Tea Party Wins

[a_majoor]

The TEA Party movement and Super Tuesday. As expected, the narrative the legacy media is pushing simply does not fit the facts on the ground. I predict a lot of exploding heads come November 2012...

http://www.broadsidebooks.net/2012/03/07/super-tuesday-explodes-two-myths-about-the-tea-party/

Super Tuesday Explodes Two Myths About the Tea Party

By: Michael_Patrick_Leahy
March 07, 2012
Results from yesterday’s “Super Tuesday” Republican primaries in ten states exploded two myths about the Tea Party movement.

Myth #1 – The Tea Party is losing its political power.

The mainstream media and the Democratic Party keeping slogging the dead horse that the Tea Party movement has peaked. They point to the lack of public rallies of the sort that characterized 2009 and 2010 as evidence. Balderdash, respond local tea party activists from around the country. We’ve moved on to more important things–like organizing to get-out-the-vote.

Yesterday’s results proved that the Tea Party movement is not only live and well–it’s thriving.

The Tea Party movement claimed another victim among incumbent GOP politicians in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, where 4 term GOP incumbent Jeanne Schmidt was upset by tea party challenger Brad Wenstrup, 49% to 43%, despite outspending him by a 3 to 1 margin.  The  noise you hear in the distance is the fearful expectations of a pair of old GOP Senate bulls about to experience serious Tea Party challenges in their primaries–Indiana’s Richard Lugar and Utah’s Orrin Hatch.

Exit polls also showed that GOP Primary voters are strongly supportive of the Tea Party movement. 62% of Tennessee voters fit that category, as do 59% of Ohio voters.

Myth #2 – Tea Party supporters won’t vote for Mitt Romney.

Exit polls in the two most contested states provide evidence that this oft-heard claim is untrue. In Ohio, supporters of the Tea Party movement virtually split their support between Rick Santorum (39%) and Mitt Romney (36%). Gingrich and Paul lagged far behind. In Tennessee, Santorum (39%) beat both Gingrich (27%)  and Romney (25%) among Tea Party supporters. While it’s clear that Tennessee tea partiers prefer Santorum to Romney, a 14% margin is not exactly a tsunami. And Romney beat Gingrich, the only one of these three who deserves credit for helping launch the movement in 2009, in Ohio, and effectively tied him in Tennessee.

While it’s true that very few local tea party leaders have endorsed Romney, that strong opposition appears not to have translated into unbending opposition among the tea party rank and file.

With a hat tip to Mark Twain, it’s fair for those of us in the Tea Party movement to let the Democratic Party and the mainstream media in on this poorly kept secret: “Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Michael Patrick Leahy is the editor of the Voices of the Tea Party e-book series and co-founder of Top Conservatives on Twitter and the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition. His new book, Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement, will be published by Broadside Books in spring, 2012. He can be reached on Twitter at @michaelpleahy .

 

[a_majoor]

A look at what the TEA Party movement has achieved already. This is a pretty potent message to send for the downline elections in November, and to use in State and Municipal elections in the years to come. Unwinding $3-500 billion in spending in two years demonstrates that real spending cuts, elimination of the deficit and dealing with the national debt and unfunded liabilities is indeed possible, not something that you just throw your hands up over and declare impossible:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/04/08/the-tea-party-already-saved-taxpayers-300-billion-maybe-a-half-trillion/

The Tea Party Already Saved Taxpayers $300 Billion (Maybe a Half Trillion)

A “counterfactual” is an analysis of “what would have happened if.” President Obama’s claim that “the stimulus added as many as 3.3 million jobs” is the most famous example of this genre.

Counterfactual analysis of the effects of the 2010 election on federal spending can be executed, unlike the jobs-saved analysis, on a more solid foundation with nothing more than a pocket calculator. The procedure is simple: First, we find what the Obama administration intended to spend in 2011 and 2012 on the eve of the November 2010 election (and not knowing that an electoral disaster lay in store). Second, we compare these figures with what was actually spent in 2011 and what is likely to be spent in 2012.  For example, if the administration planned to spend $3 trillion in 2011 but actually spent $2.5 trillion after the Republicans gained the House, the “counterfactual saving” for 2011 is $.5 trillion.

According to my arithmetic, the unanticipated Republican November 2010 sweep of the House with victories of fiscally-conservative freshmen saved or will save taxpayers at least $300 billion dollars for the two-year period 2011 and 2012 alone – a figure that may understate the saving by another two hundred billion.

Let’s begin in 2010 as the Office of Management and Budget prepared the fiscal year 2012 budget for the President.  The Congressional mid-term elections lay ahead. This budget reveals that Obama, with continued strong majorities in both houses, intended to spend $3,818 billion in 2011 and $3,728 billion in 2012.

