Will TEA Party Women Change the GOP?
If you believe this article, which I do, then it’s entirely plausible that women will lead the next conservative movement. I don’t care who leads conservatism’s next revolution as long as there’s room for everyone who prefers limited government and low taxes over the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model.
WHEN Stacy Mott, a stay-at-home mother of three children, started writing a blog after the election of President Barack Obama last year, she had no involvement in politics and simply wanted to vent her frustration at financial bailouts, healthcare reform and legislation to combat climate change. The former marketing executive at Toys R Us quickly found she was not alone. One year on, her blog, Smart Girl Politics, is an organisation with 23,000 members and co-ordinators in almost every state.
“There are a huge amount of people out there who are angry at Obama and big government but feel the Republican Party is not representing them,” said Rebecca Wales, who left the party’s campaign team to become Smart Girl’s communications director. “What we are seeing is an outpouring of conservative values.”
In recent months, the US has witnessed an astonishing growth in similar right-wing grassroots organisations across the country, loosely grouped under the label Tea party.
Although it has no leader, no clear origins and a vague objective of “taking back America”, it is emerging as a powerful force in next year’s congressional elections. A poll last week found that if it were a party, the movement’s candidates would be more popular than the Republicans. According to the Rasmussen survey, Democrats have 36 percent of the vote, the Tea party 23 percent and Republicans 18 percent.
Obviously, conservatives have felt like the GOP abandoned them in their pursuit of popularity. That won’t fly with the people who are leading the TEA Party Movement. The lesson to be taken from Rasmussen’s polling isn’t that this is the start of a third party but rather that TEA Party activists are intent on rebuilding the GOP by insisting that it stays true to its principles.
I’m proud that I get to say that my representative in DC, Michele Bachmann, is one of the leaders of the TEA Party movement. Having spoken with her about this several times, I know that she gets it. I’d go so far as saying that Michele, Mike Pence and Jim Demint know more about what’s important to TEA Party activists than any other DC politicians.
The Tea party is now preparing for its first national convention in February. The headline speaker will be Sarah Palin, poster girl of the American Right, whose memoir is topping bestseller lists. Palin is not the only female firebrand embraced by the Tea party people. “We also like Liz Cheney (the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney) and Michele Bachmann,” said Wales.
The article then announces this:
Bachmann is a member of the “birthers”, who question whether Obama was born in the US, and the “deathers”, who claim that government cost-cutting under the President’s healthcare plan would prevent older Americans from receiving vital treatment.
Soros-funded Minnesota Independent won’t even say that Michele Bachmann is a birther:
UPDATE: Salon reports that Bachmann was simply playing an assigned role to help postpone all votes until Monday evening, when she in fact voted in support of the resolution, along with everyone else in Congress, where it passed unanimously.
The left won’t stop taking cheapshots at Michele or Sarah Palin. The nastiness the national media showed toward Sarah Palin in last year’s presidential campaign wasn’t hard-hitting. It was pathetic. When the press started asking whether Trig was Gov. Palin’s son, they did it off of a hint of a rumor. They didn’t need proof. They didn’t do any fact-checking. They did that without hesitation or regret.
The national media is starting to get to that point with Michele, too. She isn’t complaining, though. If there’s anyone that can give as good as she gets, then keep fighting, it’s Michele. The Democrats’ cheapshots and their media enablers’ attacks haven’t fazed her. She just keeps moving forward.
If Sarah Palin, Liz Cheney, Michele Bachmann and other conservative women want to help revitalize the conservative movement, I’m cool with it. I’ll never say that we have too many outstanding conservative thinkers. There’s no such thing as having too many energized, charismatic conservative leaders.
Technorati Tags: Stacy Mott, Smart Girl Politics, Blogging, TEA Parties, Sarah Palin, Liz Cheney, Michele Bachmann, Conservatism, President Obama, Bailouts, Democrats, Election 2010
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog