Politico recently ran an article about how the Tea Party movement is dead and gone, and that the only thing that came of it was a scam. The idea is that a lot of opportunistic scam artists set up PACs designed to steal money and use concerned Americans for their own benefit. Did this occur? Absolutely, and it’s likely a practice that isn’t only limited to Tea Party-aligned PACs and certainly will not stop after the movement is dead.
With all of this said, if you’re a conservative or libertarian, the tea party movement’s wave of green seeking PACs are not the greatest scam of all time. It’s the Republican Party.
For years, the Republican Party has not only taken your money pledging to fight the conservative fight, it has also used the labor of others and exploited those willing to do the work. It has fielded candidates of questionable conservative credentials while asking for your money and promising to stop liberalism.
Many Republicans are in denial about this.
When former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney ran for office, President Barack Obama had to be stopped. Republicans offered promises to the conservative cause with the usual soundbites about fiscal responsibility, limited government, and a stronger nation.
This promise was offered in a man that put his signature on the legislation Obamacare modeled itself after. If it were not for this being his legacy, there are other things like signing the assault weapons ban into law, or running to the left of Ted Kennedy for U.S. Senate in the nineties.
This is conservative?
Ideally, it wouldn’t have been a problem had Barack Obama never become President. For that to happen, a solid conservative would have been required in 2008. Instead, the Republican Party ran neoconservative Senator John McCain, a strong supporter of liberal big government.
Instead of going with an opponent of warrantless wiretapping and unchecked spending like former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the Republican Party went with someone who argues for legislation to more closely monitor innocent Americans while spending their children into unlimited debt.
While this was all happening, how many fundraising e-mails did people receive? How many mailers urging support or even volunteer work? What about phone calls wanting both?
Worse, how many people actually popped open their piggy banks, opened their wallets, or swiped their credit cards to help advance these causes?
This was all happening to supposedly advancing the conservative cause. The same conservative cause long led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and now Paul Ryan after John Boehner in the House.
After years of pushing moderate Congressmen and Senators, thin-skinned presidential candidates, and insincere down ballot politicians, we’re supposed to believe that ripping off concerned conservatives is a new thing? The mainstream media doesn’t talk about these things, which may seem remarkable to some. The media is sympathetic to Democrats and generally not so kind to conservatives.
The media doesn’t want the Republican Party to die, however. It’s a nice soft target. The left wants conservativism and libertarianism to die and as long as they can portray both causes as being represented by the Republican Party, they are winning.
Our best hope now is that the scam artists can do to the Republican Party what they did to the tea party movement.
