A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to keynote the Virginia Tea Party Federation’s Action Conference in Richmond, Va., and I think I stunned my fellow limited-government constitutional conservatives when I said conservatives should get down on your knees and thank God that Barack Obama is president of the United States.
But it’s true, so hear me out.
During the 50-plus years I’ve been active in the conservative movement at the national level, people have often asked me, “Richard, what’s it going to take to turn America from the road to socialism?” My answer has always been that the only chance I see to save America is for things to get real bad, real quick.
Well, guess what? We’re there — just like the old frog in boiling water story.
Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he will immediately jump out. Put him in a pot and then slowly turn up the heat and the frog will stay there until he is cooked. When big-government progressive Republicans and Democrats were in charge we were being slowly cooked, but with the radical liberal Obama in charge things got really bad, really fast and the frogs started jumping out of the pot.
However, to change things we conservatives needed some means of channeling our outrage and frustration into political action, because even if things got really, really bad, we still had to have some vehicle that would organize and lead the opposition, and it certainly wasn’t going to be the old establishment Republican Party.
Enter the tea party movement.
The 2010 tea party rebellion was as much a rebellion against the failed progressive leadership of the Republican Party as it was a reaction to the policies of Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Democratic majority in Congress.
The limited-government constitutional conservatives of the tea party movement were unfettered by ties to the old Republican establishment — they saw the big-government Republicanism of George W. Bush and the GOP’s congressional insiders as just as threatening to liberty as the excesses of the Democrats.
They got it.
For 101 years, ever since Teddy Roosevelt made progressivism the governing philosophy of the Republican Party’s establishment elite, we conservatives had had our political guns pointed at the wrong target. We’re over here focused on Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Pelosi, and in an earlier day — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and George McGovern, but the first and most important impediment to governing America according to conservative principles has always been the big-government establishment Republicans.
It’s very difficult to win a war if you don’t know you’re in one, the limited-government constitutional conservatives of the tea party movement understand that we’re in a war, and that big government, especially when advanced by Republicans, is the enemy.
So, thank the Lord that Obama’s radical policies turned up the heat so fast and so high that it made the frogs jump out of the pot to form the tea party movement, replace the big-government Republican establishment with limited government constitutional conservatives, and in the process give us a chance — no guarantee — but a chance to save America.
Richard A. Viguerie pioneered the use of direct mail in politics. He made it possible for candidates and causes to raise money from millions of small contributors rather than from a few “fat cats.” Read more reports from Richard Viguerie — Click Here Now.
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