A confusing and bitter battle over federal spending followed in the aftermath of the Republican sweep of 63 House seats. Both sides negotiated stop-gap measures, continuing resolutions, and “grand bargains” with clear goals. The Republicans wanted less spending and no substantive tax increases. The Democrats fought against spending cuts and lobbied for tax increases. They floated proposals for a “second stimulus” and, failing that, for an infrastructure bank. The melee resembled two football teams playing on a foggy field in pursuit of a loose football. After numerous turnovers, they end up in a huge pile with the referee unscrambling the players to determine who has the ball.

In this case, we have a clean measure of which team ends up with the ball. We know that the Obama administration planned to spend $3,818 billion in 2011 and $3,728 in 2012 on the eve of the election. The OMB’s March 2012 figures reveal that $3,603 billion was actually spent in 2011 and estimate 2012 spending will be $3,627.

When we compare intended with actual spending, we get a “counterfactual” saving of $294 billion for the two-year period. Without the Republican victory, Obama would have spent $294 billion or almost $.3 trillion more.

By the end of fiscal year 2012, the counterfactual saving will probably be closer to $500 billion for two reasons.  First, if the Ryan Budget prevails for fiscal year 2012, it spends $98 billion less than the Obama budget would have.  Second, Democrat budgets schedule spending reductions for out years. True to form, the Obama budget called for an unlikely $92 billion absolute spending cut in 2012. Past history teaches that such promised spending cuts are forgotten when the time comes around. If we add the likely Ryan budget $98 billion saving to the fake Obama hundred-billion-dollar cut in 2012, we raise the counterfactual saving to almost $500 billion. That is a saving worthy of note.

In his first year in office, President Obama increased the federal government’s share of GDP from twenty to twenty five percent! If we add in state and local spending, government approached a forty percent share of the economy. His Obama Care and proposals for more stimulus spending and massive infrastructure investments were designed to keep the federal government at a quarter or more of the economy as a new normal.

The 2012 election will be a battle by the Republicans to roll back federal spending to its historical rate of twenty percent or below. An Obama victory would enshrine the quarter-of-the-economy federal share as a new baseline. The United States would then be on its way to European welfare state spending levels and would have to find ways of raising revenues to European taxation levels.

It is this scary scenario that gave birth to the Tea Party. The mainstream press has repeatedly tried to write the Tea Party’s obituary as out-of-touch, ineffective, and having lost its steam. That the Tea Party has already saved taxpayers between $300 and $500 billion shows its striking impact on the American fiscal scene. This insight should invigorate its members for the 2012 election.

 

[cupper]

OMG, Zombie Alert. I thought this topic died a slow painful death.  :facepalm:  :facepalm:

 

[a_majoor]

If you think that you will be in for a real surprise this November.... >

 

[cupper]

If you think that you will be in for a real surprise this November.... >

I don't have enough faces to palm to respond to that.

:rofl:

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I don't have enough faces to palm to respond to that.

:rofl:

It appears you're one of those Democrats that say the Tea Party is dead, or follow their dictum anyway.

Rather than argue, he said, she said, why not just be satisfied to wait and see if they make an impact.

That way you don't have to appear so self centred and condescending.

 

[a_majoor]

Other Democrats appear to be taking direct action against the TEA Party movement, which should indicate that someone is taking them very seriously indeed:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/11/send-us-everything/?print=1

‘Send us everything’
By Eric Wilson & Toby Marie Walker  11:09 AM 04/11/2012

During a 2009 commencement address at Arizona State University, President Obama joked that he’d send the IRS after those who didn’t see eye-to-eye with him. For over 100 tea party groups, his comments are not amusing; they are a reality.

The tea party has had a profound impact on the national political debate, bringing the size and scope of the federal government to the forefront of the American dialogue. As voters increasingly connect with the tea party’s values, President Obama and Democrats have grown concerned about the movement’s grassroots energy. In a “Chicago style” attempt to smother the movement before the 2012 election, the Obama administration is using the IRS to attack tea party groups.

The Waco Tea Party submitted an application for tax-exempt status in 2010. Nearly two years after the IRS’s 90-day response window elapsed, the group finally received a reply — a list of over 50 demands. The three-year-old organization was asked to compile every Facebook post and tweet it had ever produced. It was told to submit transcriptions of its weekly radio show — a request that would cost $25,000 to comply with, more than twice the group’s annual budget. It was ordered to explain any “close relationships” with candidates. And when the Waco Tea Party asked the IRS to clarify “close relationship” and “candidate,” the IRS replied, “Send us everything.”

To make the demands even more egregious, the over 30,000 pages of demanded information was to be compiled in just 14 days.

The Waco Tea Party is not alone. While liberal organizations have been given a fast pass through the tax-exempt application process, hundreds of freedom-fighting groups have received these intrusive questionnaires, which consume time and money that could otherwise be used to protect constitutional liberties.

The IRS has demanded that an Ohio group produce a synopsis of each book it has recommended to members, along with the authors’ names, the books’ titles and details about the authors’ relationships with a local conservative activist.

