Speaker John "If I Only Had the Nerve" Boehner
Amidst all the recent attacks on Tea Party Patriots by Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, or American Crossroads architect Karl Rove,
here’s an excerpt from an article entitled "Harvard Prof: Tea Party Not
Going Anywhere, More Likely To Win," an analysis posted yesterday at Breitbart’s Big Government:
"At the grassroots,
volunteer activists formed hundreds of local Tea Parties, meeting regularly to
plot public protests against the Obama Administration and place steady pressure
on GOP organizations and candidates at all levels," they found. "At
least half of all GOP voters sympathize with this Tea Party upsurge."
Though
Skokpol and Williamson have their typical biases and describe the Tea Party
movement as a "radical" one that may not like minorities--without any
evidence of that assertion--they acknowledge that "even though there is no
one center of Tea Party authority—indeed, in some ways because there is no one
organized center—the entire gaggle of grassroots" and outside groups that
support the movement "wields money and primary votes to exert powerful
pressure on Republican officeholders and candidates."
Skocpol
observes that the "Tea Party clout has grown in Washington and state
capitals" because "Americans are also losing ever more faith in the
federal government." In addition, "most legislators and
candidates are Nervous Nellies," and they have seen the Tea Party defeat
establishment Republicans like Charlie Crist in Florida in 2010 and David
Dewhurst in Texas in 2012 in addition to knocking off incumbent Republican
Sens. Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Richard Lugar (R-IN).
"That
grabs legislators’ attention and results in either enthusiastic support for, or
acquiescence to, obstructive tactics," Skocpol writes.
So in 2014, let’s keep grabbing
the attention of all those Nervous Nellie legislators!
