Back to Basics

Few political events have caught fire in the American Heartland with the swiftness of Congressman Allen West’s January 28, 2102 Lincoln Day Dinner address in West Palm Beach Florida. Lambasting the intellectual dishonesty and subversive motives of the left, Congressman West declared in unmistakable terms that Real America will have no more of the liberal agenda. By the following Tuesday, portions of the speech had spread across the nation, being replayed on talk radio and going viral over the Internet.

To nobody’s great surprise, the usual liberal mouthpieces, as typified by Democrat strategist Bob Beckel, reacted with predictable and exaggerated indignation. Nevertheless, mainstream America responded to West with a collective cheer of approval. Finally, someone on the Republican side is exhibiting sufficient backbone to echo the sentiments of Main Street, where common folk have soundly rejected both the ravages of liberalism and the insipid banalities of “bipartisanship” and “cooperation” still touted by establishment Republicans inside the Beltway as the proper course for the nation in this perilous time.

A hero to conservative America, it is appalling that West’s rising star is threatened not by the Democrats, but by the GOP Establishment in his own state. As part of an ongoing effort to disenfranchise and ultimately disband the Tea Party, Republican insiders have hatched a plot to get rid of West, and in the process, deliver a stern warning to other real conservatives of sharing his fate should they fail to play the political game on terms dictated by the ruling class.

In a defining sense, West’s plight is a microcosm of the difficulties faced by the entire conservative movement as it is repeatedly betrayed by liberal opponents masquerading as their kindred. And until grassroots conservatives recognize the nature of this Trojan Horse in their midst, and unconditionally reject it as an ally, they will continually find themselves undermined and thwarted at crucial stages of their battle against liberalism.

Considering the intensity of public backlash against Barack Obama in 2010, which culminated in devastating mid-term Democrat losses in the Congress, as well as significant routs in state legislatures across the country, it would seem ludicrous that the Republican Party insiders might even consider “reaching across the aisle” to subordinate themselves to the party America had so stridently rejected. Yet in the months following the elections, it became abhorrently obvious that such was exactly the course the GOP insiders had chosen.

On one occasion after another since Barack Obama’s inauguration, grassroots America had rallied and united in its efforts to stop the liberal onslaught in its tracks. And just as frequently, the moment any conservative victory was achieved, the GOP Establishment set itself to the task of neutralizing and negating everything that had been gained.

In a resounding rebuff of Obama’s relentless effort to drag America into the mire of socialism, the people of Massachusetts stunned the entire world by installing Republican Scott Brown in the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Democrat stalwart Ted Kennedy in a January 2010 special election. Yet to the dismay of everyone hoping for Brown to be a real Republican, the moment he passed inside the Beltway, he cast off his pickup truck driving “man of the people” persona, and embraced virtually every premise of the Washington D.C. status quo.

As the nation lurches into the 2012 election season, the propagandists of the liberal media have gone into high gear. Their singular job is to prevent the American people from correctly assessing the precarious condition of their country, what needs to be done about it and, most dangerously of all, who among the major Republican contenders could best assume the helm of the nation’s government in order to implement a proper course of action.

To date, the Republican presidential “debates” have done little more than denigrate the entire field of candidates. All too often, the only “debating” occurs between the targeted candidate of the week and a contentious, unabashedly biased, liberal “moderator.” Thus they have proven little better than a sorry mix of survivor styled “reality TV” and cheesy beauty pageants. Rarely have the candidates been allowed to openly hash out their stands on the issues of the day. Nor have they been allowed to sufficiently expound on the starkness of their political differences with Barack Obama.

In an objective and fact-based discussion of such topic matter, the dire condition of this country would take center stage, with the primary purpose being to determine the root cause for its disastrous downturn. The damage done since the advent of the Pelosi-Reid Congress and eventually abetted by the Obama White House, by which a formerly robust and secure America has been transformed into an economic basket case, increasingly subservient and vulnerable to frequently hostile foreign powers, simply does not play well on “Main Street.” Once the common citizen fully comprehends the straits into which the nation has been maneuvered, and who is ultimately responsible for the problems, every practitioner of “politics as usual” can expect to be shortly shown the door.

