A website called “Save Our Movement” demands right-wing purity from Republicans:
We Declare ourselves INDEPENDENT of the Republican Party, which has in the past manipulated its Conservative Base to win election after election and which then betrays everything that Base fought for and believed.
We reject the idea that the electoral goals of the Republican Party are identical to the goals of the Tea Party Movement or that this Movement is an adjunct to the Republican Party.
We reject the Republican Party professionals who now seek to use the Tea Party Movement for their corrupt and narrow political purposes.
We acknowledge that standing on our principles does not mean throwing out our common sense; we will NOT abandon our principles in the name of a nonexistent bipartisanship or a misguided devotion to an illusion of “pragmatism”, which disguises a desire to betray us in its name.
We reject the scare tactics of the Republican Party, which seeks to herd us into voting for candidates who supposedly represent the “lesser of two evils” in the name of fealty to the principle of small government and then having to suffer such candidates as they betray that principle. We are not well served by parasites whose livelihoods depend on the very State whose power to reward or sanction we elected them to limit and proscribe.
We insist that the Tea Party Movement does NOT consider the election of Republicans in and of itself to be necessarily beneficial to our goals.
We demand the Republican Party understand that we reject its attempts to co-opt us.
WE WILL WORK AGAINST THEM when they oppose our views by trying to force Republicans In Name Only (RINO) on us. When Republicans are in accord with their Conservative Base as well as the Independent voters who align with it, IT WINS; when they are NOT in accord with the Conservative Base and the Independent voters who align with it, IT LOSES.
We reject RINO money; we reject RINO “advice”; we reject RINO “professional experience”; we reject RINO “progressivism”; we reject RINO support of Big Government; we reject RINO back room deal making; we reject RINO pork spending; we reject false RINO professions of Conservative views and we reject the RINO’s statist subversion of the principles of small government for which the Republican Party is supposed to stand.
Republican Party attempts to ignore the will of the Base, as it did in 1976, 1992, 1996, 2006 and 2008, resulted in disaster; when it embraces the will of the Base, as it did in 1980, 1984 and 1994, it wins historic victories.
We demand the Republican Party recognize that while the Tea Party Movement cannot guarantee their aid will help them win elections, it is very likely WE CAN MAKE THEM LOSE if they are disdainful of our goals.
Meanwhile, the party continues co-opting activists:
One of the Tea Party’s top leaders was recently paid $7,500 by a campaign run by a California Republican group to promote one of their ballot initiatives.
Mark Meckler is a spokesman for the Tea Party Patriots and had publicly distanced himself from the Republican Party. But state records show that he accepted the money for “petition circulation management” from the “Citizen Power Campaign Supported by the Lincoln Club of Orange County.”
The RNC’s leaked fundraising memo has garnered a backlash:
“They don’t get it,” Judson Phillips, a Nashville lawyer who organized the National Tea Party Convention earlier this year, told the Beast. “They freaking don’t get it.” Phillips said he disagreed with the characterization of small donors as “reactionary” and motivated by “fear.” “Our motives are patriotic,” he said. “Can they be any more insulting? I guess they could have called us teabaggers, but Holy Cow, I’m so blown away by the whole thing I’m just sitting here stunned.”
A spokesman for FreedomWorks, the activist group led by Dick Armey that helped organize the first Tea Party protests, called the presentation “inept and silly.”
“I’m just kind of shocked,” the group’s spokesman, Adam Brandon, said. “I dont get what they were trying to accomplish…if I were them I’d try to say we’re strong on policy and we’re going to get the energy of these Tea Party activists and earn their trust. That seems a much more compelling message than cartoons.”
He added that the “fear” descriptor, while technically accurate in the sense donors are concerned about government policy, sent the wrong message. “When people start using the term ‘fear’ you start getting the black helicopter mythology going,” he said.
Pass the popcorn.