Obama’s IRS has requested that a Kentucky group release information about its board’s family members — if they intend to run for office, if they have started up similar groups, if they have ever applied for a tax-exempt status.

From others, the IRS has demanded sensitive information about leaders’ resumes, donors, groups’ future plans and whether any board members are thinking about running for political office.

The IRS says it’s issuing these questionnaires to investigate whether the primary — not sole — purpose of these tea party groups is to promote social welfare, but the inquiries have dug deep into the personal lives of tea party leaders and their families.

Marcus Owens, the former chief of the IRS’s tax exemption unit, told Roll Call that the extensiveness of the IRS’s inquiries is “an overreach.”

Some members of Congress have begun to question the legality of these demands.

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander recently said, “The government should not have what amounts to an enemies list based on what people or organizations say or believe.”

Given the true grassroots nature of the tea party, independent groups do not have the financial or human resources to properly fight back. By abusing the IRS’s authority, the Obama administration is suppressing the movement’s freedom of speech.

This is a dangerous precedent to set — and it should concern all Americans, whether someone’s a tea partier or not. As Tom Zawistowski, the executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, put it, “This is the kind of personal information that this government is going to be demanding from your church, your doctor, your hospital, your business and your favorite charity going forward.”

The tea party will fight back.

We have joined with Zawistowski and other conservative activists to launch ProtectTheTeaParty.com and form the Liberty Defense Foundation, an alliance created of, by and for the grassroots tea party movement that is meant to serve as a resource for the IRS’s tea party targets.

Obama’s IRS is unfairly working to shut down tea party groups or — at the very least — force successful organizations to turn their attention away from the important issues they fight for every day.

The movement’s voice will not be left unheard. We will take on the Obama administration, fight against its attempts to confiscate our First Amendment rights, push back against administration officials’ demands for us to send them everything, protect the tea party and ensure that all Americans can take advantage of their constitutional liberties.

Eric Wilson is the director of the Kentucky 9/12 Project, and Toby Marie Walker is the lead facilitator of the Waco Tea Party. Both groups have been involved with the IRS’s proceedings and are founding board members of the Liberty Defense Foundation (www.ProtectTheTeaParty.com).

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/11/send-us-everything/#ixzz1rl4nLZmQ

 

[cupper]

It appears you're one of those Democrats that say the Tea Party is dead, or follow their dictum anyway.

Rather than argue, he said, she said, why not just be satisfied to wait and see if they make an impact.

That way you don't have to appear so self centred and condescending.

I didn't say that the Tea Party was dead. I thought that this topic thread was dead, as it seemed to have not appeared in quite a while. Everyone seemed preoccupied with the Election thread instead.

The Tea Party is very alive, well, and kicking. And all of my previous comment still stand.

You appear to misunderstand me good sir. I am neither Democrat or Republican (aside from the fact that I am prohibited by law to exercise an opinion at the voting booth) for I see flaws in both parties. Just a person who feels that there is a lot of misinformation being vomited up in the media on both sides.

Unfortunately this primary season is one sided. There will be plenty of opportunities during the general election to chastise the Dems for their blunders as well.

 

[a_majoor]

Photo essay by "Zombie" of a TEA Party movement rally for Mitt Romney, in San Fransisco of all places: http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/04/16/tea-party-rallies-for-romney-in-san-francisco/

Now the TEA Partiers are probably only lukewarm for Governor Romney, but they are positively cold for the current Administration, so expect the movement to start pulling forward towards their goals (and certainly expect them to be making demands come Jan 2013).

 

[muskrat89]

An article on what the Tea Party is up to:  http://news.yahoo.com/3-years-later-whats-become-tea-party-205645508.html

Hoping Yahoo is a neutral enough source to quell the scoffers

 

[a_majoor]

No wonder the TEA Party movement is so effective; look who is running it:

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/04/the-tea-party-the-greatest-feminist-movement/

The Tea Party: The greatest feminist movement?
Posted by Anne Sorock    Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 10:02am

Two standout appearances at Chicago’s Tea Party this Monday were familiar faces from Saturday’s Wisconsin event: BigJournalism’s Dana Loesch and Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch.

These two women, working moms who are relatively recent entrants into the political fray, are examples of one of the most underreported stories of the movement: the Tea Party’s empowerment of women.

It is women in particular who have embraced the movement, either in leadership roles or in behind-the-scenes work. The stay-at-home moms and working women who sacrifice family time in order to commit themselves to the movement are inspiring generations of young American females.

Dana Loesch gave a take-no-prisoners speech that had people cheering her on from the furthest reaches of Daley Plaza. And Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch’s appeal to keep in the fight–as she is having to–wasn’t lost on the scores of women who had taken time off work and mothering to travel into to Monday’s Tea Party.

