James Delingpole, after suddenly discovering a man-crush on Marco Rubio, outlines how the Tea Party can still succeed:
[. . .] I’d suggest that the key lesson of yesterday’s mid-terms is this: it is simply not enough to stick a Tea Party label on any old candidate and hope that the US electorate’s growing antipathy towards Big Government will take care of the rest. Christine O’Donnell was more than proof enough of that. Not only did her candidacy allow the liberal MSM to tar the entire Tea Party movement as the natural home of anti-masturbation ex-witches and other fruit loops. But it demonstrated a worrying complacency and ignorance within the Tea Party movement about what it stands for and what it ought to stand for.
Christine O’Donnell puzzled me . . . if she’d actually been a witch, then her anti-masturbation activities made no sense. I’ve met lots of witches, and it’s hard to imagine any of them being anti-sexual in that kind of dogmatic manner. I didn’t follow the story, but I assume that she lost on the basis of both accusations influencing different voting groups.
So, if O’Donnell and other marginal candidates can’t depend on just wearing the “Tea Party” label to get elected, what do they need to do?
The Tea Party does not stand for: banning lesbian or sexually active single women from teaching at schools; discouraging onanism; banning abortion; keeping drugs illegal; God; organised religion generally; guns; or, indeed, Sarah Palin.
The Tea Party stands, very simply, for small government. So long as it understands this, a presidential victory in 2012 is guaranteed. If it forgets this — or doesn’t understand it in the first place — then hello, a second term for President Obama, and bye bye Western Civilisation.
In other words, Delingpole is calling for the Tea Party to be true to a minarchist vision: the least possible government to get the job done.
If you are against Big Government, you are for liberty. If you are for liberty you are also for free citizens’ right to choose whether or not they get out of their trees on cannabis, or indeed whether or not they have the freedom to terminate unwanted pregnancies or never, ever, go to church and in fact worship Satan instead.
Liberty is not a pick and mix free-for-all in which you think government should ban the things you don’t like and encourage you things you do like: that’s how Libtards think. Libertarianism — and the Tea Party is nothing if its principles are not, at root, libertarian ones — is about recognising that having to put up with behaviour you don’t necessarily disapprove of is a far lesser evil than having the government messily and expensively intervene to regulate it.
BTW. Mr. Obama, et al, must reduce this Circus entourage planned for India trip. His allowance needs to be suspended right now.
Comment by janetcole — November 3, 2010 @ 23:22
O’Donnell has never claimed to be a witch, only that she “dabbled” in witchcraft when she was younger. Given her born again worldview, this could mean anything from dating a sketchy guy (which I believe is the case) to watching a Harry Potter film.
O’Donnell’s defeat in Delaware proves nothing except the only Republican who could win is a RINO. This is not a problem for the Tea Party (let alone the Tea Party label), it is a problem for Delaware.
Comment by Flea — November 5, 2010 @ 11:02
That’s fair enough. The Republican “breakthrough” in taking the hereditary Kennedy Family senate seat only showed that the RINO candidate was more Kennedy-like than the Democratic offering. The O’Donnell win in the Republican primary in Delaware pushed out a more palatable-to-liberals candidate, and forfeited those votes back to their natural home in the Democratic column.
Comment by Nicholas — November 5, 2010 @ 11:31