The Tea Party's Focus: Elections

For the Tea Party movement, 2009 was about coming together, meeting our brothers and sisters in arms, and standing athwart socialism, yelling, “Stop!” It worked. President Obama entered office promising socialized medicine, card check, and cap and trade all before the August recess. He went 0 for 3 thanks a grassroots uprising that came together like spattered quicksilver.

In our desire to fix things, we also launched a lot of legislative initiatives. These initiatives included various sovereignty amendments in the states, petitions for Constitutional Conventions, petitions for redress of grievances, petitions of right, and state laws exempting states from any national healthcare legislation. Each of these was a bold and important step, and such laws, amendments, and petitions should continue. Next year.

Let’s not fool ourselves. While the Tea Party movement has been very effective, it has been effective only when focused on a very narrow set of compelling causes. Our quick responses to card check and cap and trade convinced the White House to suspend those initiatives until we weren’t looking. Our overwhelming attack on ObamaCare took the last bit of energy and time from each Tea Party patriot. We left it all on the field.

In 2010, our focus must be to overthrow the leftists in Congress at the ballot box. By definition, our focus will be diffused. We will have to divide up 40 critical races and do our best on 395 others. And that’s just the House. We also must win a dozen Senate races, a dozen gubernatorial races, and countless state legislative seats. Our task is mighty.

We are up to the challenge. But we are not up to the challenge of winning tough races AND waging state legislative battles AND fighting for Constitutional Amendments AND the myriad other causes that we’ve taken up. If we are to prevail on November 2, 2010, we must table our various legislative initiatives until after the election. Our power is without limits.

You might say, “But we’re so close. We can’t quit now.” I want you to ask yourself this. If you wake up on November 3 and realize that the Tea Party movement was put down by a corrupt White House, that some great conservative candidate lost while you and the people you influence worked on a state sovereignty bill that will be ruled unconstitutional by Obama’s federal court appointees, will you be able to look at your children and grandchildren ever again? Will you ever forgive yourself if your effort toward a state’s non-binding resolution costs us our freedom?

That’s how stark our choices are in 2010. We either take control of Congress, or we learn to live in a socialist empire where your children’s careers are determined by a bureaucrat, where your wages are directed by a federal labor board, and where the words you speak are approved by a government correctness czar–under threat of incarceration.

This is the year. If we do not take back Congress, the socialist tsunami bearing down on the beachhead of freedom will overwhelm our valiant resistance. Let’s put aside the bills and amendments until a friendly national legislature is seated and ready to reward our hard work for their election. As Ben Franklin said over 230 years ago, if we don’t hang together, we will surely hang apart.