THE MANIFESTO OF THE DAY
I am a Tea Party Republican.
And I am a Sarah Palin Republican.
Because I am a Constitution Republican.
Because my politics is merely an extension of my patriotism. To the extent the Republican Party stands for our Constitution, it’s my party. The extent it doesn’t, it isn’t.
I know what I believe, I’m not backing down, I’m not afraid.
And I refuse to be shamed by the mockery of those who attack the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. The character assassination of the movement and the woman are the desperate, immoral attacks of evil people.
What you can’t successfully argue against, you seek to destroy through mockery and scorn. At least you do if you’re a liberal Democrat.
And the NAACP yesterday was an excellent example. The group, decades past its glory years, called the Tea Party movement racist, and said that its passion is hatred and its motive is bigotry.
In the “1984” world of progressive political correctness, all who disagree with the social masters are racist haters. Ideas are not discussed, reputations are destroyed. You do not stand on the strength of your views, you stand on the slandered name of your opponent.
The politics of the left has devolved to a lowest-common-denominator witch hunt of prejudice and scapegoating. And so, when hundreds of thousands of Americans take their flags and gather in the public square, it is chalked up to racism and division, as the politics of hate.
Which is an odd case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The left’s characterization of conservatives is the most persistent and widespread example of hate speech in our society today. The attitude of progressives toward those who disagree can only be described as prejudice, built on stereotype and chauvinism.
And the percentage of racists in the NAACP is far higher than in the Tea Party.
I am a Tea Party Republican.
And I am a Sarah Palin Republican.
Which is to say, I am a free-standing, Constitution-loving American who is not going to be intimidated into silence.
Sarah Palin does not lead people, she reflects people’s values. We do not follow her, she and we together follow a set of principles we learned at our parents’ knee. We like Sarah Palin not because she is the smartest or the best spoken or the most experienced, we like her because she is one of us.
She doesn’t have a Harvard heart.
She has an American heart.
We get her, and we know she gets us. And in her gut, she is going to think and feel the way we feel. She is the girl next door, and if the girl next door can be the backbone of America, then why can’t she be the leader of America?
I don’t know if I’ll support her for president, but I certainly appreciate her as a spokesperson. As a symbol. As a reminder that Joe and Betty America don’t have to sit cowering the corner, whipped into silence by a media and a president and a party intent on domination.
She is plain grits, just like us.
And the people who mock and ridicule her are people who fear us.
The tea party is not an organization, or even a cobbled together group of organizations. It is none of the self-appointed leaders who go on TV; its name cannot be long co-opted by aspiring politicians.
The tea party is an attitude, around for more than 200 years, rising in our day in defiance of an over-reaching federal government and the president and politicians who have turned it against us.
The people who attend a tea party rally are not sheep, they are lions. They are not being fed, they are being reflected. Any member of the crowd could come forward and speak for the whole. We are a society of individuals united by a common culture, cause and love of country. We are Americans, and we’ve got a case of e pluribus unum.
And we’re in the process of laying a hurting on the politicians and philosophies that sap our freedom, hurt our country, impoverish our children and sully our flag.
Our symbol is most accurately the Gadsden Flag, the yellow rattlesnake banner with the warning: Don’t Tread on Me.
Except that we have already been trod upon.
And we are sinking our fangs into ballot box after ballot box.
And all the uproar is nothing more than the squeal of Democrats and their entitlement-class base terrified by the sting of our venom.
I am a Tea Party Republican.
And I am a Sarah Palin Republican.
Because I am a Constitution Republican.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010
