Those who identify themselves with the Tea Party apparently have as poster boys, Barry Goldwater and Grover Norquist. Some still remember Goldwater, in his acceptance speech for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination, saying, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” The extreme element’s definition of the defense of liberty is to be unyielding, anti-government, in fact just about anti-everything. Am I wrong or do they appear to have no use for any government program, public infrastructure or the common good? It seems they define liberty as the freedom to be able to do what they want without question, obligation or responsibility for others.
Tea Partiers are angry, sometimes with justification, over the current state of government and they clearly don’t like today’s culture. They have learned from Grover Norquist to use threats and intimidation tactics to get their way. Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform coerces candidates to sign “no tax hike” pledges, then he turns on them and sees to their defeat if they vote for anything that even smells like a tax increase after being elected.
Tea Partiers are using these same tactics to effectively silence and make impotent those within their own party who are willing to seek consensus and compromise; leaders who heretofore have included the likes of Jim Broyhill, Jim Holshouser, Jim Martin and others. Today’s mainstream Republicans are conservatives but they are also pragmatist,s willing to include others, to get far more accomplished with cooperation than by being unyielding, threatening or mean-spirited.