Barack Obama is once again demanding more than a trillion dollar increase in the nation’s “debt ceiling” which, if it can be arbitrarily raised, actually represents no ceiling at all. And once again, the enormity of that sum needs to be pondered in its ugly reality, lest the nation eventually grow completely indifferent to the catastrophe that such reckless expenditures represent. From its founding, the United States of America did not accrue its first trillion dollars of debt until 1982. Yet Obama, with no honest plan to address this hemorrhaging of the American people’s former industry and prosperity, will eagerly squander such a sum between now and the November elections, and then demand even more.

Perhaps more distressing is that, in the wake of Obama’s hideous expansion of the nanny state, the tendency of the “ruling class,” irrespective of political affiliation, is to preserve and maintain the new order. Far too many “Republicans” have willingly accepted the current status of the nation as being ripe for such a transition from freedom and self-reliance to state control and its inevitable finale of subservience and meager sustenance. Power, once wrested from the people, is not readily or willingly conceded back to them by any who find themselves at its epicenter.

Only by recognizing this truth can the abysmal behavior of the “Republican” Congress be understood.

Finally, Senate Republicans have achieved a political and moral victory. Caitlin Halligan, a far-left judicial activist and Obama nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was soundly rejected in a fifty-four to forty-five Senate vote on Tuesday. Though liberalism continues to ravage the nation, at least one extra-constitutional militant will not be spearheading the movement by exceeding and abusing the authority vested in the court system.

Heartland America is daily bombarded with horrendous news of continued unraveling of the economy, abetted by the latest Obama affronts to the Constitution and the free market. People on Main Street are angry and alarmed that the nation they love is being wrested from them while the liberal media looks on with gleeful approval. On that basis this small victory can be regarded as an encouragement in and of itself. But in a much larger sense, it embodies both the assaults on the nation by the liberal/Democrat political machine, and the manner in which they must be repulsed.

Liberal lawmakers and executives, from state capitols to Washington, have been aggressively undermining the foundations of this country for the purpose of remaking it in their twisted image, and politicizing every position of power where they can entrench themselves, in order to wield state sanctioned authority over the common citizen. Regular breaches of the public trust, perpetrated under the auspices of “the greater good,” pose a burgeoning threat to the lives, property, and freedoms formerly enjoyed as the unalienable rights of the American people.

Among the worst offenders have been those liberal judicial activists who shamelessly brandish their appointed and unaccountable positions as the means by which to conform society to their own perverse worldview. From the atrocity of “Roe vs. Wade” to the ongoing cavalcade of judicial opinions declaring any public profession of the Christian faith to be violations of the “separation of Church and state,” much of American life has had its norms and boundaries drastically reordered at the whims of liberal jurists. And given that such individuals are almost entirely beyond the reach of the electorate, it is altogether predictable that liberal strategists will focus their primary efforts at dominating the courts.

In the nation’s highest court, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Barack Obama’s two appointees, epitomize the brazen leftist arrogance that construes judicial office not as any objective charge to impartially uphold the law for all, but as an opportunity to exercise unbridled power. To nobody’s great surprise, they were considered for their current positions with only cursory references to their abhorrent track records of undermining basic constitutional principle. Their confirmation hearings quickly degenerated into contrived controversies pertaining to gender and ethnicity. Now they sit at the pinnacle of American jurisprudence, potentially controlling the final arbitration of such fundamental and defining issues as whether or not government can forcibly impress the population into socialism.

Among the defining issues facing a Supreme Court review is Obamacare, with its inarguable despotic excesses and unconstitutional infringements on the rights of American citizens. That it could have even reached this milestone signifies a dangerous lapse in the former adherence to the noble principles on which the nation was founded.

Somehow, the sun came up on Thanksgiving Day 2011, despite the shocking failure of the “Deficit Reduction Super Committee” to concoct a bipartisan program for long-term debt reduction in the federal budget. All of America, we were told, had pinned its hopes on the prospect of a miraculous agreement among committee members that would maintain all of the profligate nanny state handouts, vaporize the federal deficit, and otherwise burst forth with such promise that the nation’s beleaguered economy could rebound through the sheer power of optimism.

Amazingly however, the debate among committee members broke down right along its historical lines. Democrats refused to cut spending, and Republicans refused to raise taxes. The left determined to continue down its dark path and, for once, Republicans refused to go along with them. This, according to the pundit class, is what passes for moral equivalency. But in truth, absolutely nobody was surprised at the ultimate outcome.

