Believe it or not, sometimes the President is right.
A while ago, during the budget lockdown and subsequent government shutdown, President Obama made a good point. If you want things to change, better start winning some elections.
It’s not often that he makes a salient point, but when he does it’s often about politics.
The Republicans want to stop the expansion of government and get the bureaucracy off the back of the American people.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of the American people seem to think the way to accomplish that is through accusations of Obama’s birthplace, chemtrails in the sky and complaining about the GMO’s in their box of Cheerios.
This fringe segment of GOP is doing more damage than good.
While I would never suggest that the GOP cave on principles or on core issues — such as illegal immigration, gun control or government spending — it also has to control the more fringe elements of the party that continually push the issue of impeachment and criminality on the part of this administration.
We cannot hope to gather votes and win elections while tilting at windmills and chasing our tail in distraction after distraction. Whether or not their argument is valid is not the issue- winning elections is.
The grassroots Tea Party groups are the organizations that are most responsible for keeping these people in line.
As a collective grassroots effort, the Tea Party tends to attract a wide variety of these “fringe” arguments and has a tendency to promote a more libertarian ideology.
It needs to restrain itself from putting the cart before the donkey. The Tea Party should be now focusing on getting out the vote, encouraging people to register as Republicans and giving the GOP a consolidated ground game in what may be the most pivotal election to turn the tide against this government in years.
There is opportunity with the failures of ObamaCare, taxation and stalemate in Congress — let’s not blow it on specious arguments.
The Tea Party was formed in the aftermath of the Affordable Care Act legislation and has forgotten its roots – the “Taxed Enough Already” crowd.
As such, they have fallen into the trap of not focusing on core Republican arguments and have driven people out of the party to vote Libertarian instead of Republican.
What are those principles?
Lower taxes, a smaller more efficient government, strong national defense and free markets should be our national argument. That’s it.
That is a platform that people will vote for, whether they are liberal or conservative. Focusing on what normally are states’ rights issues such as abortion, gay rights and Common Core are sidetracking our national and congressional elections.
Once we start winning some elections, regain Congress and the White House, then we can get back to more reasonable government and repeal and restrain what has been done to this country in the last 5 years.
Until then, we are just tilting at windmills.
Thomas Purcell is a nationally syndicated columnist and host of the Liberty Never Sleeps podcast hour and author of “Shotgun Republic.”
