Serious Political Commentary for Serious Conservatives

	The Independent Voice for Conservative Values and the Conscience of the Conservative Movement Less Government is the Best Government

Wasted Opportunity
Who Pulled the Plug on the TEA Party?

An Analysis by Scott Rohter, June 2012

Republicans never had a better chance to put a solid conservative onto the ballot and into the White House than we did in this year's Republican Primary Elections. We had all of the pent up energy from the TEA Party Movement that has been building for the last three and a half years. There were also the thousands of local 912 groups that have sprung up all across America since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Not since the peanut farmer from Plains Georgia, Jimmy Carter has there been such a firestorm of discontent raging in America. And not since the Presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan has there been such a level of excitement and enthusiasm re- invigorating the Republican Party... and all for what? Mitt Romney.

In spite of all of the good intentions, in spite of all the best laid plans of mice and men, the best that the TEA Party Movement could produce was a rather limp fisted moderate by the name of Mitt Romney. When the oath of office is finally administered to him on January 2, 2013 and I can assure you that it will be, he will repeat after Chief Justice John Roberts the following thirty-seven fateful words, “I Willard Romney do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He should probably add four more little words to his oath, but he probably won't. Those words are “so help me God”. He is going to need God's help if he is ever going to fix what is wrong with our country.


How did the TEA Party Movement become so badly derailed? How did we get so far off the track? Just as four rotten years of Jimmy Carter produced the resurgence that led to Ronald Reagan, I would have guessed that these last four abominable years of Barack Obama would have resulted in something far better than Willard Romney. So why didn't it? Who pulled the plug on the Conservative revival in America? Who threw the switch that shunted the TEA Party Train onto another track? How did conservatives ever allow ourselves to get so sidetracked?

In the early days of the TEA Party Movement there was just pure, raw, unbridled energy in opposition to President Obama's progressive agenda. At some of these initial rallies there were organizers and organizations whose job it was to try to harness all of that energy and enthusiasm, and try to focus it in a particular direction. The trouble was, that it was a direction of their own choosing, not necessarily ours. These national groups received a lot of their funding and their direction, not from the typical discontented members of the TEA Party, but from a different group of disenchanted opponents of President Obama's agenda.

These national organizations quietly and efficiently went about gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures and eventually millions of signatures, and they provided the logistical and technical help to the growing TEA Party Movement, along with recognized leaders who would soon be doing more than just infiltrating and providing support to the Movement. They would soon be directing the charge. This transition was seamless and it went almost un-noticed. The trouble with this was that the goals of these national organizations were not always the same as those of the average disgruntled TEA Party goers. The direction that they were taking us was not always in sync with where we wanted to go. The agenda and the direction of the TEA Party Movement were no longer being set at the grass roots level, by a majority of disenfranchised patriots. The operational planning of the agenda moved from the streets to the executive boardrooms, and it became perfectly obvious that it was being directed from above by a rather limited subset of very wealthy individuals. It is doubtful that the energetic masses of alienated conservative voters who attended the TEA Party rallies, and these exceptionally wealthy individuals who are behind the national organizations would agree about very many things, including the focus of the whole movement, and about specific Republican candidates in particular. That soon became painfully obvious.

Michele Bachmann was the original TEA Party candidate and the obvious and deserving choice. However it was soon clear that one national organization preferred Hermann Cain, and another preferred Ron Paul. Soon Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry threw their hats into the ring too, and they had a different group of supporters and followers who were all claiming that their guy was the real TEA Party candidate. And finally there was Rick Santorum, who was never really the TEA Party candidate of first choice, but who only became so after all of the other so called conservative candidates had either shot themselves in the foot, or spent their entire political wads battling one another and canceling each other out. That's what actually happened.

The reason that there were six Republican candidates in the race who were all claiming to be real conservatives and all appealing to the TEA Party, was for the sole purpose of dividing up the conservative vote, and preventing the real conservative candidate from actually winning. In my opinion that candidate was Michele Bachmann. The media went after her from the very beginning, along with Sarah Palin with everything that they had. They even had the nerve to imply at one point that Congressman Bachmann could not lead the nation because she took medication for migraine headaches. Really, how desperate can they get? But the divide and conquer strategy worked. The division among conservative TEA Party voters led to the eventual nomination of a vacillating, inconsistent, and non-conservative candidate, Mitt Romney.

