Kevin Fobbs is founder and president of the National Urban Policy Action Council that supports colorblind solutions to universal issues and domestic policies.
Do you ever feel as if standing up for your U.S. Constitutional rights has allowed the liberals and the blame game mainstream media to paint a red target on your back as a Tea Party supporter? Well, it appears that since the election the re-engineering of the election results are giving GOP moderates as well as alphabet soup network pundits’ greater incentive to bury the Tea Party movement in another shallow grave.
One of those pundits is former President Reagan Speechwriter, Peggy Noonan who stated on CBS Face the Nation, Sunday November 11th that , “The tea party style of rage is not one that wins over converts and makes people lean towards them and say, ‘I want to listen to you.’ I think a friendly persuasion has to begin now from the Republican Party to people of the United States.”
Exactly what type of converts is Noonan referring to? Is she asking that Tea Party supporters moderate their positions so that U.S. Constitutional principles become warmed over mush? Does Noonan and other moderates want Tea Party supporters to sacrifice deeply held foundational values on the Obama alter of socialist expediency? That is absolutely and categorically not going to happen.
The Sunday network talk shows are beside themselves with more than usual self serving glee to bury this genuine grass roots movement of millions of Americans as quickly as they can. The problem is clear – The Tea Party has not retreated since the 2009 continuous assault from mainstream media vicious mistruths. The goal was to label the patriot citizens as extreme, rabid racists who were only interested in destroying the failed tax and spend deficit policies that cooperative Republican moderates and liberal Democrats have forged for several decades.
Well, guess what, one of the most important color blind leaders to come out of the 20th century probably described the Tea Party movement best. Rev. Martin Luther King taught the nation to stand up against unjust systems.
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.“
The Tea Party movement did not bend its back or kneel to the constant and sometimes withering assaults from self serving civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
The New York Times surveyed Tea Party supporters between April 10th — 12th of 2010, and miracles of miracles occurred. It was not made up of pitch fork carrying, knuckle dragging, and semi-literate Neanderthals as they had been viciously portrayed. Instead, according to the study, Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public. The survey also concluded that the Tea Party supporters were not in opposition to Obama because of race. Instead, the surveyed supporters opposed his political ideology and cared deeply about their own “economic well-being.”
When the mainstream media could not demonize Tea Party supporters and candidates as the Neanderthal stereotypes they had tried for more than a year to portray them as, they attempted to delegitimize its national supporters like former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. The attacker in chief was Chris Matthews of MSNBC and his cohort at ABC News George Stephanopoulos. This continued until the democrats and Obama’s liberal socialist policies were manhandled in the 2010 midterm elections.
The massive Tea Party shift resulted in Republicans gaining 63 congressional seats, and removing the gavel of power from then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Were the Tea Party candidates and their supporters too extreme? Or was it the democrats and Obama who were out of step with America?
Consider this for a moment. Were the Tea Party supporters and the movement extreme when their grass roots determination caused the largest shift of any midterm congressional election since 1938? The result left GOP moderates and liberals as well as Obama with a determination to steer the selection of a Tea Party presidential candidate who they could not beat to a moderate to center establishment candidate who they could demonize. Of course the rest is recent history.
Yet, with the defeat of Mitt Romney the election of 2012 has still resulted in the Tea Party and its conservatives holding onto the people’s house – The House of Representatives. True, Obama has been reelected through despicable campaign tactics and White House cover ups that border on scandalous tactics, but the Tea Party did not fold.
So is the behavior of a president who lowers his already suspect principles to an even lower level to remain in office the fault of the Tea Party, which helped to hold the House of Representatives? Of course not. If anything, the conservative values of smaller government, less debt, erasing the deficit and protecting life needed to be emphasized more!
Going forward, into 2013 and the 2014 mid-term elections the one benefit, if one could call it that, is removed from the Obama arsenal. Obama and liberals cannot blame Bush any longer. Now Obama has to man up to every dime of deficit spending, to every trillion dollars of debt. He must answer to every cover up and possibly face impeachment hearings in the House.
The blame game now clearly stops squarely at Obama’s desk in the Oval Office, or at least until he is impeached or convicted.
The Tea Party is not a fictional aberration that will wither on the vine of history because of an election loss by one presidential candidate. Listen again to the words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
You can read Kevin Fobbs article in full at this link.