Lt. Gov. Kleefisch, subjected to recall along with Gov. Scott Walker, is facing an uphill battle. While Gov. Walker’s plight has caught the attention of national media–and donor’s wallets–Kleefisch is having trouble getting noticed in the shadow of the Walker spotlight. A defeated Kleefisch would leave Walker alone in the State House; in her place would be the president of the Wisconsin Firefighters Union.

So Kleefisch–and Loesch–and countless women across the country (Toby Marie Walker’s Waco Tea Party comes to mind as a particularly feisty and effective bunch) are fighting on. In doing so, the story of women and the Tea Party grows more prominent–and more difficult to ignore.

And a forecast of how much the TEA Party movement could bring to the election. The high end numbers are the "best possible" scenario, I would look for something closer to the lower boundary based on the available time and resource base of the TEA Party groups:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/18/the-coming-conservative-landslide/?print=1

The coming conservative landslide
By Michael Patrick Leahy  7:38 PM 04/18/2012

Wishful liberals and Chicken Little conservatives who watch the weekly fluctuations in the presidential polls have concluded that President Obama is a shoo-in for re-election. They point out that Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, can’t connect with women, has a large likability gap and is slightly behind Obama in most national polls as well as in the key swing states of Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.

The despair of faint-hearted conservatives deepens when they contemplate President Obama’s disastrous performance in office. His record of fiscally reckless extremism is unparalleled in American history. In three short years, federal spending as a percentage of GDP has climbed from 20% to 24% while the national debt has exploded from $10 trillion to $15.5 trillion. By the end of his term, Obama will have increased the national debt by a staggering 67%.

Add to this record President Obama’s continual disrespect for the Constitution, his unceasing regulatory attacks on free enterprise and small businesses, his rhetoric of class warfare, his deceptive demagoguery and his spendthrift economic policies that have fattened the wallets of his political cronies but created so few jobs that millions of Americans have simply dropped out of the labor force, and many conservatives can offer only one explanation for Obama’s current lead in the polls.

America, they conclude, must have lost its can-do spirit of rugged individualism and replaced it with what Governor Chris Christie recently called an attitude of “paternalistic entitlement” championed by a coalition of political elites, acolytes in the mainstream media, crony capitalists and an ever-growing dependency class.

Conservatives across the nation should be of good cheer, however. The United States remains a center-right nation. This November, voters will choose common sense over fiscally reckless extremism in what will be a landslide conservative victory. Republicans will retain the House, gain the Senate and win back the presidency with a 2-to-1 Electoral College margin.

The most recent Rasmussen poll shows Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama, 48% to 44%. Obama’s support has softened significantly since 2008, and opposition continues to grow on all sides. In that election, Obama defeated John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin in the popular vote. Since then, as the Rasmussen poll demonstrates, Obama has lost the support of 9% of the voting population. Much of that loss is permanent. Defectors include disappointed voters under 30 who supported him by a 2-to-1 margin in 2008 but can’t find a job in today’s lackluster economy, disaffected Catholics turned off by his high-handed tactics and virtually every small business person in the country, to say nothing of disillusioned Democrats opposed to his individual healthcare mandate.

But the polls are missing one key ingredient: the intensity of feeling and the level of determination among the 28% of American adults (66 million people) who consider themselves part of the tea party or are supportive of it. To these people, 2012 is not “just another election.” It is the defining political battle of our lifetime.

Most of these 66 million tea partiers will vote in November. But they will do much more than vote. They will also make unprecedented personal sacrifices in time and money to help get out the vote. To a person, these 66 million Americans believe that if Barack Obama is re-elected, the constitutional republic as we know it will be destroyed. They are determined not to let this happen on their watch.

Reports that the tea party movement has lost steam are entirely the creation of a mainstream media that wants the movement to go away. Recent polls show that support for the movement is higher today than it was two years ago, in the spring of 2010. The tactics of this large and growing group have evolved from the high-profile rallies of 2009-2010 to a more organized and focused national get-out-the-vote effort. Every night, the country is honeycombed with a series of local and regional conference calls among the local leaders of this dedicated group. New tea party groups — estimated at around 3,000 at the start of the year — are being formed at an accelerating rate. These new groups are smaller, more localized and highly focused on one objective: getting out the vote in November.

A national poll, of course, is not all that helpful in predicting presidential election outcomes, which are decided based on the results of 51 separate electoral contests (the 50 states plus the District of Columbia). When the 9% President Obama has lost across the board is subtracted from his 2008 results in each state, the dimensions of the coming conservative landslide become apparent.

Obama can count on winning only the 10 states he won with more than 60% in 2008 — California, Hawaii, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Illinois. Add the three Electoral College votes from the District of Columbia, and President Obama has only 146 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 392.

To these 10 “certain” Obama states, add four “blue” states that Obama won in 2008 with 56% to 57% of the vote — Washington, Maine, Oregon and New Jersey — and Obama’s electoral count edges up to only 186, barely half of the 352 Electoral College votes Romney will receive from the other 36 states where Obama received 57% or less of the vote in 2008. But even these four states aren’t guaranteed. All four of them have active and engaged local tea parties, and New Jersey has Chris Christie, the popular governor and big Romney backer.

