Ben Smith over at Politico has an interesting article up about the tea parties and their priorities. I’m quoted in the middle of the article.
Groups such as FreedomWorks, said Perkins, bring a libertarian bias that doesn’t represent the “true tea parties.” Brendan Steinhauser, the director of federal and state campaigns at FreedomWorks, responded that the contract represents activists’ priorities.
“People didn’t come out into the streets to protest gay marriage or abortion,” said Steinhauser, who said that he hoped the Republican Party would follow the contract’s cue and “stop bringing up flag-burning amendments and the gay marriage thing when they’re not what people are focused on.”
To be clear, I am staunchly pro-life, and consider myself somewhat socially conservative. However, I think the biggest threats to liberty in America are the national debt, outrageous deficits, wasteful federal spending and higher taxes. Focusing on the fiscal issues is a winning formula for both political parties.
WorldNetDaily has a great piece up today about the grassroots effort to finally put an end to Obamacare 2.0. If you are in the DC area, please join us on Tuesday, March 16th, as we take our message directly to our congressmen. We need to swarm capitol hill with patriotic, freedom-loving Americans who don’t want the government to take over our healthcare system. Come out and support us on Tuesday!
Tea partiers will also “surge” on Capitol Hill Tuesday as a show of opposition to the Democrats’ health-care reform. FreedomWorks is planning a March 16 rally called the “People’s Surge Against Obamacare 2.0″ outside the Cannon House office building located at Independence Ave. SE and New Jersey SE. The group will rally from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. People will be bused in from various parts of the country.
“We’ll probably have at least 1,000 if not more people coming in to this event,” FreedomWorks’ director of federal and state campaigns, Brendan Steinhauser, told WND. “We’re telling people to go right into the three House office buildings: Cannon, Longworth and Rayburn. Find your congressmen, whether they are in the cafeteria, their offices, in the halls or hiding under their desks, and tell them to vote no. It’s very simple.”
He added, “We’ll help direct traffic. Come and deliver your message to Congress.”
Steinhauser is also urging citizens to visit district offices and organize local town-hall meetings this month.
He said FreedomWorks personnel will be on the street corner in front of Cannon building handing out maps of office locations and copies of petitions so people can take them to their representative on Tuesday.
“It’ll be interesting to see what Nancy Pelosi does,” he added. “Last time she told them all to run and hide.”
I just stumbled across this excellent video taken from the US Capitol building. It was recorded by Congressman Culberson from Texas. Pretty amazing view from his perspective!
There is a special election coming up very soon in Georgia’s 9th congressional district. Tom Graves, a personal friend and a stellar conservative state legislator, is running to replace the retiring incumbent Nathan Deal. I urge all of my fellow conservatives out there to sign up for his campaign, follow him on twitter, join his facebook fan page and give him money. Also, if you can make phone calls for him and/or travel to north Georgia to do some GOTV, please do so!
Tom has been a rock solid conservative leader in the state legislature in Georgia. He has taken on the GOP leadership and has been pushing forward a pro-growth, limited government agenda, before it was the most popular thing to do. Please join his campaign today and let’s help Tom win this special election so he can come to Washington to fight for lower taxes, less government and more freedom.
We got some nice press coverage again today in both CNN and Fox.
Here are my quotes:
CNN: “This Coffee Party looks like a weak attempt at satire or a manufactured response to a legitimate widespread grassroots movement,” says Brendan Steinhauser (no relation to this reporter), director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, a nonprofit conservative organization that helps train volunteer activists and has provided much of the organizational heft behind the Tea Party movement.
From Fox News: Elected Republicans are making the media push to shame Democrats, while the conservative Tea Party groups are readying a new wave of protests that, for the moment, could put them and the establishment Republicans on the same page.
Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns with FreedomWorks, told FoxNews.com that his group is encouraging Tea Partiers to hold forums, much like the August town halls, to talk about health care reform.
From there, the Tea Party groups will hold nationwide rallies on April 15, and health care reform opposition is expected to be a major cause. Though Congress could potentially pass the bill by then, Steinhauser said he doesn’t think Tax Day will be too late.
“A lot of people are just fired up about this,” he said. “I don’t see any indication that they’re going to be able to do this very quickly.”
One year ago, hundreds of Americans took to the streets to protest the Wall Street bailout (TARP) and the massive $800 billion stimulus package. In 50 cities across the country, limited government advocates gathered in major intersections, city parks, national historical places and main streets to speak out with one voice: “Enough Big Government!”
The protests had begun a couple of weeks before, when a lone activist in Florida, Mary Rakovich, organized her friends and family in Fort Myers and protested outside President Obama’s townhall meeting with Governor Charlie Crist. That event led to a series of other protests around the country, from Seattle, to Mesa, Overland Park and Denver. Then, Rick Santelli of CNBC went on his “rant” on the floor of the Chicago board of mercantile exchange and called for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest big government. Santelli’s call to arms was viewed by more than 2 million Americans within a couple of days, and galvanized a small movement around a theme: the Boston Tea Party. Thus began one of the largest pro-liberty movements in American history.