Inside Washington, the die was cast last August 2, when the whole “super committee” scam was initially formulated. From the start, its implementation represented just another transparent ploy to divert attention from the intransigence of Democrats, enabled by the cowardice of Republicans, as both groups postured and tap-danced their way into raising the national debt ceiling by more than two trillion dollars over the next sixteen months.

The end game was never in question. Keep the spending going, while cleverly deflecting blame from the majority votes in both Houses of Congress by which it was facilitated. Now, the expectation is that everyone can wag their fingers at those wicked committee members, but not holding anyone in the House of Representatives or Senate directly responsible. And in their minds, these members of the “ruling class” have succeeded. Yet the electorate is much more informed than it was in the past, and the scam is not going to work this time around.

As the news of the “failed” committee effort is disseminated, and the nation is ceaselessly warned of the dire ramifications this all portends, the outrage that the whole endeavor has represented from its beginning, is once again being placed front and center for all of America to ponder. Some grim realities need to be highlighted.

First, the entire premise of a “1.2 trillion dollar” cut has always been a sham. This sum of money would ostensibly be “saved” over a ten year period during which time, even at today’s spending rates, the federal government would squander another 40 trillion dollars, give or take a few trillion. Yet the duplicity gets much worse. Current and historical spending patterns are on track to bloat the budget significantly beyond that amount. So even if any feigned deference to the paltry “cut” directives were upheld, future budgets need only claim that they had originally been projected for higher amounts, then to be “reduced” according to the required committee “cuts,” and all is right with the world. Problem solved.

In short, no real effort at actually cutting spending was ever intended, and if the current crop of Beltway insiders (regardless of party affiliation) maintains its hold on power, none will ever be made.

For all but the most blindly dogmatic, any former “bloom” has long since left the rosy facade of the “ Occupy Wall Street” phenomenon. Though the liberal media have been working overtime from the beginning to maintain the fantasy that the protesters embody the concerns and aspirations of Real America, and despite their best efforts to frame any discussion of the movement as a noble endeavor propelled by unfettered idealism, its sheer ugliness is daily becoming more apparent and inescapable.

Increasingly, “Occupy” events throughout the nation are becoming anarchistic zones of unchecked assault, robbery, rape, and even murder. Reports of spreading diseases, in one instance even including a particularly virulent form of tuberculosis, are ever more common at the protest gatherings. And in general, the lofty and pious rhetoric of the protesters is rendered completely implausible by the abhorrent filth and squalor in which its participants are willing to subsist.

Nevertheless, these brave and principled individuals, we are told, constitute a shining army of visionaries who have dedicated themselves to the establishment of a proper and decent America. The future of the nation is firmly in their hands, and we can all rejoice at the plans which they have conceived for us. And herein lies the one critical warning to be gleaned from this debacle by a vigilant America. From its inception to the appalling manner in which the “Occupy” movement is being advanced, it does indeed represent the grim fate awaiting the nation if a drastic course correction is not implemented soon.

To begin with, this was no uncoordinated groundswell of like-minded individuals sharing a collective yearning to establish justice and promote the “general welfare” of their fellow citizens. Despite all of the propaganda seeking to create parallels between the “Occupy” and Tea Party movements (aided and abetted by the entire liberal/Democrat political machine up to and including the Obama White House), the foundations and methods of the organizations could not be more disparate.

While the people of Heartland America did indeed rise up spontaneously in the spring of 2009, taking time off from their jobs and voicing their opposition to the decimation of their country occurring at the hands of the hard-left, the “Occupy” movement was hatched and nurtured from the top-down, ACORN style, and facilitated through enormous outside funding. These “Occupy” players are simply incapable of autonomously generating and supporting an effort of this scale. On a continual basis, they are being resupplied and underwritten from the outside through Soros style backing, which is the only reason they can maintain their noxious presence on public property while the nation’s adults accept their responsibilities and go to work each day.

Here again the situation is an excellent representation of the liberal economic model. A bunch of idle loafers gather together and engage in an orgy of narcissism, while their basic needs are met by donations made from the outside. On the same day that they stop receiving the sustenance garnered from the labors of others, the “Occupy” protestors will grow hungry and go home.