The only hope Democrats have of narrowing the gap is to win the ground battle. In that effort they have several advantages over the tea party movement. Unions and left-wing organizations will spend millions of dollars to pay people to get out the vote this fall. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s get-out-the vote efforts will be laughably anemic.

Only the tea party has the enthusiasm and manpower to get out the vote for Mitt Romney, but it’s financed by the spare change found in the couches of local leaders. Nonetheless, as the critical role it played in the 2011 Republican takeover of the Virginia State Senate proved, the tea party is very effective.

The big question is whether wealthy conservative donors will wake up to face the political realities and help local and regional tea party groups finance get-out-the-vote efforts. To date, they have ignored the tea party, giving their donations instead to Washington-based organizations that are more interested in building their own brands than in building effective local get-out-the-vote capabilities.

If local grassroots activists are forced to finance their get-out-the-vote efforts from the spare change in their couches, Obama could pick up six additional states where he won between 54% and 57% of the vote in 2008 — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico. This would give Romney a solid, but not spectacular, 296-242 Electoral College victory.

But conservatives around the country should take heart because that’s an unlikely scenario. As we’re beginning to see, conservative donors are finally realizing that the scope of the conservative victory in November will be determined by the level of financial support they provide to local grassroots conservatives. They understand that when it comes to political return on investment, local tea party groups provide the biggest bang for the buck.

Michael Patrick Leahy is the editor of the “Voices of the Tea Party” e-book series and co-founder of Top Conservatives on Twitter and ElectionDayTeaParty.com .His new book, “Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement,” was published by Broadside Books in March 2012. He can be reached on Twitter at @michaelpleahy.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/18/the-coming-conservative-landslide/#ixzz1sUA6D9fH

 

[tomahawk6]

Orrin Hatch will have to face a primary after failing to win the nomination at the convention.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/21/orrin-hatch-fails-to-clinch-gop-nomination-in-utah-by-0-9/

 

[a_majoor]

TEA Party movement nominates another Senatorial candidate (and by a large margin). The "establishment" GOP candidate had lots of high level backing, lots of cash and still cratered. People who continue to spout the TEA Party movement is dead meme should be reevaluating their positions about now:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/tea-party-pulls-upset-in-texas-primary-race/article/2503694

Tea Party pulls upset in Texas primary race
July 31, 2012

Joel Gehrke
Commentary Writer
The Washington Examiner

@Joelmentum Joel on FB
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Ted Cruz, the former solicitor general supported by the Tea Party, defeated long-time Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, R-Texas, in a primary runoff that effectively decides who will serve as the next U.S. Senator from Texas.

The Associated Press called the race for Cruz the first 22 percent of votes counted showed him with 53 percent support, as Roll Call noted, despite Dewhurst loaning himself over $24 million during the primary.

Cruz received strong support from Tea Party figures such as Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., whose Senate Conservatives Fund spent $1.3 million on behalf of Cruz and raised another $700,000 for his campaign.

“This is another victory for conservatives and it shows that the Tea Party can still defeat the Republican establishment if it wants to,” said Senate Conservatives Fund executive director Matt Hoskins. “This wasn’t a fluke. Ted Cruz was massively outspent in a state of 25 million people and he still won. If conservatives can win a race like this in Texas, they can win anywhere.”

Cruz burnished his anti-establishment credentials during the primary when he left the door open to opposing his home state’s senior senator the next time the Republican conference picks its  Senate leadership. “I’m not going to prejudge,” Cruz said when asked about potentially supporting Cornyn for a leadership post.

That comment didn’t stop Cornyn from closing ranks around Cruz after the runoff results came in.

“With a strong, hard-working ally in Ted Cruz, we will work to pass a balanced budget amendment, remove the federal government’s boot off the neck of our small businesses, and repeal-and-replace ObamaCare,” said Cornyn, R-Texas, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “I will do everything I can to help elect Ted Cruz in November and look forward to working with him next year.”

Democrats have little-to-no chance of pulling an upset against Cruz in Texas this year, but liberals nonetheless played the race card as part of a rapid response to his victory: Think Progress called Cruz an “Islamophobe” and said he “wants to party like it’s 1829″ — a reference to The Nullification Crisis.

 

[a_majoor]

Glenn Reynolds calls it

Like the Tea Party movement, the Chicken Sandwich Insurrection is a bourgeois revolt, which is why some people find it so threatening.

