Tea Party victories

I want to write a lengthy commentary but wonder if my mind can get around it enough to do it real justice.

When the Tea Party started it seemed like a grassroots reaction. It did not really have a party affiliation. My first tea party had lots of booths, NRA types, John Birth types. But there was no Republican party booth.

In contrast the leaders of the Republican party have had a disconnect with the rank and file for a long time. I see that at the meeting called Harris County Republican Executive Committee. The members are the precinct chairmen. We are mostly active in running elections and primaries. We are supposed to work to get out the vote. Most do not do much along those lines.

Those who lead this party have as their main goal working for electability. We, on the other hand, are always passing resolutions that would never fly with most candidates or elected officials. They are mostly working to get along and not rock any boats. They do not want to alienate any prospective voter. The party platform that we pass at the state convention is not even read by candidates. The disconnect is great there. No leader or candidate would ever consider seriously what we fight for over a whole week.

But we let it go, thinking that the leaders must know best. We are tired of fighting. The Tea Party people have brought in new energy. They see that Bush, no matter how nice a guy and how much he succeeded in Texas, looked pretty much like the liberals when in Washington. The Tea Party stands for a Republican Party that is different than the Democrats.

Now with Obama we found the Dems can be truly different, adding a massive new entitlement. But Bush never lifted a finger to reduce entitlements. Or so it seemed. If he did it escaped my view, and that of many others.

I think there is still an elephant in the room. The Tea Party have come in energized by the large taxes on the middle class. They think we are taxed too much, that capitalism is being destroyed. I tend to agree. But they are short on solutions. They can complain but they have no fixes to suggest. So in this way they are really no different than the older Republicans who have lost steam. Without some solutions they are doomed to quickly fade away.

They have latched on immigration as a big issue. This is true in Texas certainly. But while they have complained about the problem I have heard no solutions except to kick them out and keep them out. As a solution that is not new and it has not really worked. Maybe it has not been really tried but no one has the stomach for that.

I think the elephant in the Republican room is that no one on the Republican side has offered ways to actually reduce government. We can talk about waste, I'm sure there is lots, but how to actually make things more efficient has not been truly addressed.

Cuba just fired 500,000 government workers. Shouldn't we think about following their lead? Polls firmly say people are for smaller government and less taxes. But they are against actually cutting services. Someone is going to have to lead by explaining what services can be cut or eliminated. They are going to have to show that to truly reduce spending services must be cut and job eliminated. This will be a War on Spending. No one truly likes the leader during a war.

People like the idea of government helping them. They just do not like paying for it. Republicans had a few years in power to try to limit and/or reduce government. However nothing happened. Neither the Congress nor Bush had the bravery to actually try to do something about it.

In Europe there is some effort actually being made to reduce government. Of course they have gone much further towards socialism/communism than we have. But I think we can, as a people and a government, works towards limiting middle class entitlements and working to make sure poorer have incentives to work and improve their lot.

We could start by making more people pay taxes. Too many people pay no taxes at all.