What Tea Partiers Want

In yesterday's Townhall.com, Jonah Goldberg had a good piece on the feelings that animate the Tea Parties in Tea Partiers A Delayed Bush Backlash. As Goldberg points out, with both Gore and Kerry, conservatives had no where else to go, so reluctantly voted for Bush. With McCain, they were again in a corner, with nowhere else to go. But neither Bush, nor McCain was, or is a conservative (except in the minds of far left radicals, that is.) Indeed, I often wondered about, and was amazed by, the evident Bush hatred on the left. Wasn't Bush accomplishing much of the Progressive/Marxist agenda? That it was a so-called Republican doing it would, I thought, make it that much more delicious.

According to last week's NYT/CBS poll of tea party supporters, 57 percent have a favorable view of Bush, but that hardly captures the nuance of tea party feelings. For instance, when Bush's face appeared on the Jumbotron in the arena, the Cincinnati audience applauded. When speakers criticized Bush and the GOP for "losing their way," the audience applauded even louder.

Going by what I saw in Cincinnati, second to a profound desire to rein in government, the chief attitude driving the 39 percent of tea partiers who describe themselves as "very conservative" isn't partisanship, racism or seizing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. It's "we won't be fooled again." In the near term, that spells trouble for Obama and Democrats. In the long term, that lays down a serious gauntlet for Republicans.

We won't be fooled again. In my case, no more RINOs. If I don't have a good conservative candidate, who is solid on gun rights, I simply won't vote for that office. I will not acquiesce in the slow destruction of the Constitution that the last 100 years represents. No more.