New Hampshire Primary Reflections

In a speech in South Carolina Wednesday, republican candidate Newt Gingrich made a comment basically telling people not to vote for any candidate just because the main stream media says they are going to win, instead vote for who you think is the best candidate to beat Barack Obama. Of course Gingrich thinks that would be him. Other than that the advice is good.

In these days of 24 hour news channels and constant access to news and commentary via Al Gore’s internet, it can be pretty easy to be persuaded as to who one should vote for. While we all know how unbiased the mainstream media is (waiting for lightning to strike) the internet is full of one sided “reporting”. Too many people are like sheep, which follow blindly based on what a blogger, columnist or comedian says, automatically assuming whatever these people say is the truth.

Read More From
Amazon

Even those of us in the tea party movement are bombarded with messages from various organizations with the tea party name attached, all claiming to be the official representative of the movement, exhorting us to back their favorite candidate because he is the “true” tea party candidate. I can only speak for myself, although I know of many others who are of the same mind, the tea party as a whole, the real grass roots tea party does not endorse any candidate. We believe our members should feel free to choose who they like. All we do is see which candidates mostly adhere to our principles.

But then those of us who are true believers in the tea party principles also realize that the mainstream media really doesn’t understand us, and we know the left doesn’t. They still call us names and they still can’t understand how we can function without any leader or standard party type organization, which is why they are so quick to latch on to anyone who claims they are the leader of the movement.

But back to Gingrich. He reminded people of the difference we made in 2010. This was when many of the “establishment” candidates lost and the ones who received little or no support from their respective national party organizations won. We ignored the pundits and the experts then and we should do it again in 2012.

More on the primary here: No Surprises in the New Hampshire Primary