People are tired of being told what to believe, what to do, what they should say, think etc. by the political class, particularly when they look out the window and see results so at variance to what is being claimed. The "Chicken Sandwich Insurrection" is a reaction to the mayors of three large American cities threatening to use their political power to deny a business licence to a company who's owner publically holds views at variance to their own. Now individuals may decide if they wish to patronize such business or not, but to use or threaten the use of force (especially the power of the State against a disarmed individual) is far beyond the pale, and many people have recognized that if there is no pushback, then potentially anyone could be next; especially if they don't parrot the "progressive" line (and make no mistake, all the Mayors who offered threats against the chain were Progressives and were threatening to close the chain because the owner was speaking against the Progressive "party line").

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2012/08/cfa-appreciation-day-the-triumph-of-the-ordinary.html

CFA Appreciation Day – The Triumph of the Ordinary
August 2, 2012 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker 31 Comments


Welcome Instapundit readers!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day yesterday was historic. It  was historic because it marks a new method of mass protest. I even hesitate to use the word ‘protest’ because it wasn't a protest. There wasn't any anger. There wasn't any hate. There wasn't any bullying. There were no unwashed crowds of unhappy people holding a sit in and causing other people stress, inconvenience and expense. There were no protest signs, no marches, no noise makers and attention grabbers. There were no revolutionary slogans, no clenched fists, no class warfare, no sullen adolescents in a stroppy mood.

The classic signs of a protest movement were absent. If they were not actually violent revolutions, the great protest movements in history have often had violent undertones. Subtle threats were made. Bullying tactics, financial and political pressure was exerted. Guns were wielded. Behind the scenes in smoke filled rooms men did deals and crossed swords to determine the future of millions. In the great revolutions hoardes of unhappy people filled the streets, rioting and on the rampage they took what they wanted, killed who they wanted and in misplaced zeal for justice overturned an established order.

Even the nonviolent protests pioneered by Gandhi and the American civil rights movement had an undercurrent of threat. Nevertheless, they avoided violence and they opened the way to other peaceful revolutions in which ordinary people stood up against injustice and tyranny without resorting to violence themselves. In his great biography of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel shows how the Catholic Church, during John Paul’s papacy, inspired this sort of non violent revolution across the globe. The Solidarity movement in Poland lit the fuse which brought down the Communist Empire with little or no violence. The revolution of Cory Aquino in the Phillipines, and numerous other smaller scale nonviolent revolutions in Africa and Central and South America were all inspired by the people and for the people–and most of them were also inspired by people of faith–working from the grass roots upward to change their society for the better.

Yesterday's Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day was the sort of ‘revolt’ this country needs, but it was even better than the non violent revolutions and peaceful protests which have changed the world because it was so ordinary. It was just plain, ordinary Americans getting in their cars and doing a plain, ordinary American thing: going out for lunch to a fast food joint. It was just plain, ordinary Americans doing something plain and ordinary, but positive and joyful and good. In buying an ordinary tasty chicken sandwich at their corner fast food emporium ordinary Americans were expressing the wish to be left alone to be ordinary Americans.

There were no protest signs (except from a few glum pro-gays who said we were eating ‘hate’ sandwiches) There were no noisy, angry scenes. Folks in the drive through lines did not honk their horns or proclaim their Christianity with bullhorns. There were no statements against homosexuals or homosexuality. (Indeed, the only statement put out by Chick-Fil-A affirmed their commitment to serve and employ all people equally without notice of race, gender, age or sexual orientation.) The brilliance of the event that it used the network of a nationwide fast food chain as the foundation for a visible, peaceful, creative nationwide statement.

There was no bullying, no hateful anti-homosexual loud mouthed preachers. This grace, patience gentleness and community good humor contrasted with the ugly and spiteful comments from the ‘other side’. Nobody wished their enemies to get cancer the way ‘comedian’ Roseanne Barr proclaimed. Nobody was using back room political and financial pressure to bully the majority of Americans the way mayors of Boston, DC and Chicago were doing. For all the talk of the traditional marriage supporters being full of hate, there was not hatred apparent. It was just ordinary suburban Americans sticking up for their way of life by buying a chicken sandwich with their friends and neighbors. These were not scary people like the folks from Westboro Baptist who tote guns and hate homos. They were the folks next door.

Yesterday’s demonstration was a truly American form of revolution. Where else could it happen but the USA? Read More.

 

[cupper]

Let's wait and see what happens with the LGBT "Kiss In" planned for today before we judge.

 

[a_majoor]

Although preliminary reports of the "Kiss in" suggest it is nowhere near the magnitude of the "Buycott" the other day, that isn't really the point.

The buycott protest wasn't for or against the owner's particular position (and note that the chain itself makes no distinctions about who they hire or serve), but rather a pushback against the mayors of Chicago, Boston and Washington DC attempting to use their political power to muzzle the First Amendment rights of the chain's owner.

You, personally, can express your approval or disapproval of the owner's position through various non coercive means, ranging from a letter to the company, a letter to the editor, refusing your custom or organizing a boycott with people of similar views. You cannot use force (real or implied) to prevent the business from operating or customers from choosing to patronize the establishment; there are very clear limits in any civilized society. Since the Mayors had threatened to cross that line, they were rightly being mocked by thousands of people across the United States who chose to eat there in support of the owner's First Amendment rights.

