LaTourette may have no idea what the Tea Party actually is, but he's right on a few things

Politico, CNN and a Republican who slams the Tea Party are letting us know what the 2014 and 2016 election efforts are going to be like. 

Republican Rep. Steve LaTourette slammed the Tea Party on Thursday and said the GOP needs to start acting like a national party.

“There’s a one-word phrase we use in Ohio for that: ‘crap,’” LaTourette said on CNN’s “Starting Point,” when asked whether he bought a Tea Party leader’s line that that group is the nation’s “last best hope” to “restore America’s founding principles.”

Is this a media fail, or a congressman's fail, or both? 

Thanks for helping liberal media, the statists and the Republican status quo marginalize the real Tea Party movement, LaTourette. Care to clarify your comments, or are you a part of the GOP's underwhelming status quo and your goal was achieved?

It is going to be a long haul to achieve these things: limiting government, clearly regarding the Constitution, controlling gov costs, limiting regulations so they are not unfairly limiting private commerce, assuring social security and the like survive without being abused by government, and reducing taxes on everyone.

Those, quite simply, are the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT INTERESTS. Everything else people connect to the Tea Party is "crap."

Most of the article (linked below), and so much of LaTourette's comments, are "CRAP." I haven't determined if the Politico piece is a good (or a selective) sample of the congressman's entire commentary on the CNN show, or what the congressman's history with Tea Party comments is, just so that's out in the open. No matter the context, though, this part is right on: 

LaTourette says there are "controversial Republicans who cast the whole party in a 'nutty' light..."

“We have the right message on the finances,” LaTourette continued, but added, “We have to get out of people’s lives, get out of people’s bedrooms, and we have to be a national party…or else we’re going to lose.”

That's right! But I harshly disagree that these are Tea Party activists. The really, truly grass roots Tea Partiers believe very simple things that have gotten "crapped all over" by Republican stalwarts and those fixated on social issues such as gay rights (forget marriage, call it gay rights and they fight it, and they are wrongly roped in with the Tea Party), anti-abortion activists, Christian-only ethics, severe anti-Muslims (not just against extremist Muslims), a variety of conspiracy theorists (birthers, for instance), and more. These social and paranoia issues are not the issues of Tea Partiers, even if they hold views in some of those areas.

Somehow, the effort to connect the Tea Party with extreme morality nannies and the like has worked. That's "crap." The Tea Party is not a frigging grab bag of Republicans, or social conservatives, or conservative Christians. LaTourette, were he not an ignoramus, ought to know that. Where or not he does, I don't know, I don't follow the man. But he just made an ass of himself on CNN and Poltico, as far as I can tell. 

The real Tea Party is "nutty" only to partisan Democrats, leftists or those who believe the U.S. Constitution is an outdated document (and Tea Party is well-misrepresented by many eager-beaver leftist media people). 

The truly problematic Republicans are ignorant, poorly informed and insular, including science-deficient, Bible-fixated ones. I do not mean devout Christians, but people who are quite obviously ignorantly fixated on a juvenile doctrine based on the Bible and spending way too much time talking about the Bible and not real life matters, like how the human body actually works.

These are NOT the Tea Party. Akin is not the Tea Party. Akin was the poster boy for the ugly Republicans this time around, and I was cringing at anyone who went out of their way to support him after his rape-physiology comments that were a throwback to early 1900s.

Allen West is a Tea Party Republican -- some think he's evil or whatever. Well, snap out of it. He's a solid guy. He lost, sadly, because we need less politically motivated wusses, and more real men in Congress. But South Florida instead has now got Patrick Murphy: daddy's boy.

Some want us to believe, like LaTourette would seem to, that "Tea Party" is the label for weirdo, ignorant political views. If ignorant equals Tea Partier, then here's a Tea Party member: Harry Reid. His comments on Obama being a well-spoken, light-skinned Negro were as old-man, out-of-date, white elitist stupid as it gets. But look where he is: Leading the Senate as a Democrat! But we know he's not a Tea Party member, don't we? 

(And, while I'm on Republican oddities, uh... Santorum? Lose the damned sweater vest! This isn't a Bible convention, this is national politics, and you looked like a choir nerd!) 

Read the whole piece I've quoted at Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83571.html#ixzz2BebOd5OZ

If you value the ideals of the actual Tea Party, then prevent the movement being roped in with all sorts of issues, and with fake activist groups who are out for themselves, not the real Tea Party ideals.

Don't do what LaTourette has done. 

- jR

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