Tea Party Movement Is A Game-Changer
By SCOTT S. POWELL
IBD Editorials
Posted 10/26/2010 06:19 PM ET
The hostility and jaded news coverage that the Tea Party movement evokes suggests that it must be onto something really big — beyond anti-incumbent attitudes or current-issue debates of Democrats or Republicans.
The Tea Party is animated by powerful enduring ideas expressed in the nation's founding through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: freedom, the natural law of inalienable rights and the sovereignty of the people that requires limited government.
Remarkably, the Tea Party movement has gained national prominence with unpaid volunteers in just a year and a half. Its people come from every walk of life from all over the country.
What has brought them together is an acute awareness that Washington has been tone-deaf to the voices of the people. They've had it with the posturing of both Democrats and Republicans. Through the Tea Party, the silent majority now has a giant megaphone.
The Tea Party movement provides a fresh and unvarnished combination of candor, authenticity and idealism. In the age of YouTube, politicians are having difficulty in managing their image or their audience through a largely supplicant news media.
Courageous Citizenry
Something more fascinating and real is taking place in town-hall meetings rather than in staged press conferences. In fact, it would appear that average citizens have more courage to play hardball with politicians than do too many in the Washington-centric media.
Conventional news reporting has become increasingly passe in a digital age where pervasive recording devices and Internet distribution have empowered average people to cut through political double-talk and denial. Lawmakers can no longer hide in smoke-filled rooms or deflect with mere press releases. Spontaneous responses with common-sense zingers from people like Joe the Plumber are a lot more lively and revealing.
The Tea Party folks don't stand in the line to genuflect before an adoring media. Perhaps that's where the conflict begins. Even so, in spite of Democratic strategists who seek to discredit or belittle the Tea Party as a speed bump rather than a roadblock, there's no denying that this movement is a game-changer.
Taxed And Spent
Many drawn to the Tea Party say they fear for the first time that the country is in secular decline, with future generations facing a financial collapse from Washington's narcissistic spending and borrowing binge. For them, the Tea Party represents the most effective way to halt the corrupting spending practices of many in both parties that add trillions to the national debt.
This corruption became embarrassingly obvious in the Democrats' unconstitutional maneuvers to force passage of ObamaCare. There, on display before the nation, was the ruling party's corruption and violation of the people's inalienable rights in a most personal area of their lives.
Tea Party activists not only have tax-borrow-and-spend liberals in their sights. They are equally fed up with country-club Republicans who have enabled large corporations — such as General Electric and Goldman Sachs — to game the system and obtain loan guarantees and preferential treatment.
Titans of finance and industry need to recognize that competitive free markets always provide more reliable and abundant prosperity than the rigged game of corporatism and liberal fascism built on ever-shifting political sands. For too long, silence has been consent. Corporate leaders need to speak out and defend the system that produces wealth and upward mobility.
Economic discussions within the Tea Party start with recognizing that free-market capitalism has not failed in the U.S., because it has not really been sufficiently tried.
What failed in 2008 was the result of distorted and overextended crony capitalist housing and finance markets that were largely created through easy money and credit by the Fed, Fannie and Freddie — all centered in Washington. The Tea Party believes separation of the economy and state is as vital to the country's future as separation of church and state.
Going into the elections, Tea Party activists are more likely to support candidates of substance within the two-party system than third-party candidates. With the Democratic Party having become one whose naked interests now revolve around maintaining and enlarging the prerogatives and power of the state, Tea Party affiliates have little choice but to favor Republicans.
Incumbents or new-entry candidates who distance themselves from the Tea Party message do so at their peril. Anyone sent to Washington now needs to be resolute on three things: deficit and debt reduction, getting the government out of the way of private-sector job creation, and repealing ObamaCare.
Back To Basics
Many Tea Party activists believe they have a historic calling to realign the Republican Party around the nation's founding ideals. That vision has helped elect a number of Tea Party candidates against better-known and better-funded establishment Republicans in recent primary races. It's also likely to find broad support with independents and traditional Democrats who put patriotism above special interests and entitlements.
The majority of Americans still know by experience and instinct that it is the character, initiative and ingenuity of people that are keys to restoring the nation's greatness, not wealth redistribution and regulatory spoils arrangements undertaken by faceless government bureaucrats. As for the November elections, the Tea Party folks say: "Bring it on, baby."
• Powell is a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a director at RemingtonRand and Alpha Quest.
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