Tax Day Tea Party Shuns Washington This Year

Tax Day Tea Party Shuns Washington This Year

Washington may have seen its last national, anti-tax tea party.

For the first time since the tea party movement began two years ago, its members have not announced plans to storm the National Mall with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags on April 15. No tea party groups have applied for permits at the popular protest locale that day, according to the National Park Service.

In the past, Tax Day rallies with thousands of small-government advocates served as a symbolic show of force against Democratic control. Now that Republicans control the House, the fervor for national protest appears to have waned.

Some tea party leaders say national rallies are a tired custom and they have shifted their focus from federal to state and local issues.

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Tax Day Tea Party Shuns Washington This Year

I think everyone knows, I was a part of the Rowlett TEA Party. I cared greatly about this organization and I believed that it had great possibilities and could bring change to local, state and federal government.

Sadly, the local version of the TEA Party, in it’s original inception, wanted to take on Washington, a group of 8 or 10 older, retired, disabled, limited income folks, and by God, ‘We’re gonna give D.C. a piece of our minds and they’re going to know we’re here…’

They had NO focus, they were never organized or under control. Organization was drastically lacking. When public meetings took place they were more like revivals than patriotic meetings. There was preaching, seriously, sermons given about the evils of homosexuality and abortion, and not having GOD at helm of everything.

TEA Party Core Values:
1. Uphold the U.S. Constitution
2. Limited Government
3. Fiscal Responsibility
4. Free Markets

Nowhere in the Core Values of the TEA Party could I find anything even remotely connected to abortion, homosexuality or religion.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not bashing religion, prayer or preaching, but the TEA Party is made up of all kinds, atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, homosexuals, who knows what else. The TEA Party is a cross-section of American life. But the local version here in Rowlett, the original inception, alienated anyone that wasn’t a bible thumping, homo-hating, anti-abortion supporter.

If folks want to hear preaching, they can go to a church, or tune in Glenn Beck. What? Just sayin’…  

So, the TEA Party ideas are all well and good, but with no real organization, no real leadership, how do they manage to accomplish anything? Maybe that’s why they have shifted their focus from federal to state and local issues.

Lets face FACTS, you gotta crawl before you walk, you gotta walk before you run and as much as I respect grass roots efforts, there has to be a leader somewhere. Sarah Palin has exerted her force over the TEA Party with her attempts to handicap political races and pick candidates.

We saw how that worked out, RINO from Hell Scott Brown won, oh goodie, Christine O’Donnell (loser), and Lisa Murkowski kicked Joe Miller’s ass in Alaska. But the TEA Party worships the ground Palin walks on.

“At first we started with protests because we didn’t know what else to do. When everybody saw that protests weren’t achieving the objective, which is reining in this ridiculous spending, people went to work understanding how to affect policy and legislation,” said John Jaggers of the Northern Virginia Tea Party, which has been hosting local candidates’ forums in lieu of rallies.

Candidate forums are a wonderful idea, and I believe in giving credit where credit is due. The Rowlett TEA Party sponsored a great candidates forum a year ago, it was a rousing success and several of their endorsed candidates were elected to office.

Then, as soon as the task at hand was done, the TEA Party went dormant.

Keep it local. Chris Littleton, head of a Tea Party group in Cincinnati, says the activists he knows are driven by “this sense that you have to own your backyard first.”

“I can’t fix what is happening in D.C.,” Littleton says. “But I can fix what is happening in my backyard. I can affect my township, my county, my city, my congressional district and my state.”

That, my friends, is the most logical thing I have heard from ANY TEA Party official ever. 

So, the Rowlett TEA Party decides to hold a meeting at the Rowlett Public Library, featuring Rowlett Mayor John Harper as their guest speaker, the TEA Party getting involved in local politics so to speak. It blew up in their faces.

Here’s where that leadership thing I mentioned comes into play.

Mayor Harper seized control of the TEA Party PUBLIC meeting, turned it into a CITY function by declaring it so, and took the opportunity to use it as HIS platform from which to speak against City Council members, to call names and generally make an ASS of himself.

Rowlett TEA Party President Jerry Berggren did nothing to maintain civility or to regain control of HIS TEA Party PUBLIC meeting.

To the best of my knowledge, Berggren has done nothing to rectify those uncontrolled actions by the Mayor and has done nothing to repair the damage that his lack of direct involvement in the control of his meeting caused.

Those unhinged actions by the Mayor inspired me to write several blog posts regarding Mayor Harper and his all around actions and words, attacks actually, against anyone that doesn’t toe HIS line in HIS favor.

The original story above inspired me to vent about the effectiveness of the TEA Party, or, lack thereof.

I personally feel that if anything can stop the TEA Party it will be political correctness, a lack of fortitude to stand up to elected officials that bully their way through life and that loose confederation of grass roots activism.

A grass roots organization is a marvelous place to start, but where do you go from grass roots?

Again, in MY opinion, NO organization can survive without being properly organized and led by GREAT men and women in positions of strong leadership, be it local or on a national scale. America does NOT need Casper Milquetoast, nor those that are afraid of their own shadows, nor those that RUN from confrontation! We must have STRONG, brave, forceful, persuasive and dedicated leaders, no matter what the endeavor. 

We must have dedicated leaders that fall in to the same category and hold true to the beliefs held by our Founding Fathers.

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2 Responses to Tax Day Tea Party Shuns Washington This Year

  1. Bloviating Zeppelin says:

    If I’m not mistaken, the acronym TEA stands for:

    Taxed
    Enough
    Already

    It doesn’t stand for any other items. In my estimation, the TEA Parties are economics/budget-driven.

    BZ

  2. TexasFred says:

    BZ — The TEA Party has lost it’s compass, at least on a local level… Rudderless and no compass…

    Why do I picture Capt. Jack Sparrow, At Worlds End?? 😕

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