Greg Walden got invited to the tea party, but he says he doesn’t want to come.
A group of 35 Republican members of the House, led by ultra-right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Uranus), this week formed a “Tea Party Caucus,” which Bachmann described as “an informal group, dedicated to promote Americans’ call for fiscal responsibility, adherence to the Constitution and limited government.”
The office of Oregon’s 2nd District representative told The Bulletin’s Keith Chu that, while Walden is in sympathy with the Tea Partiers’ general philosophy, he’s decided not to join Bachmann’s group because he thinks the movement needs to retain its independence.
Walden “isn’t necessarily opposed to joining, but considering that the energy of the Tea Party groups comes from the local and grassroots levels, he’s not sure they want Congress to step in and usurp what they’re doing,” Walden spokesman Andrew Whelan told The Bulletin.
Walden’s a smart cookie, and declining to align himself with Bachmann was a politically shrewd move. Surely one of the biggest crackpots to hold a seat in Congress since Reconstruction, the Minnesota Republican emits bizarre statements on almost a daily basis, such as hinting that President Obama was responsible for the swine flu outbreak last fall, stating that Terri Schiavo was “healthy,” claiming that carbon dioxide is not a “harmful gas” (tell that to those deceased Drake Park geese) and implying that the movie “The Lion King” could be used to promote homosexuality.
But isn’t it about time to drop the pretense that the Tea Party movement is an “independent” entity that somehow just sprung up spontaneously and has no connection to the Republican Party? As the Infoplease.com website notes: “While the Tea Party movement claims to be a grassroots movement, FreedomWorks, a powerful conservative organization headed by former congressman Dick Armey, seems to play an important role behind the scenes and serves as clearinghouses for information on protests.” (Its role isn’t even really “behind the scenes”; FreedomWorks actually calls itself “Tea Party HQ.”)
More tellingly, why weren’t the Tea Partiers worried about “fiscal responsibility” when George W. Bush and a Republican Congress were turning the budget surplus inherited from Bill Clinton into a trillion-dollar deficit? Where was their dedication to “limited government” when Bush launched an unnecessary trillion-dollar war and illegally wiretapped Americans, among other excesses?
Funny how those “grassroots” concerns didn’t sprout up until we had a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in Congress.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2010.
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HBM of Michelle Bachmann: “Surely one of the biggest crackpots to hold a seat in Congress since Reconstruction.”
But not the biggest (or else you would have said so). No, you’re definitely leaving out the biggest crackpot to ever hold a seat in Congress. This one makes Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin appear to be Nobel laureates. Even with the twisted liberal fog that you inhaled after your Goldwater Republican days you must admit that the dimmest bulb in Congress belongs to one and only one person. Unfortunately for our country, that person is but two heart beats away from being President.
However, come November that can all change. Obamanation has more to worry about with independents running, not walking, away from this administration and its acolytes, Reid and the bulb with a perpetual dimmer turned on, Nancy P.
Fellow Wanderers, please click on to the Infoplease.com website in HBM’s blog and read the article. It is a brief history of the tea party movement and touts its independence notwithstanding the involvement that Dick Armey “seems” to have. HBM picks out essentially the only sentence in the article that speaks to a national presence in the tea party and tries to pass it off as the context of the entire article. Shame on you HBM. The article’s author does not posit any examples and thus must use the weasle word “seems” to describe Armey’s involvement and nothing more definitive. Perhaps HBM was just snookered instead….those rascally conservatives.
I don’t believe conservatives and tea party folks believe in limited federal government when it comes to its most important job…national security.
HBM, I clicked into the “illegally wiretapped Americans” link you listed above and while it speaks of a SAN FRANCISO district federal judge’s ruling (we all know what happens to about 2/3d’s of the rulings made in the 9th circuit when appealed to the Supreme Court) in that Portland case involving the Al Haramain “charity” and its lawyers, it provides an interesting and insightful look into your journalistic style that you did not include any commentary or mention of the most important paragraph in the article. But then again, maybe you just read the headlines.
Here’s the paragraph:
” In the midst of the presidential campaign in 2008, Congress overhauled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to bring federal statutes into closer alignment with what the Bush administration had been secretly doing. The legislation essentially legalized certain aspects of the program. As a senator then, Barack Obama voted in favor of the new law, despite objections from many of his supporters. President Obama's administration now relies heavily on such surveillance in its fight against Al Qaeda.”
This was a democrat majority senate and house that passed this. Thank God that as President, Obama has the good sense to follow Bush’s policies as it relates to surveillance in order to protect us.
Critic: Thanks for helping prove my point. If Republicans do it, the Tea Partiers will find a way to rationalize it.
As for the “grassroots” nature of the Tea Party “movement,” Dick Armey and FreedomWorks don’t do their thing for free. There’s big Republican/right wing money behind the “movement,” and it’s about as spontaneous as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.