Why GOP must embrace small government philosophy of Tea Parties
While all too many on the left (and in the MSM) continue to ridicule the Tea Parties being held across the country this past year, they represent the largest grassroots phenomenon of 2009. If the GOP can tap into the energy of these parties, Republicans will repeat the results last month of elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the counties surrounding New York City and avoid the mistakes of New York’s 23rd Congressional Districts.
Republicans continue to improve their standings in generic party matchups against Democrats, leading in the Gallup survey for the first time in years:
Today, however, Rasmussen finds that a hypothetical Tea Party candidate would run ahead of a Republican:
In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.
This shows that voters still remain skeptical of the small government bona fides of the GOP, or, as law professor William A. Jacobson more ominoulsy puts it, “the Republican establishment needs to understand that it has lost its base.” People still remain skeptical of the GOP’s commitment to the principles which helped Republicans win the White House in the 1980s and Congress in the 1990s, but at the same time embrace those principles.
With the GOP caucus in the House voting unanimously against the spendthrift “so-called stimulus” and in near unanimity against cap and trade and Obamacare, Republicans are beginning to show that commitment once again. But, it’s not enough. I suggest that, in response to the President’s proposal to spend TARP money to make work, they offer their own proposal for creating jobs, cutting the corporate tax rate, reducing federal regulation and freezing the salaries of federal workers.
Such a plan will show both a commitment to conservative principles and to job creation.
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The Republican political class isn’t trustworthy. Under Bush-DeLay, they spent like drunken sailors. The Bush tax cuts were fine; but the massive year-to-year domestic spending increases and new entitlement programs, no freaking way. Combined with 1% interest rates (which Bush owned because he chose to re-appoint Greenspan and egg him on), it led to the real estate bubble and then the financial crisis. Now Obama is making it worse. Obama is running deficits four times as large and going with 0% interest rates, trying to re-inflate our stupid, debt-based “bubble” economy. So Democrats are worse than Republicans. But alas, that still doesn’t make the Republicans grand, or even trustworthy. I see precious little sign of the GOP establishment ‘getting it’; only signs that they are a bit less demented or insane than their Democratic counterparts.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — December 7, 2009 @ 5:55 pm - December 7, 2009
I see now why they are in a hurry to pass health care and appease their base. In this scenario, democrats could win races with their base only if the independents are pulled off by a 3rd party candidate.
Comment by Steven E. Kalbach — December 7, 2009 @ 7:30 pm - December 7, 2009
The high panjandrums of the Party should take not that “gay marriage” and “abortion” are not on the agenda nor the placards of the Teabaggers…it’s about liberty from Nanny State and fiscal sanity. When trhe Whig Party lost it’s way and moral compass just before the Civil War, the Republican party was born. Maybe it’s time for another rebirth?
Considering how the Democratic Gays have been repeatedly thrown under the bus by the Obama regime…maybe they should join the Gay Conservatives in the center and support the Teabaggers…
Comment by Ted B. (Charging Rhino) — December 7, 2009 @ 10:37 pm - December 7, 2009
I am in basic agreement… it’s good for the Republicans that Obama-Reid-Pelosi have been wasteful and incompetent beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. But no one is going to trust them unless they present a plan to reign in government, and actually stick to it. I know I don’t trust them.
But the simple reason the tea-party patriots are right and everyone else is wrong is that we simply can’t afford the level of government the Obamunists are creating.
Comment by V the K — December 8, 2009 @ 6:42 am - December 8, 2009
I have to ask: can the GOP change its ways? The recent ‘purity pledge’ is a bad sign.
Comment by DRH — December 8, 2009 @ 8:29 pm - December 8, 2009
As probably the only real GOPer who reads GayPatriot, aside from the writers, I’m convinced that the GOP is changing fundamentally at the state level in states that will matter in 2010 and 2012 –the natl party (if id’ed as the RNC members) hasn’t gotten the “it” in the TeaParty & TownHall movements. I’m sure they will, eventually… and before 2010.
The hardcore conservative GOP base needed some bitch-slapping for the excesses brought by Delay and his “No Moderates Need Apply” cabal… and Steele has publicly and vocally stressed we need to appeal to moderates and independents while remaining true to core GOP principles and values; it doesn’t mean turning over the Party to squishy RINOs like Snowe… it means smart, well positioned policy alternatives.
The answers for the GOP are in the success of governors and state leaders actually doing the innovative work today. It doesn’t lay with inside-the-beltway types or fat cat pundits selling their fake outrage over the airwaves. That isn’t the TeaParty anymore than Rush is the leader of the GOP –as MoveOn, DailyKos, CBS, RachelMadcow and others would like to project.
Comment by Michigan-Matt — December 9, 2009 @ 12:26 pm - December 9, 2009