By Tim Dunkin
Conservatives in America find themselves at a cusp in our history. Just one short year ago, it seemed that all was lost. A new President was installed into office - one who we knew, even if 53% of the voters didn’t, would destroy the liberty and prosperity remaining in America. To top it off, the opposition Party had been decimated in two straight elections, largely because it wasn’t opposing the march of big government, and was in no condition to advance the cause of conservatism at all. Yet, we now find ourselves on a whole different playing field. The incontinence and haste of our narcissistic, juvenile President and his Congress have ignited a public backlash against virtually all aspects of their agenda. The American electorate is suddenly finding their inner conservative once again, and the Republican Party has been the beneficiary (somewhat undeservedly) of the electorate’s turn of mind. The Tea Party movement, and the Town Hall takeovers from last fall have helped to crystallize the public’s opposition to the Democrat agenda, and have also served to channel their disgust into productive directions for conservatism.
As I’ve pointed out previously, the Tea Party movement is nothing new, but is the renovation of authentic conservative (regardless of Party or lack thereof) activism. In it, we see conservatives and other liberty-lovers of all stripes standing up, getting organized, and telling the tone-deaf, elitist political establishment in Washington that they’re mad, and they’re not going to take it anymore. This reinvigorated conservative activism helped Doug Hoffman in NY-23 to come out of nowhere and nearly put him into office, in the process relegating the leftist establishment Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava to third party status (and frankly, I think that if the voters knew last November what they know now, Hoffman would have won it hands down). Tea Partiers helped to mold the coalition that put Scott Brown into office, sending Obama and Co. a strong repudiation. Conservative activists have helped the conservative Marco Rubio take the lead in the GOP primary in Florida over the Stimulus-loving friend of Obama, Charlie Crist. All across the country, conservatives are getting involved and shaking up the political landscape like a volcano.
Another point I’ve made in previous articles is that conservatives need to stick together – and that means conservatives both outside and inside the Republican Party. That is where TEApublicanism comes in, a term which I used in my previous article, but did not define. Allow me to do so here.
TEApublicanism is a term that, to my knowledge at least, was first coined on Free Republic by FReeper SeattleBruce. In a nutshell, TEApublicanism is a practical approach to conservative activism that rejects two things: Third Partyism and establishment Republican business as usual.
As readers of my previous articles may have noted, I have roundly rubbished the notion that conservatives should go third party. I think the idea is pure foolishness. There’s nothing that helps to sap the drive and momentum of a movement like splitting it up among a gadzillion different little groups. This is what third partyism does. It takes our efforts, and divides them, introducing acrimony and destroying our ability to work together for the common goal of advancing conservatism. Let me say that I understand the frustration of those who want conservatives to take the third party route, and who want us to break with the Republican Party once and for all. I will address this in a moment. However, the GOP has the resources, the organization, and the membership that conservatives need to harness to have a practical chance of impacting our electoral and political systems. Why spend years building an organization from the ground up, when one is already established nationwide? And why spend years trying to woo the 56% of American conservatives who are also registered Republicans away from their party, only to try to induce them to join your particular third party, which is just one of dozens of conservative third parties (literally) floating around out there? A much better route is for conservatives to get involved with the Republican Party at the grassroots level, and use it to advance our agenda.
Now, this does not mean, however, that I am asking conservatives who are independents, members of third parties, libertarian-leaning, etc. to subordinate themselves to a Republican Party that is dominated by the likes of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the RINOs who have made the GOP what she was in 2006 and 2008. I’m not asking them to join a group, only to see it remain the very thing that drove them to leave it in the first place.
Instead, TEApublicanism calls on conservatives to come together in the GOP, making the first order of business to be the destruction of the RINO establishment power structure, and its replacement with a party leadership and organization that is reflective of the values of the conservative majority. In short, TEApublicanism calls for conservatives to band together and to take on and defeat the McCain-Graham-Romney axis of evil.
There are two ways for this to be done.
First is for conservatives to get involved at the local level. Work within your county’s Party apparatus to capture it for conservatism, and then work your way up. Flood your county conventions if you have to, and bring along some folks who know how to use the parliamentary procedures that are used to run these conventions. When conservatives get hold of the county apparati, then they get to determine who the leadership is at the state level, and from there the national level. The establishment RINOs and the cigar-smoking, back-slapping smoke-filled back room types who dominate so much of the Republican Party’s power structure are only there because conservatives have failed to get involved and “upfilter” their numbers and influence into the higher reaches of the Party. Granted, we should expect that the RINOs and insiders will put up a fight – but we can beat them if we all get organized, on the same page, and use our conservative numbers to our advantage.
Second, conservatives need to do everything they can to dry up the ability of the RINOs and establishment types to exercise influence and power. I have long advocated that conservatives refrain from donating money to official Republican organs like the RNC, RSCC, the RCCC, and so forth. Give money directly to the candidate instead. The money donated to these organs by well-meaning but hoodwinked Republicans is often used against conservatives. Observe what happened in NY-23, where the RNC gave Dede Scozzafava nearly a million dollars, and this after it came to light just how bad and left-wing of a candidate she was. Observe also that individual conservatives at the grassroots level were able to deliver several money bombs to Hoffman’s campaign that made him competitive and nearly won the race for him. Likewise, in the race for the Massachusetts Senate seat, the RSCC did little to help Brown win – it only belatedly came out on election night, as reported by Ace at Ace of Spades HQ, that Party had quietly slid half a million to Brown’s campaign under the table. Of course, Brown was bringing in million dollar plus money bombs every day for the last two weeks of the campaign - from grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers who enabled him to defeat Martha Coakley. Clearly, until the GOP establishment gets its act together (and that’ll coincide with the time when conservatives successfully take it over), the only feasibly option for committed conservative activists is to support candidates directly.
Another way to dry up the influence and power of RINOs is to remove them from elective office. We conservatives can work to do this by supporting conservative Republican primary opponents against known RINOs who are up for office, and by supporting conservative Republicans in the primaries to determine who will run against Democrat officeholders. I am blessed to have one such conservative Republican running in my district (North Carolina’s 4th district) to challenge the disgustingly left-wing David Price, who currently “represents” this district. In contested primaries between a RINO and a real conservative, we can work for the conservative’s campaign and band together to money bomb his or her coffers. We can support, for instance, Marco Rubio against Charlie “Chargin’ RINO” Crist in the Florida GOP senatorial primary. We can support J.D. Hayworth’s effort to take down John McCain, who has been one of the most consistently anti-conservative, pro-establishment, pro-amnesty, anti-free speech “Republicans” in the Senate. Find out who the conservatives are in your elections, and support them against the RINOs. Take away the offices that these RINOs hold, and you remove a lot of their influence and credibility. After all, if John McCain can’t even hold his own Senate seat against a conservative challenger like Hayworth backed by grassroots conservatives in Arizona and across the country, why would anyone think that his model for the Republican Party – which involves bringing it even further left and compromising with the Democrats even more – holds any water?
In short, TEApublicanism is an effort to unite lovers of liberty and smaller government, be they Republicans, independents, third partyists, libertarians, conservative Democrats, or anyone else who is with us, into a single movement that has the organizational advantages of the Republican Party, while also having the ideological advantages of the Tea Party movement. It’s a win-win situation, really. Conservative Republicans get their Party back, and conservative non-Republicans get a Republican Party that they can actually vote for without feeling dirty. Together, we can keep up the momentum that we are seeing to date, and rebuild the winning Reagan coalition.