To my mind, the "kiss in" is an attempt to change the "narrative" from defense of the First Amendment. Personally, I find the idea that ordinary, apolitical citizens would stand in line to support the First Amendment to be a far more compelling narrative, and if this is an indication of how Americans really think, then the TEA Party movement is more like an iceberg than most commenters are willing to credit; 90% of the movement is silently moving out of sight of the political establishment.

 

[cupper]

Actually, it's more interesting that this appears to be a media generated tempest rather than something developing from the fringe (read both group and edge).

The comments in question were made on a Christian Conservative radio broadcast, and quoted in essentially limited readership Christian Conservative media.

It didn't spread wings and fly until it gained mention in mainstream media outlets, and was then pushed to the forefront.

It's all a moot point anyway, as the tide is turning for same sex marriage through out the US. And to quote Jon Stewart "You're going to get the right to marry, and your opponents are going to get type 2 diabetes".

I will genuinely celebrate and give congrats to the Gay and Lesbian community each time they gain in their fight for equal marriage rights, all the while eating my chicken, egg and cheese bagel meal with a large coffee.

 

[a_majoor]

You are missing the point in so many ways, my UN friend:

1. This isn't a "media driven" protest; the Media has almost uniformly portrayed this in a negative light and under the ruberic of "gay marriage"

2. If the chain owner's remarks had been confined to Christian media outlets I'm sure you or I would have never heard of them, or the particular fast food chain in general.

3. Three powerful political figures rode in on the "Gay Marriage" meme, and threatened to use the power of the State against the business, thus threatening the owners First Amendment rights to free speech.

4. Apolitical people, most of whom don't have a dog in the gay marriage fight, have pushed back against the threatening and bullying by the mayors of Chicago, DC and Boston, who made (illleagal by the way) threats to withold business licenses, zoning permits etc. to prevent the chain from opening franchises. This is the real story, and one which the Legacy media would rather ignore in favour of the "gay marriage" theme or "Kiss ins" at the outlets. It should also be noted that the primary driver behind the buycotts that filled the stores was the Internet, particularly the blogosphere and social media spreading the news of the threats against the chain, which may be why the legacy media was put out by the size and scope of chicken sandwich day.

Regardless of what you think of gay marriage, this story isn't about that topic, it is about the steady mobilization of apolitical people who have had enough and are now finding creative and non traditional means of pushing back against the political class in general and "progressive" memes in particular. (And if you have any misconceptions about why I am posting on this topic, I favour letting people get married without interference from the State; I will respect gay marriage partners like my next door neighbours. I want people to respect churches and other people who don't hold the same views and not threaten them and their institutions with State power to make them conform).

edit to add: this guy said it better:

http://coldfury.com/2012/08/02/of-chicken-sandwiches-unintended-consequencesand-revolutions/

Of chicken sandwiches, unintended consequences…and revolutions
Counterrevolution by Mike

The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey asks a silly question:

Liberals used the same tactics they’re now employing against Chick-fil-A earlier this summer to attack University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus. He published one of the most comprehensive studies examining the outcomes for adult children whose parents had same-sex relationships. Rather than learn from Regnerus’ study or debate its findings, activists instead have sought to destroy his credibility and banish him from public discourse.
There’s even an ongoing inquiry to examine his work. Anyone can request such a probe of the University of Texas. In this case, it came from provocateur Scott Rosensweig, who uses the pseudonym Scott Rose. He claims “scientific and scholarly misconduct” on the part of Regnerus and has made it a top priority to discredit and silence the professor.

Rosensweig isn’t alone. A group of 200 scholars wrote a letter to the editor of Social Science Research, where the Regnerus study was published, questioning how the journal could print such a thing. The publication’s own audit, released last week, “did not find that the journal’s normal procedures had been disregarded, or that the Regnerus paper had been inappropriately expedited to publication, as some critics have charged.”
The whole affair illustrates, once again, the left’s intolerance of opposing views on hot-button issues.

The question is posed in the title to Rob’s post: Why are liberals so intolerant? As Rob knows well enough, it’s because the smug, arrogant, self-righteous fools pleased to misidentify themselves as “liberals” are some of the most illiberal people imaginable. Their misuse of the word demonstrates, in a small way, how they’ve warped not only our national character but the very language we speak. Bob Owens heads to a Chick-Fil-A store and witnesses an illustrative irony:

Cars lined up for the drive-thru stretched out of the parking lot, down the access road, and up the street to the main highway. I tried to get a quick count of the cars, but had to be content with an estimate of 40-60 as they stretched out of sight behind Applebee’s. A solitary driver laid on his horn as he went by the traffic jam, middle finger extended defiantly from the window of his CR-V, his “coexist” bumper sticker mocking those he left in presumably smug satisfaction.