The original TEA Party Movement was successfully co-opted by well-funded national organizations who did not really want a true conservative to top the Republican Party ticket in 2012. The initial TEA Party vision to take back America and re-install Constitutional government was divided and diluted to mean just getting any old Republican back in the White House again in 2012 instead! Unfortunately that is not the same thing!

The last Republican President to occupy the White House wasn't all that conservative, and frankly I am concerned that the next one won't be either. Sure he will be a lot better than the alternative which is Barack Obama, but I am afraid that he won't be that much different than John McCain or George W. Bush. All of the real conservative Republican candidates in this year's Primary withdrew from the race except for Ron Paul in a staged and scripted withdrawal after they fulfilled their only real purpose, which was to divide the conservative voters, and conquer the TEA Party so that Mitt Romney could eventually win. Even that perennial old stalwart, Ron Paul has basically conceded the nomination to Mitt Romney.

All of the conservative Republican sheep were basically divided up into different Republican pastures by several different false political shepherds. That is why Michele Bachmann's campaign was blown out of the water very early in the race. She represented a real threat to the ruling Establishment. That is why Rick Santorum's serious political challenge couldn't overcome the built in momentum of Mitt Romney's Restore Our Future Super PAC. Herman Cain and Rick Perry, and maybe even Newt Gingrich were just useful political stooges. They were just there to further divide, confuse, and ultimately to conquer the TEA Party.

No matter what any Sunday morning, self-proclaimed political quarterback says, the true TEA Party candidate was always Michele Bachmann. She was the first candidate of any national significance to openly oppose Obama Care. She opposed it even before it was passed by Congress. Along with Congressman Stephen King of Iowa, together they organized the mass demonstration on the Capitol Mall in D.C. to voice united opposition to the idea of nationalizing health care in America. She also created the Congressional TEA Party Caucus to give voice to the TEA Party's concerns in Congress.

Michele Bachmann was the real TEA Party conservative. It wasn't Cain, or Perry, or Palin, or even Santorum, and it certainly wasn't Newt Gingrich. Sarah Palin has discredited herself so thoroughly with her last minute endorsement of the biggest phony conservative to ever stroll down the halls of Congress, Newt Gingrich. To even further discredit herself after resigning as the Governor of Alaska, she went on to endorse John McCain in his fifth term as a United States Senator from Arizona, against a very good man, and a very good conservative too, J.D. Hayworth.

Furthermore she endorsed incumbent Senator Oren Hatch of Utah this year, who has never been a conservative in his entire, very long Congressional career. If you will only remember a few years back, it was Oren Hatch who promoted the idea of a Constitutional Amendment to permit Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President. Now if that wasn't a stupid idea, you tell me what is then... Not only would such a Constitutional amendment be totally unwise, but Arnold Schwarzenegger was not even a conservative. Neither is Oren Hatch. And neither is Sarah Palin, unfortunately.



So where is the next Ronald Reagan going to come from? It is obviously not going to be Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, or Mitt Romney. Remember Mitt Romney's very own words on the subject, “I'm not trying to return to [the days of] Reagan-Bush!” Let's just hope that he doesn't lead our country further down the road to the Left while we are still waiting for the next Ronald Reagan to come along and revitalize what is left of the fractured TEA Party Movement, and re-invigorate the conservative base of our Party after this year's very disappointing Republican Primary. Who will be the true conservative political shepherd that will lead his conservative flock to greener and "freer" political pastures? For now we need to stop trusting in these national organizations that have infiltrated and co-opted the TEA Party Movement. For now all we can do is support conservative political candidates for House Congressional Districts and for Senate Seats all across America in every Congressional District and State so that no matter who becomes our next President in 2013, they have absolutely no support in Congress to move their progressive agenda forward.

"The truth, the political truth, and nothing but the political truth. A journalist has no better friend than the truth." - Scott Rohter
Share