Obviously some unnamed and intellectually vacant do-gooders have decided of their own free will to bear the cost of this inane exercise.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the entire Herman Cain “sexual harassment” controversy was its complete predictability. The moment Cain stunned the nation by winning the Florida straw poll, an ambush of this nature became inevitable. And it is for that reason more than any other that, despite the ferocity of the attack, the vast majority of early supporters remain steadfastly in his camp.

After being so overused, the pattern has become unmistakable. The moment any true conservative moves to the political forefront, the script books are opened and a methodical deconstruction of that individual begins. First, some quality (any quality) is spotlighted and identified as a critical flaw, after which the news media relentlessly repeats the mantra. Very soon, the usual “Republican” turncoats begin to concede that the liberals may have a point. Finally, a blanket pronouncement is made in absolute terms, to the effect that the former “rising star” has been rendered irreparably “unelectable” and must be abandoned “for the good” of some more worthy cause, invariably referring to the GOP establishment.

Cain’s recent “sexual harassment” debacle has unwaveringly followed this pattern. Rising meteorically in the polls, he clearly represented a looming threat, not only to the Marxist aspirations of the Obama Administration, but also the inner circles of the Republican Party where cronyism predominates. Initial attempts to trivialize Cain’s popularity as a “flash in the pan” thoroughly failed to dissuade the gathering grassroots momentum propelling him forward.

Reporters and analysts sought on every occasion to deflate his following by demeaning his “999” tax reform plan and reminding us of his lack of political experience. Of course such criticisms have been comical, coming as they do from people who fawn all over Barack Obama, whose pathetic record of voting “present” in the Illinois Senate and an attendance in the United States Senate literally measured in days, can hardly be held up as worthwhile background for the nation’s highest office. Nor do the worst projections of negative fallout from the “999” tax plan compare with the fate facing the nation if Obama is able to complete his own plans for its cultural and economic destruction during a second term.

Thus the slanderous barrage was unleashed against Cain by “The Politico,” a very typical left wing website reflecting all of the objectivity and reason of “The Daily Kos” and “The Huffington Post,” except that it is presented to the public under the banner of being “mainstream.” And believing that such a facade represented political safety, the predictable gaggle of RINOs were soon in front of the cameras pronouncing the Cain candidacy to be DOA.

Forget the fact that with every such attempt to betray a Republican candidate, they improve the political prospects for Obama’s reelection. In their minds, such a possibility is far preferable to the unthinkable alternative of a real conservative ever again assuming the reins of national power. One Ronald Reagan was bad enough. And they certainly do not want to contend with any more of his kind.

Similarly, the less than flamboyant 2009 response of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address prompted the “experts” on both sides of the aisle to declare Jindal’s political prospects to be over.

It is hard to know where to begin listing the reasons why “liberalism” and “hypocrisy” have become synonymous. But the latest flap over some warmed over charges of “sexual harassment” against Herman Cain is a sterling example. Outrageous though this synthetic controversy may be, it hardly comes as a surprise. Conservatives have been warning for weeks that the left would most certainly engage in just such behavior once Cain’s star began to rise. Yet it is always amazing how shamelessly liberals can ignore the mountains of evidence proving their insincerity while they lecture the nation with almost comical passion.

Nor do they seem to be the least bit aware of how thoroughly they caricature their ceaseless self-glorification. This latest barrage against Cain is nearly satirical, and absolutely reeks with all of the stereotypical bleatings from their leftist strategy book. On the heels of the unsubstantiated and ambiguous claims of Cain’s supposedly crude innuendos, it is a sure bet that he will next be accused of having stolen hubcaps from his subordinates’ cars in Godfathers’ parking lots.

Admittedly, this current chorus of liberal fury exhibits an amazing ability to switch on a moment’s notice from alarm and righteous indignation to total indifference, and back to moral outrage, as varying events have unfolded and either presented a public relations liability or an opportunity to make political hay. Particularly in light of the recent history of real sex scandals perpetrated by prominent liberals, most of which involved substantiated incidents of harassment, assault, and abuse, liberals have been forced into some thoroughly shameless gymnastics in hopes of navigating the gauntlet needed to maintain the moral “high ground.” But of course they are up to the task.

Consider the drastic lane changes that were required in the 1990s, after the 1992 election of philanderer in chief Bill Clinton. After the stormy 1991 Supreme Court appointment of Clarence Thomas, which was punctuated by spurious charges against him of sexual harassment, liberals believed they owned the issue. Despite their failure to thwart his confirmation, they declared a moral victory, and insisted that votes to confirm Thomas constituted acceptance of abusive behavior towards women. For the next few years, they remained on that pious perch, loudly crowing of their superior advocacy of the fairer sex.