Bob then gets to the heart of it:

Clearly, this is more than a “buycott” over gay marriage. If the smattered of people I’ve talked to are representative, homosexuality is a side issue.
This strikes a much deeper, more foundational chord.

The massive crowd reaction locally and nationwide are driven by a loathing of arrogant politicians like those in Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco who feel they have the power and the authority to tell a businessman like Dan Cathy what personal opinions he can and cannot hold if he wants to do business in “their” towns.

They trampled on his religious beliefs. They trampled on his freedom of speech. They attempted to deny him and his franchisees the rights to start small businesses, merely because a free American dared to share what he believed.

Students of history know that there are rarely singular triggers to world-changing events.

We have over the past decades been slouching towards a crisis point in this nation. I’ll leave it for future historians to find fault and place the blame, but the momentum towards disintegration has been apparent and accelerating for some time.

I smirk, thinking about those that are reading this incredulously, thinking, “is this rube trying to tell us that we’re going to launch a civil war over chicken?!?! What a dunce!”

They are capable of only seeing isolated events and individual threads, not the tapestry of tyranny that has turned a simple protest buying of chicken sandwiches and waffle fries into a fed-up Republic’s sudden self-awareness.

The greatest trick that Hollywood, the lying liberal media and the Democrat Party was able to conjure was the illusion of their power and our isolation. As tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans are realizing in a simple act of conscious commerce today and this evening, we are legion. There are far more of us than there are of them, and in that realization, our power grows, and our desire to give up even a fraction more of our rights, shrinks. ( interpolation by me: Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has blogged about this in the past under the heading "Preference cascade")

One more time: this ain’t about chicken. It isn’t even about gay marriage. It’s about straws, and camels’ backs, and being absolutely fed to the gills with being lectured, hectored, harassed, shouted down, mocked, and ignored. It’s about being used as an unwilling national ATM by people doing things we do not in any way approve of, indeed are strongly opposed to and offended by. It’s about being disrespected, taken for granted, and coerced.
It’s about the ongoing attempt to remake us into a more docile, dependent people, very much against our will. It’s about being lied to so obviously even a small child wouldn’t be fooled by it. It’s about being condescended to by people who aren’t even smart enough to see that their way of doing things has been a miserable, oppressive failure every single time it’s been tried, and are so deluded they can’t see that it’s failing yet again all around them, before their very eyes.

It’s about having a bellyful of being misled and misruled by the patently misguided. It’s about not sitting back and quietly taking it anymore.

And as with the Tea Party uprising, it’s not in any way enough. We must–MUST–find a way to translate this energy, this disgust, this willingness to step up and take action, into something more meaningful than going out and having a tasty lunch. We have to keep the weapon of public disapprobation and disgust well-oiled and loaded, and get its muzzle pointed squarely at Washington, DC, and every one of the petty would-be tyrants and carrion-fowl roosting there. If we don’t, our country is well and truly lost, and this wonderfully hopeful moment where thousands–perhaps millions–of us went to some personal inconvenience to make a gesture in support of freedom and against tyranny will have meant nothing in the end.

“Coexist”? As the asshole in Bob’s post demonstrates well enough in his priggish, purblind way, liberty can’t coexist with tyranny. As I’ve said many times here: those collegial, “moderate” fools ostensibly on our side who demand civility to and compromise with liberal-fascists–”our friends across the aisle”–should be required to answer a simple question: what parts of the Constitution are you willing to throw away? Which of your unalienable rights are you willing to give up? What part of our national soul are you willing to trade for a mess of pottage?

No compromise with socialists. Never. Instead, it’s victory or defeat, and some of us need to make up our minds toot sweet which we prefer. There’s a lot at stake, we’re already a very long way down a very dark road, and we don’t have a lot of time to turn things around.

 

[cupper]

You are missing the point in so many ways, my UN friend:

No, I haven't missed the point. This stopped being about gay marriage as soon as Chick Fil A came out with a statement that the Corporation did not discriminate against anyone in either their tratment of customers, or their employees. It simply became one man's opinion (albeit a weak one) about his view on marriage and family values as expounded in whatever version of the Bible he chooses to follow.

And it was a media drive protest. It took more that a week for the story to become mainstream from the time of the interview. Once it hit the national spotlight, it developed a life of it's own.

David Frum makes a very good point in a column for the National Post that the is now a cult of victim hood that pervades through out society now, where everyone can claim some form of persecution.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/04/david-frum-fried-chicken-for-jesus/

And for the record, I've been a customer of our local Chick Fil A for several years now. And their Christian pro-family stance has never been an issue with my non beliefs and as long as their business policies continue to be non discriminatory, I will continue to be a customer.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I agree with cupper; this is, totally, a media driven event - on both sides. There are NO principles involved, on either side, and it is, per force, a non-issue, except that Mike Huckabee, who is part of media now, thought he could improve his ratings by exploiting it.