Glenn Beck has now joined the fray of commentators and blabber mouths who have insinuated that the motivation behind the TEA party is an inward Jim Crow complex from old prejudiced white people who comprise the TEA party. Now, Glenn did not say that but his wording just stokes the fire even more. What Glenn was saying is that is Gingrich is the nominee for the GOP, which he is saying would have to with complicity from the TEA party, that it would mean that progressive liberalism is OK, so long as the dude in chief doing it is white and not black.
While the comparison is way off when it comes to Obama and Newt, lets take what he is saying. If the TEA party with complicity nominates a squishy republican and ignores fine conservatives like Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, and I guess Rick Perry just for laughs, then are they really serious about defeating progressive liberalism or are they just mad that a brother occupies Pennsylvania Avenue ( no relation to the Occupy movement ;P)
In my opinion the answer is no. The TEA party is not a party or a machine. It is a libertarian style movement that is diverse as America itself. The TEA party is mostly concerned with fiscal issues but there are many in the movement who share social conservative values. The TEA party however is despised and mostly mocked by the establishment whether it be in the liberal media, democratic party, and even the GOP. Because they want to bring America to a place where the establishment and the leftists are obsolete and worthless. They want to abide by a set of principles and ideas in our Constitution and that spells doom for the left and for the elite who are growing fatter by the day by the current state of affairs in government.
So again Glenn is wrong and so is everyone who says that the TEA party is racist. The TEA party should however understand that getting behind a squishy liberal republican whether it's Romney or Gingrich would hurt their credibility and would hurt America in the long run. My dad compares it to running off a cliff at 100 miles an hour or 30 miles an hour. Either way if we don't change course we will go off the cliff so to speak. So if the TEA party wants to assert themselves in a bigger way in 2012 then they as a whole need to support a true conservative for President.
Joe Garrison
I am Tea Party and I am a regular Beck viewer and listener. You correctly note that he spoke in very obvious satire when he made that statement. He did not accuse the Tea Party of being racist, as you acknowledge. He made the point that Tea Party folks are either being inconsistent when they support a progressive candidate like Gingrich or Romney -- or they are compromising their principles simply because they believe the slickest of the sleazy might have a better chance of winning. And that is unprincipled.
ReplyDeleteSo I can see that the thrust of your blog is right on target, but then you go and state "Glenn is wrong". No, he isn't. Just as you have acknowledged earlier in your piece. Glenn is right.
We held a staw poll the other night at our monthly Tea Party meeting. To the surprise of many of us, Newt Gingrich garnered the most votes. Michele Bachmann came in "second".
My conversations with Tea Party folks who support Gingrich is that they desperately want the far-left progressive policies out of our government. They simply have forgotten (how short memories are!) all of Gingrich's flip-flops, progressive positions, globalist ideas, and unprincipled actions.
In this forgetful reverie, they listen to his sparkling rhetoric, and gloss over his clear progressive statements couched in sweet-sounding conservative language. They are running scared. They have accepted the media spin that truly conservative candidates are "unelectable". They do so because they are afraid of losing their country, Constitutional rule of law, their lifestyles, and -- yes -- perhaps even their very lives.
There is no racism in any of this. That is a figment of the great Lies of the Left. There is a quiet desperation to win and return sanity to Washington. I pray every day that my fellow conservatives and Liberty-loving independents will realize that neither Gingrich nor Romney nor Trump nor Perry will actually do that.
And the Left will do all they can to smear and scandalize any candidate who runs against Obama. We need to nominate the best candidate, not the "slickest".