As we look back at 2009, the year of protests, Tax Day Tea Parties, August townhall meetings and the massive 9/12 March on Washington, DC, we can’t help but look back in awe at where we started, and where we have come. The grassroots revolt against big government stopped the Obama agenda dead in its tracks and delivered a huge defeat in elections in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts. The “tea party movement” of limited government activists has swept the country and has re-awakened the inert patriotism and spirit of freedom in millions of Americans. The movement has been called the most potent force in American politics today, and few would argue with that.
But as we celebrate what we have accomplished in the last year, we should also forge ahead with a plan of action for the years to come. Here is what I believe we must do in order to ensure that this movement is successful for the long term.
First, the movement must continue to grow through events, recruitment, voter registration efforts and media exposure. We need millions more Americans to join the ranks of the limited government movement in every county in America. Second, the movement must stay focused on the issues that created the groundswell of outrage in the beginning: the national debt, deficits, wasteful spending, higher taxes and bailouts. We cannot let the movement be hijacked by those who wish to focus on distractions, or issues that were never part of the movement in the first place.
Third, the movement must institutionalize itself in the culture and politics. The movement must re-invigorate the conservative/libertarian movement by utilizing the resources of free market think tanks, intellectuals, advocacy groups, books, magazines, websites, online networks and funding sources. The movement should take advantage of the existing infrastructure of conservative/libertarian politics and spread these resources throughout the movement so that millions more Americans will be exposed to the ideas of F.A. Hayek, National Review, the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institution, etc..
And new movement activists should participate in free market advocacy groups with resources and experience; groups like the Campaign for Liberty, National Taxpayers Union, Tea Party Patriots and, of course, FreedomWorks. Local groups should retain their local autonomy, but should link up with national groups that can offer support, guidance, expertise and training, to make them better advocates for limited government.
Finally, the movement should seek to take over the most conservative of the two major parties: the Republican Party. The movement should do this from the ground up, precinct by precinct, county by county - in every county in America. If the movement tries to start a third party it will utterly fail, and all of this hard work will be for naught. Politics is the art of the possible - and it is possible for the tea party movement to take over the GOP, run limited government candidates and win local, state and national elections on a limited government platform - year after year.
The tea party movement is merely part of the broader limited government movement, which includes fiscal conservatives of all stripes - libertarians, conservative Democrats, conservative Republicans, independents and others. If this movement can remain active locally and nationally, grow its membership, avoid turf battles and distractions and ultimately institutionalize itself in the political culture - the movement will be successful.
This new, re-invigorated limited government movement can make a lasting impact on our culture and politics for decades to come, and shape the next generation of Americans. It can win elections, move a limited government public policy agenda forward and discipline politicians that stray from this agenda. Most importantly, this movement can defend liberty in the minds and hearts of Americans for the next century - thus extending the torch of freedom in a way as profound as the generation of 1776 - the original Sons of Liberty.
I have to give it to the folks at CNN who put this piece together. It is a fair look at one tea party activist from Little Rock, Arkansas that came to CPAC this past weekend. This is the second piece CNN has done on Bob Porto, a nice guy that FreedomWorks has worked with for the past few months.
Hopefully we can continue to get this kind of fair coverage in the media, despite some of the left-wing attacks against us. Bob represents the movement well, and hopefully was able to attract more people to this movement through this great interview.
This has been another good week for FreedomWorks in the media. First check out my interview on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show about the conservative revolution sweeping the country. Diane has more than 2.5 million listeners a week, and was kind enough to invite me to her studio in Washington for the interview.
Second, check out George Bennett’s piece in the Palm Beach Post about the origins of the tea party movement in Florida. George highlights the role that FreedomWorks activist Mary Rakovich played in sparking the protests in early 2009. As I say in the piece, Mary was the first person to protest the stimulus bill in the streets, and did so when president Obama joined Gov. Charlie Crist to stump for this colossal waste of money in Fort Myers, Florida.
Finally, ABC News has a story up about the Contract From America, which is making the rounds among conservative activists. It’s the idea of Ryan Hecker, from Houston, and its purpose is to provide a platform for candidates to run on in 2010.
This is the video of an interview I did with CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I joined my friend and fellow conservative activist Kellen Giuda of Tea Party 365 in New York City to discuss the movement, and the role it played in the Massachusetts Senate race.
Fast forward to 1:24:10 in the video to see our interview.
Today’s Christian Science Monitor has a piece on the Tea Party movement and its origins. It has a great analysis, and not just because of the kind words it says about yours truly.
But unheralded operatives, such as Brendan Steinhauser, campaign director for FreedomWorks and author of “The Conservative Revolution,” created the backbone of the movement, establishing websites and Facebook pages that would become populated with fed-up voters.
The CSM is doing a good job covering the movement, unlike some other newspapers that still don’t get it. But most mainstream media outlets are coming along slowly. CNN has aired quite a bit of reporting about the movement, and much of it has been fair.
Hopefully we can continue to build the momentum for the long-term, and reinvigorate the conservative movement the same way that William F. Buckley Jr. did in the 1950’s. This revolution is now entering a new phase, and no one really knows where it will go. But I predict it will make a big impact on the 2010 elections, and more importantly, keep people involved in politics at the local level for a long time to come.
