Sarah Palin to Tea Party crowd: Time to pick between the two parties
Via CBS News:
(CBS) In front of a crowd of Republican Party activists and the tea-party movement’s rank and file here on Tuesday night, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin seemed to put a damper on speculation that she might consider running for president in 2012 as a third-party candidate.
Asked what her advice would be to conservatives as the November elections approach, Palin first lavished praise on the Tea Party movement, calling it “a grand movement” and adding, “I love it because it’s all about the people.”
But she quickly pivoted to the broader question of whether the Tea Party movement might successfully field its own candidates in national elections, and on that point she sounded far from convinced.
“Now the smart thing will be for independents who are such a part of this Tea Party movement to, I guess, kind of start picking a party,” Palin said. “Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken? Which party will best fit you? And then because the Tea Party movement is not a party, and we have a two-party system, they’re going to have to pick a party and run one or the other: ‘R’ or ‘D’.”
Palin said that the Republican platform best meshed with the Tea Party’s creed. However, she mentioned that her husband Todd was not a registered Republican and that the party should be open to embracing independents.
I agree with her on this point and I’m glad to read that she made it. I’m a supporter of the Tea Party movement in terms of what it’s done to encourage straying Republicans to go back to the party’s roots. At the same time, though, I am resistant to any efforts to make the party into an official “third party” – and yes, I know some of my fellow Republicans believe the exact opposite; that their should be a third party alternative to the GOP because, in their view, the GOP has competely lost its way. My view is even though it has in some respect lost its ways, it’s still viable and is still our best option for spreading the basic core conservative message of lower taxes, fiscal responsiblity, and less government intrusion into our lives across the country. Right now the message is practically selling itself, in part, thanks to our celebrity President.
With that said I also believe that we have to be realistic and realize that there are going to be moderates within our party, especially in the Northeast and on the left coast, and that until – if – the conservative message resonates and takes root in those regions, it’s going to be that way for the forseeable future. Because of that, conservatives and moderates within the GOP need to figure out a way to work together and find common ground. Conservatives were excited about the election of Scott Brown, but Scott Brown is a MA Republican, which translates into moderate. His votes are going to please conservatives sometimes and other times irritate the you know what out of them. But we have to remember that he was elected by a majority of pepole in MA to represent them, not to represent any party.
It all goes back to the “politics is local” thing, IMO. That is how it works everywhere. The Scozzafava/Hoffman race is a prime example of that. It was close, but in the end, the liberal Democrat won against the conservative Republican because that district was not ready for a conservative representative in Congress. Had Hoffman and the prominent conservatives who took an active role in that race had more time to sell the conservative message, maybe he/they would have pulled off the upset but in the end, it didn’t work. That district has always leaned moderate to liberal, and that is how it stayed after the NY-23 election.
There’s also the question of “what is a moderate”? For example, some conservatives saw/see anyone who sided with McCain and Bush on immigration reform as a “moderate,” which I think is a shame because I was in the pro-immigration reform category but on most every other issue I am a solid conservative. If I ran for office as a Republican, would the Tea Party movement reject me simply because I was pro-immigration reform and allegedly “pro-open borders”? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. How moderate is too moderate for the Tea Party? Obviously an Arlen Specter-type Republican who sides more often with liberals than conservatives is more of a moderate – some would say liberal – than a conservative who disagrees with her fellow conservatives on a few issues, and clearly those types of Republicans are understandably out of favor with the Tea Party. But what about conservatives who have taken positions classified as “moderate” by some and “pragmatic” by others, such as my example on the issue of immigration reform?
These are the things we all need to think about going forward as the Tea Party progresses. Will it, as a conservative movement, help straying Republicans return back to fiscal sanity and responsibility? I think so, and I will continue to strongly support that effort. But will it help the conservative movement if it seeks to turn itself into an actual third party, challenging moderate Republicans who in some cases may not actually be moderates, in effect helping the liberal Democrat candidate? I believe it would, and for that reason, on the calls for a third party, I respectfully count myself out. Conservatives already have a party. It’s called the Republican party, and it’s time to take it back, while at the same time finding common ground with its more moderate elements until opinions in moderate to liberal areas of the country change.
Your thoughts?
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