However, it was not long before the advent of the Clinton Presidency thoroughly discredited such claims and, more significantly, proved the entire liberal/Democrat establishment to be entirely phony in its professed concern for women in general. From the repugnant treatment of Paula Jones to a physical assault on Kathleen Willey (followed by thuggish attempts to silence her), to the very likely rape of Juanita Broderick to the exploitation of Monica Lewinsky, Clinton revealed an absolute contempt for women, other than as objects of his own amusement and self-gratification.

Even more significant however was the manner in which the entire liberal political cabal not only refused to condemn his actions, but breached every boundary of credibility and decency in order to defend him. New and contorted definitions of “sexual harassment” were concocted by liberal politicians and pundits which somehow always preserved a “safe zone” around Clinton.

Those who ascribe to such quaint and sentimental notions as national sovereignty and cultural cohesiveness would certainly not shed any tears over the demise of the European Union. Once praised as the gleaming example of the new order, it now teeters on total collapse. And in an inarguable statement on the reality of the human condition, its travails do not involve any irreconcilable conflict of altruistic philosophies, or contrasting visions of the future ascendancy of civilization. Rather, the widening rift among its members centers on the comparatively prosaic issue of money.

More specifically, those people on the street are being confronted by the harsh realities of having to eventually pay the bill for their promised socialist utopia. And on both sides of the equation, they are not happy about it. Those who were once told they could expect a free lunch in perpetuity, but now face the grim prospect of having to put in a good day’s work for a fair day’s wages, have concluded instead that riots and violence in the public square can somehow make those elusive Euros magically fall from the sky. Thus, the pandemonium in Athens Greece, to name just one example, represents the best efforts of hapless citizens, too long accustomed to reaping the fruits of other peoples’ labor, to continue their parasitic existence with no expectation of accountability.

On the other end of the scale, stable and productive countries such as Germany, which have paid far more than their fair share just to keep the European Union scheme on life support, are slowly coming to the realization that they will have to make such sacrifices on an ever increasing scale, in order to have any hope of holding things together. Unfortunately for them, human nature is what it is, and as time goes on more people will realize that it is easier to ride the cart than to pull it. And if some idealistic countries are congenial to accepting this travesty and thereby enable it to breach national boundaries, then of course the field of willing takers will expand beyond anyone’s worst fears.

In light of these circumstances, it is not at all difficult to foresee the end game, the specifics of which were inevitable from before the European Union monstrosity was ever conceived. An increasing number of people demanding “benefits” from their respective governments means that ever larger taxes will be likewise demanded from those segments of society still capable of paying the bills. Recipients of those monies, having done nothing to earn them, essentially devalue the currency in general. Eventually, not enough of anything is being produced to keep funding this vicious cycle, so it collapses.

Efforts to stave off such a collapse through austerity, venomously opposed by the dependent citizenry, will be diluted or completely stalled, thus averting the only viable fix. Conversely, the repeated decisions among European leaders to continue any portion of the funding will at best only delay the inevitable, while vastly increasing the magnitude of the implosion once it eventuates.

Assessing the sum total of the latest news, one is left wondering whether to laugh or be seriously alarmed. Those pathetic bands of shiftless loiterers on Wall Street and in prominent locations across the nation, while hardly overwhelming in number, nonetheless represent the latest iteration of the Obama/Alinsky “community organizing” antics. But despite the liberal media relentlessly trumpeting the far-left agenda and supposed strength of the Wall Street itinerants, few Americans are overly impressed with them or interested in listening to their loony advocacy of undiluted collectivism.

Sadly however, the usual suspects within the “me too” wing of the Republican Party are already telegraphing their intentions of eventually running for cover, or at least granting a little validity to the protestors and their demands. Clearly they hope to dodge any arrows from the liberal “analysts” on the nightly news and weekend “roundtable” shows. It is obvious that no ideological precept held by the leftists is ever too extreme or deranged to garner some degree of philosophical concurrence from the Republican establishment. And the latest GOP nod towards the collection of misfits on Wall Street is no exception.

