <\/em>their records.\u00a0 Just a few words about each should suffice to substantiate this point.<\/p>\n Take, first, the two \u201cfrontrunners,\u201d Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.\u00a0 The former was a lifelong Democrat and supporter of Al Gore up until the end of the Reagan decade, while the latter was the governor of the most heavily Democratic state in theUnionand long-time ally of Ted Kennedy.<\/p>\n Now, that a person\u2019s intellectual horizons should expand is something at once possible and desirable.\u00a0 It is certainly anything but a strike against Perry and Romney that they should have changed their minds throughout through out their lives.\u00a0 But it is neither the quantity nor the quality of the changes in perspective that renders both men suspect; it is, rather, the timing <\/em>of their political conversions that calls into question their sincerity:\u00a0 both \u201cfrontrunners\u2019 seem to have changed their views at just those moments when it was to the advantage of their political careers to do so.<\/p>\n More specifically, Perry not only attempted to compel<\/em> underage girls to receive a vaccination (whether it would have adversely or beneficially impacted them physically, is neither here nor there), he attempted to do so by way of circumventing the legislative branch, through an executive order.\u00a0 Furthermore, by granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens, he extended to them what in effect amounts to a de facto amnesty.\u00a0 To add insult to injury, as recently as a few weeks ago during the last GOP primary debate, he stood by his decision, and all but accused his critics of being heartless \u201cracists.\u201d\u00a0 If ever we needed proof that Bush\u2019s \u201cCompassionate Conservatism\u201d is back, and back with a vengeance, this is it.<\/p>\n As for Romney, he is credited by no less a figure than Obama himself as being the inspiration for the dreadful Obamacare.\u00a0 Before there was Obamacare, there was Romneycare in Massachusetts.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, along with Perry (and, for that matter, Obama<\/em>), Romney too has a penchant for deploying the power with which he has been entrusted in the service of coercing those over whom he presides into pursuing ends that he has chosen for them.\u00a0 In the hardback edition of his book, No Excuses, <\/em>Romney even expressed his enthusiasm over the prospect of implementing a national version of his state plan (When, however, the paperback edition was released, he omitted this detail).\u00a0<\/p>\n The second (and third, fourth, and fifth?) tier candidates aren\u2019t significantly better.\u00a0<\/p>\n Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are long-time establishment Republicans.\u00a0 If the Republican establishment that Americans overwhelmingly rejected in 2006 and 2008 could be said to have a face, it would be a composite of the faces of Gingrich and Santorum.\u00a0 From these two we heard not a peep during the last decade about excessive government spending, the dangers of the Federal Reserve, the impending housing bubble burst and consequent economic collapse, or any other threats to liberty and prosperity that Republican rule posed to the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n Michele Bachmann is much more impressive than her contenders, but she did <\/em>vote for $192 billion dollars in \u201canti-recession\u201d stimulus, while Herman Cain ecstatically endorsed Mitt Romney in 2008, indicated not the slightest awareness as late as 2006 of the looming economic crisis, and, even now, urges, never the elimination or drastic reduction of any agency or even program, but their reform.\u00a0 <\/em>As for Jon Huntsman\u2026well, he is Jon Huntsman, a former servant in the Obama administration<\/em>.\u00a0 This is about all that we need to know about him.<\/p>\n There is something else that we must never forget: every one of the forgoing candidates supports Bush\u2019s \u201cFreedom Agenda,\u201d an agenda that demands for its actualization an ever expansive military and, thus, increases <\/em>in government spending.<\/p>\n This brings us back around to our original point.\u00a0 That Tea Partiers would be in the least bit conflicted as to which of the Republican candidates they should endorse would alone suffice to confirm my suspicion that they are the same old Republicans repackaged under a new label.\u00a0 That they would think to chime right in there with Rick Santorum and other establishment backers in mocking, ridiculing, and booing Ron Paul all but assigns this suspicion an axiomatic status.<\/p>\n Ron Paul is the only single Republican presidential candidate who has a lifetime of unwavering service to precisely those ideals for which Tea Partiers claim to stand.\u00a0 He should be the sole <\/em>Tea Party candidate.\u00a0 That he isn\u2019t only shows that the Tea Party is an organ of the GOP.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published in The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Within the last few years, a phenomenon emerged to become among the most formidable forces in contemporary American politics.\u00a0 It goes by the name of \u201cthe Tea Party movement.\u201d\u00a0 Supposedly, the Tea Party movement is not affiliated with either of our two national political parties.\u00a0 Rather, it is composed of millions of ordinary Americans who,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n