Is The Tea Party Over? Libs Have Grave Dances Ready & Say “Yes!”

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – I think the challenge for the future of that particular body of movement-the Tea Party – is to move beyond the electronic media and get into actually doing things, get into actually meeting face to face.  Meeting face to face has its advantages.  Meeting face to face and trying to find if there is any common ground when you’re not blabbing on endlessly on Facebook is a challenge. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  There is an editorial from Dana Milbank of the Washington Compost that asks the most provocative question of all: Is the tea party over?  That’s an intriguing thought.  The tea party, you mean all those people that showed up in March of 2009 at income back tax day rallies and protests?  I was at one in Mordor on the Potomac River in Lafayette Park right across the field from the White House.  Many of you went to them.  Remember in 2010 we swept in the tea party congress?  [mocking] “Things are gonna change now.  We got our guys in there now, Mr. Church.  You just wait and see.  Scott Brown is going to do it,” you famously said.  You may have seen that Governor Bobby Jindal has said that Republicans need to divorce themselves from certain individuals, otherwise they will remain the stupid party.  What individuals is Jindal talking about?  Is he talking about Tea Partiers?  No, he couldn’t possibly be.

Friday afternoon: The office of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, another would-be Republican presidential candidate, declares that he will not go along with a plan, hatched by conservative legislators, to rewrite the state’s election laws in a way that would stack Virginia’s electoral votes against Democrats.

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Mike:  In other words, Virginia is considering doing what federalists ought to consider doing, which is apportioning their electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner takes all in the state.  In my humble opinion, that’s the way it ought to be and that’s the way I believe it was intended to be, but that’s just me.

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Monday: Senator John McCain, who during his 2008 presidential run backed an enforcement-only approach to immigration, declares his support for a plan for undocumented immigrants to become legal. Joining him on the stage is Senator Marco Rubio, one of the party’s brightest stars for 2016. [Mike: Then the list goes on and on and on.]

It is too early to call a requiem for the tea party. The informal movement still dominates the House Republicans. And the GOP’s puritanical primary process, encouraged by the redrawing of districts to protect Republican seats, guarantees that the far right will remain entrenched in the party for some time. [paraphrasing: Witness that Saxby Chambliss in Georgia has decided to not run for reelection.  He is foregoing a primary challenge from a “tea party” candidate.] But if the tea party isn’t over, some of the more sensible partygoers are heading for the exits, realizing that things are getting rowdy and the neighbors may soon be calling the cops. Republicans with national ambitions – Jindal, McDonnell, Chris Christie – are moderating their images and views in ways that keep pace with the electorate.

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Mike:  Then he points out some of the obvious faux pas like with Richard Mourdock in Indiana with the Senate race, Todd Akin in Missouri in the Senate race, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware in the Senate race, and all the things that have gone bad.  The tea party actually has done an awful lot of good, too, because it has acquainted many people with men and women that they never would have met.  I think the challenge for the future of that particular body of movement is to move beyond the electronic media and get into actually doing things, get into actually meeting face to face.  Meeting face to face has its advantages.  Meeting face to face and trying to find if there is any common ground when you’re not blabbing on endlessly on Facebook is a challenge.  Trust me, I’ve actually done this.  We had a convention, a meeting of what we thought were similar-minded people in June of last year.  We called it a convention to draft a constitution for the people of Freedonia.  In that room of 35 men and women, there was hardly anyone that agreed on anything.

What does the tea party do from here?  Does it just put all its eggs in the GOP basket?  We talked about this last week with an essay by the great George Carey, asking whether or not — as I was derisively called by James W. Antle III yesterday, a paleocon.  Should paleocons unite?  Should they walk away from party and party affiliation?  Should they instead work tirelessly in their communities, knowing that the federal edifice is probably going to do what it was going to do with or without their input?  I think Carey was onto something.  That’s just me as a paleocon.

End Mike Church Show Transcript