The Republican Party needs to be very careful. While McCain, Graham and others are denouncing the Tea Party, the Tea Party is building a political infrastructure from the ground up. It is easy to dismiss people without years of experience, lots of money and lacking a sophisticated political operation. The Tea Party is growing from a community organization that rallies at parks, holds signs on street corners, to a more nuanced group that understands the nature of politics.
While many GOP leaders in the country are pushing away Tea party activists, ideas and organizations, California is different. Starting about a year ago California Republican Party (CRP) Chairman Jim Brulte started talking with and meeting statewide Tea Party of California Caucus (TPCC) leaders. At the CRP convention last week, at the Condelezza Rice lunch, Chairman Brulte had TPCC chair Randall Jordan at the table with Ms. Rice. Brulte gets it—you win when you have everyone participate.
On Tuesday, in Pennsylvania, a Tea Party candidate won a State Senate Special Election—by WRITE-IN—beating both a GOP’er and a Democrat. California establishment folks need to take heed. You need the Tea Party. Denouncing people with values guarantee your candidates lose—either in the primary and certainly in the General Election. You need high voter turnout—you do not get it by telling your voters they are to shut up and follow you.
“But Republican state Senate nominee Ron Miller may think differently this morning because he just lost a special election to a write-in Tea Party candidate, Scott Wagner.
“With 100 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595, or 47.7 percent, to Miller’s 5,920, or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of New Freedom nearly edged out Miller with 5,704 votes, for 25.7 percent,” according to the York Dispatch.
Pennsylvania is a place where it can sometimes be difficult to tell the Democrats from the Republicans, at least at the state level.”
Tea Partier wins write-in race for Pennsylvania state Senate seat
By Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner, 3/19/14
York is a modest little city in Southern Pennsylvania not too far from Baltimore and right in the heart of Dutch country. It’s not the sort of place where political revolutions are found.
But Republican state Senate nominee Ron Miller may think differently this morning because he just lost a special election to a write-in Tea Party candidate, Scott Wagner.
“With 100 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595, or 47.7 percent, to Miller’s 5,920, or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of New Freedom nearly edged out Miller with 5,704 votes, for 25.7 percent,” according to the York Dispatch.
Pennsylvania is a place where it can sometimes be difficult to tell the Democrats from the Republicans, at least at the state level.
Wagner, who owns a trash compactor business, ran on a typical Tea Party small-government/fiscal conservativism ticket.
He attributed his win in great part to the relentlessly negative attacks on him by the local and state GOP party establishments.
Odd party out?
It’s only a state Senate race and maybe it’s just an outlier. But what if it’s not? What if the VIP lesson here is what happens to the GOP when it doesn’t run on an explicitly limited government/fiscal conservatism Tea Party type platform?
There’s already a party of government, the Democrats. The York happening may herald the first small sign of the birth of a new party of freedom, the Tea Party.
The odd man out here is a GOP that merely offers a pale imitation of the real thing from Democrats. That sort of GOP is a party with no future.