So ultimately, the “Inside the Beltway” crowd is essentially conceding that it has no intention of inflaming liberal sentiments by curtailing the outlandish spending binges of the past three years. A new annual deficit “baseline,” adding well over a trillion dollars in new debt every year, was established in the early days of the Obama administration. Accordingly, from here forward any minuscule trimming of that unimaginable bloat will be decried as “draconian cuts” and condemned as further examples of callous indifference from those “mean spirited” Republicans.

Throughout Europe, the spurious and unsustainable promises of socialist utopia, Ponzi schemes all, are collapsing, leaving entire segments of the population in the throes of riots and revolt. The few remaining adults on the continent are faced with the reality that the massive funding needed to prop up the sham was bound to eventually run out, and now no longer exists. As a result the dream of socialist beneficence simply cannot keep going, no matter how hysterically the short-sighted and morally vacant masses demand it.

While America was once safely insulated, both culturally and geographically, from the downward spiral of European nihilism, the unceasing corrosiveness of the American counterculture, culminating in the electoral success of Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2006 and again in 2008, has facilitated an incredible degree of destruction on this continent as well. The inherent strengths and traditions of Americanism, so critical to resisting the leftist onslaught, have been systematically marginalized and dismantled by the current administration and its collaborators in Congress. As a result the nation is not only suffering economically, but unraveling culturally as well. The only hope of avoiding total societal collapse lies in the possibility of an immediate and drastic change in the national leadership in next November’s elections.

However, if the current regime is merely supplanted by an insipid or unremarkable Republican, America will simply languish for a while amid the horrendous damage that has been perpetrated over the past few years, awaiting the eventuality of the future Democrat who will simply continue the process.

On August 1, 1988, several dozen radio stations across America began broadcasting a revolutionary radio program in which a single individual, with no guests, delivered a veritable monologue of observations on the state of the nation and its culture. In only a few short years, that handful of local radio affiliates grew to over six hundred, with the total audience easily topping twenty million. Thus had Rush Limbaugh and his “Excellence In Broadcasting” network, stormed the national stage.

As the voice of the American Heartland, it was immediately apparent to the left that Limbaugh constituted a grave threat to the liberal agenda. Consequently, throughout the past twenty three years, he has regularly endured contemptible attacks which are standard fare from the liberal playbook. From deliberate misquotes to selective editing to outright fabrications attributed to him, the left has relentlessly sought not to rebut his worldview, but to forcibly eliminate it from public discourse.

Most notably, it futilely attempted for a time to compete directly against him. One leftist “savior” after another was presented to the public as a new left-of-center “rising star” on talk radio, and thereafter trumpeted as the latest “antidote to Rush Limbaugh,” replete with promises of the impending demise of his dominance. At one point an entire liberal radio network, “Air America,” was established, under the auspices of neutralizing his presentation of the truth though yet another dispersal of liberal misinformation. But in the end, the entire strategy only served to prove how irreconcilably out of touch the left was, and is, with Real America, and how starkly its fraudulence and disingenuousness are contrasted against the mindset of those common people on Main Street.

Contrary to its obsessive quest to outdo Limbaugh, the American left had no driving purpose for any new outlet for its propaganda, since it already possessed an overwhelming advantage, at least in the number of such venues, with its total dominance of the major broadcast networks, cable news networks (with the sole exception of Fox News), and all of the nation’s largest newspaper markets. Its ability to shape the debate of the day was never endangered by any lack of its own sympathetic mouthpieces, but by the collapse of the total information monopoly it had previously enjoyed.

Unfortunately, even the enormity of Limbaugh’s popularity was insufficient to overcome the forces that coalesced in 2006 and again in 2008 to give Democrats control of both the Congress and the White House. This afforded the left yet another opportunity to sidestep any constitutional safeguards and impose its sordid agenda on an unwilling people, ultimately threatening the very future of the nation.

Yet America did not accept this fate passively. In early 2009, mere weeks after the inauguration of Barack Obama, and despite the nearly universal media accolades offered in praise of him, a heartfelt movement of concerned citizens congealed and almost overnight grew to mammoth proportions. Its members recognized with alarm that the great nation they had known and loved was being systematically wrested from them and dismantled before their very eyes. In this manner the “Tea Party” movement had arisen from the ashes of an ingrown and often cowardly Republican Party that increasingly sought to retain its national presence by kowtowing to the liberal Democrats.