Tea Parties and the GOP

Richard Viguerie writing in the American Thinker:
Why leaderless Tea Parties are beating the GOP

Rasmussen reports the Tea Party Movement, which percolated only months ago, is beating the Grand Old Party.


That's amazing -- and good -- news. A nascent grassroots movement is more popular than a long-established political party.

Republican Party leaders should be embarrassed. Instead, the Republican establishment disdains this populist uprising. Rather than embracing this genuine movement, establishment politicians and consultants are calculating how to co-opt, sideline or even defeat the newest phenomenon in politics - tea partiers.

That would be arrogance, not leadership. It could be the downfall of Republican leaders, who have taken the Party of Reagan to the Party of No -- meaning, No Ideas, No Leadership, and No Principles.

What's driving the Tea Party phenomenon? Robert Stacy McCain writes at American Spectator about one tea partier, Rhonda Lee Welsch, who says, "‘It's a systemic problem,' discussing the top-down approach of leaders in both parties who seem indifferent to the concerns of ordinary Americans."

Go read it all.