Sunday, October 17, 2010

ClockTicking: Let's Stay Focused

Social issues are important. Certain issues are more important and other less important depending on a myriad of different things such as different people, groups, and time, etc., but at this point time for the 'Teaers' we need to stay focused on limited government, the economy, and candidates and how each sees government's role in our lives and at the national levels. If we get caught up in social 'hot buttons' they will divide and weaken our resolve as well as our resources.

It has been some time since 'The Oxford Tea Party' has forwarded a newsletter from the Dick Morris web site. The article
below is timely and to the point.


ECONOMIC ISSUES AT THE FOREFRONT

This election season, fiscal conservatives own the GOP grassroots.

By: DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

The coalition Ronald Reagan assembled of fiscal and economic conservatives, evangelicals, and national-security advocates has always been dominated by the social issues at the grassroots level. While free-market economic conservatives lived in New York and dutifully attended their Club for Growth meetings and national-security types inhabited Washington, the Republican social conservatives dominated the grassroots of the party. They alone could turn out the numbers to rallies and to the polls on primary or Election Day.

Now, all that has changed. It is the fiscal conservatives and free-market supporters who own the Republican streets. Through the Tea Party, they have come to dominate the grassroots of the GOP. It is as if an invisible primary were held for supremacy at the grassroots and the Tea Party won.

And social issues are nowhere on the Tea Party agenda. I recently participated in a conference call with tea-party affiliates throughout the country. During the question period that followed my speech, one leader of a local tea-party group asked a question about abortion. The conference-call leader jumped in before I could answer and ruled the query out of order. "Our priorities are to oppose taxes, support fiscal conservatism, and advance free-market principles," she scolded the questioner. "We do not take a position on social issues like abortion," she added.

Along with this change has come a shift in what it takes to turn the litmus paper red enough to win Republican primaries. It used to be that abortion, gun control, and gay marriage were the hot-button issues, and anyone straying from orthodoxy was targeted in the primary and handicapped in the general election by a lackluster turnout. Now, a candidate's social positions rarely even come up. It is fiscal and economic purity that rules the day. Anyone who voted for cap-and-trade is targeted in the primary. And there is no place for a candidate who ever backed a tax increase. Every candidate has to sign the no-tax pledge that Grover Norquist formulated for Americans for Tax Reform.

Where Republican politicians were once terrified to move to the left on social issues, they are now more frightened of retribution for departures from fiscal orthodoxy. The once-elitist demands of the Club for Growth are now echoed throughout America by the surging Tea Party movement.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 71 percent of all Republicans regarded themselves as Tea Party supporters, far more than would identify themselves as pro-life or opposed to gay marriage.

This shift in Republican priorities is opening up the way for social moderates and libertarians to back Republican candidates in the 2010 elections. The libertarian strain in the American electorate has long been neglected by the mainstream media. But, through the Tea Party, it has gained ascendancy on the right. Those who want the government to stay out of both boardrooms and bedrooms have come to dominate the party and its nominating process.

Ironically, this change in the Republican grassroots has come at a time when abortion is falling into disrepute and larger numbers of Americans report themselves as being pro-life. This swing of voter sentiment might reflect the growth of the evangelical community of believers or simply the aging of the baby-boomer population. But even as the right to lifers move toward a national majority, their clout at the grassroots level of the Republican party is waning.

But despite this growing support for pro-life policies, no Republican candidate is basing his or her insurgency against an incumbent Democratic congressman, senator, or governor on social issues. There are no ads urging the ouster of a Democrat for his pro-choice policies or backing of gay marriage. All the ads and the rhetoric are devoted to fiscal transgressions like support of the stimulus package, the TARP bailout, or Obamacare.

The Tea Party has flourished in all regions, drawing libertarians in the North and evangelicals in the South, all committed to its agenda of reduced spending, limited taxation, balanced budgets, and free-market economics. It is the new mantra of the Republican grassroots and has a lot to do with the massive gains the party will win on November 2.

Dick Morris

Meg Whitman may or may not win the Governor's race in California….I am not using the example below in support of her candidacy but as an example on where the mind set of the Dems is in all races around the c ountry. I can't remember any time in our history that anyone in either party would have referred to a candidate they were running against as a whore…..

The head of the California NOW affiliate says Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is one.This is the oldest liberal women's organization in California.California NOW President Parry Bellasalma told the TPM blog on Thursday that the description of the Republican candidate for governor of California is accurate."Meg Whitman could be described as 'a political whore."

I mention this political ploy because it has distracted the voters in California (Jerry Brown's poll number have gone up) and with the support of the liberal media it has become a 'hot button' that other Dem candidates, in other states, will try to find and use in their contest….. What make this particularly unique is that this was something that the Brown campaign accidently did but the impact seems to have served to distract as if it had been planned. For the moment, hopefully only for the moment, the voters have stopped looking at Jerry and all the damage he did while he was governor. (We lived in the state when Jerry came into office and watched as he changed the state with the same zeal that Obama is trying to change the nation.)

("Two weeks ago, we had a company announce that it was relocating from Silicon Valley to Mississippi. Those people said they're happy to be part of Mississippi, and they encourage other companies to move from Silicon Valley to Mississippi." If nothing more were to be said about the politics in the California this movement of businesses out of California says it all and is happening daily.)

At this point all that is left for many of the Dem incumbents is to find ways to distract voters from their voting record and maybe find ways to 'bash' the conservative opponents. Such a distraction is bringing Bill Clinton into Mississippi to support Childers. After the distraction Childers will still be Childers. (You wouldn't think Clinton would be seen as a 'political vote getter' for any candidate.)

Come November… It upon us... Vote counting is just a breath away and lots of votes are still needed for this counting. Where are they going to come from?
Thousands of more votes are still needed. Where are they going to come from? This is a wide political river we are trying to forge and many more bridge builders are needed. We have to find them.

What to do with this little bit of time that is left? At the end of the voting day, only one vote at a time gets counted. That one vote makes a difference…Where is that vote going to come from? That one vote could be the one that makes it possible for the country to get back on some kind of a common sense track. That one vote could be the vote that finally teaches the entrenched elected folks who their bosses are.. Where can we find that one more vote? Where can we look? Who can we talk to that we've not talked to already?

Ron

http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/

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