Some Tea Party Thoughts

Here is a copy of a letter I sent to the members of the Sturbridge Tea Party group and I think it could be applicable to other groups as well. This is my perspective from my limited view.

Fellow Patriots:

As one of the co-founders of the Sturbridge Group, I have to ask, "Where do we go from here?"

Needless to say I am disappointed  in the election results, I am not at all surprised. At the risk of losing friends, I am going to get some things off my chest. I know I have some decisions to make in my life, the least of which is whether or not I continue to believe in the Tea Party movement, so here goes. 

Why did the tea party movement come about? It had nothing to do with any candidate, especially here in Massachusetts. No, we began because we felt that our rights as Americans were being taken away. We believed we were on the road to fiscal ruin, to a land of entitlements and more and more government interference in our lives. We believed in the four core principles of the tea party movement:

• Fiscal responsibility
• Smaller government
• Strict adherence to the Constitution
• Personal irresponsibility. 

Sure some of these can be tweaked or argued about but these are the four main ones. 

So now, one mid-term election and one Presidential election later where are we? Any closer or further away? I would argue further away. 

Why? 

I admit, I wasn't involved as much as I could have been, I have to many other things in my life which have to take precedence, but what I saw at a few meetings I have attended in the last year or so, what I read, discussion I have seen and read on Facebook, blogs, etc. have shown the tea party movement to be exactly what our detractors said it was going to be. Instead of a united front in support of the core principles of the movement, we digressed into bickering over which candidate we should support, whether we should not vote for Brown because somehow he is a traitor, how Ron Paul was screwed by the Massachusetts Republican party because they didn't allow the Paul delegates to be seated. We argued about local candidates way back when the state primaries were held. We argued about whether or not we should support so and so for Congress, which Republican was more "Tea Party Centric" (hmm a new term) and what happened.

We lost. The Democrats presented a united front and beat us here in Mass. We didn't gain one seat, we didn't reelect our Senator, we gained nothing, in fact we went backwards. Look at the election of Warren, they played their games so that she was the only choice for the Dems at their convention. We just fought. Do you think Warren is the best choice for Massachusetts? Well we got her. 

We also became so caught up with social issues, especially those of us who are Republican by nature, we gave our opponents more and more ammunition against us. We (republicans) had candidates out there, minor candidates at that, make stupid comments on abortion, etc, which gained national attention and gave the Democrats ammunition to use against us, but more importantly to distract what I call the "useful idiots" away from the real issues in this country.   I know it is hard to believe but this election wasn't about whether a woman has the right to use birth control or have an abortion or whether gays can marry each other. It should have been about the economy, the middle east situation and the erosion of the Constitution. But we allowed the Democrats to use the social issues against us to win. 

Are social issues important? Absolutely, but how will be change things now? Obama will take over the Supreme Court, will continue to subvert the Constitution and keep sending this country down the road to fiscal disaster, and we let him. 

Even though this may sound like a rant, it isn't. Just my thoughts. As for me, I need to make some decisions and one of them will be where I go with this group, both the local group and the broader movement. I have written in the past that or the first 50 years o my life I paid no attention to politics, perhaps people like me is the reason we are in this mess, and I apologize or that, now I wonder if it is time to go back to that. After all, I have enough other more pressing issues to worry about.

Who knows.  

I argued when I attended my first tea party meeting with the Knox Trail group that we needed to "Think locally, act locally". Change comes from the bottom and works up. I still think that, but evidently not enough others do.