Kevin_Kennedy
Defend Liberty
- Aug 27, 2008
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Approach a Tea Party supporter, compliment his "Don't Tread On Me" T- shirt, and ask what motivates his activism. The federal government is always growing, he might reply, as is the financial burden it imposes. We're borrowing more money every year, mortgaging our children's future, and little by little, we're ceding our very liberty.
If the Tea Party wants to win enough converts to effectively govern, it must persuade more voters that this kind of rhetoric is offered in earnest.
Skeptics of the Tea Party note that the right never organized in opposition to the profligate spending of the Bush administration. They wonder why a movement so vocal about liberty focuses exclusively on the economic variety, and suspect that if the GOP is returned to power, government won't grow smaller or less intrusive so much as serve different masters.
Come 2012, however, there is one Republican who'll be uniquely positioned to win over these skeptics: former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a long-shot candidate whose success in the presidential primary would signal, as nothing else could, that the principles espoused by the Tea Party really changed the GOP.
Forget Palin, here's Gary Johnson - CNN.com