Some background to the presentation below: After observing the trends on the Left for many years, in early February 2009, during a meeting with a friend familiar with the “hydra” that the Left had built, we lamented on how there was nothing on the Right to combat the behemoth that had been built by unions, the institutional Left, with the help of the mainstream media, to tear down the Right and propel Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats to their huge 2008 victories. Knowing what was on the agenda, “we’re finished as a nation,” was the overriding feeling. A short time later, the first Tea Party rally was held. During the summer of 2009, I attended my first Tea Party meeting as an observer. It was, as they say, beautiful chaos . People who, for the most part, had been apathetic to politics were suddenly engaged and outraged. Nevertheless, I left that meeting with the thought, ‘ these people really have no idea what they’re up against .’ A little more than a year later, as we were launching the Concord Project for the mid-term GOTV , there was opportunity to speak at several other Tea Party events. As part of the presentation, several slides were devoted to “what we’re up against” (explaining the leviathan that the Left had built). Following that meeting, someone stated that the attendees loved the information, but it “scared the crap out of them.” This was surprising since the Tea Party had been in existence for more than 18 months at that point. How can you fight something you don’t understand? More importantly, how can you expect to win? More recently, having had several occasions to present information about unions and the Left, attendees began stating, “So, what do we do about it?” Frankly, after the millions in donations* that have gone to Tea Party groups, it still is surprising that this question gets asked. What you are about to read is a PowerPoint presentation that is simply a condensed overview of information, some of the groups on the Left, and the nature of the fight Constitution-loving Americans are up against, as well as tasks that must be done in order to win in 2012. It is, by no means comprehensive. Hopefully, whether your a member of a Tea Party or a church (or other) group, you can use it as a means of sharing information within your group. Many of the tactics described in this presentation are already in use—both from inside the Left (sourced, where possible) or have been gathered from years of observation (and first-hand experience). The five tasks that must be done are simple, but require a commitment that must be there from each and every American who wants to stop the Marxist slide toward bigger government, higher and higher taxes to pay for never-ending deficits and debt, and the entitlement culture that the Left has sewn, nurtured and grown. There’s not a lot of time left, so let’s get busy (or busier , as the case may be). Become A Force Multiplier: Five simple tasks for American Activists * Note: Following an exchange with a Left-wing, union writer on Twitter, it is necessary to clarify the following for the Left-wing trolls reading this post: Contrary to union and Left-wing myths (lies, actually) and unlike other entities, LaborUnionReport.com is not funded by any corporate interests, the Koch brothers, or any industry trade group, association, etc. In fact, to date (sadly), LaborUnionReport.com has received less than $100 in donations. LaborUnionReport.com is powered by our own dime, on our own time. Go figure. ______________ “Socialism has no place in the hearts of those who would secure the fight for freedom and preserve democracy.” Samuel Gompers, 1918 Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com .
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Become A Force Multiplier: Five simple tasks for American Activists
In the House Republican’s Pledge that I told you was a “Pledge to Nowhere,” you find this language: “tax increases must be prevented” and “We will help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases”. Got it? The House GOP pledged, also known as a promise, to stop “all tax increases.” It was their promise. According to The Hill , the Republicans are about to give a capital “F” and a capital “U” to the tea party and throw in the towel on their Pledge. Lawmakers emerged from the closed-door meeting saying Hensarling had made the case that offering some new revenue — $300 billion in at least one publicized offer — would be a good trade to secure a permanent extension of the George W. Bush-era tax rates. So we’re going to keep permanent the Bush tax cuts that no one really thought would actually expire next year even though they technically are supposed to and replace those with a $300 billion tax increase? To rub salt into the tea party’s wounds, “Hensarling received a standing ovation following his presentation.” Yes, a Republican got a standing ovation by Republicans for proposing a tax increase. To be fair, if there are serious structural reforms to the tax code and serious concessions by the Democrats on entitlement reform, I would want to look seriously at the plan. But, based on what we know so far, the Democrats have offered nothing publicly substantive and the GOP is offering up a bunch of smoke and mirrors on the House side to cover up the fact that House leaders are actually proposing a tax increase on the American public. Yet again the GOP is negotiating with itself. Given the way the GOP is operating on itself in public, I’m surprised it isn’t blind. Parting thought: if the GOP is doing this out of fear that the Bush tax cuts won’t get extended again, are they not then operating out of fear? Of course they are. And fear should never be the starting point for negotiations.
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We Sent ‘Tea Party’ Republicans to Washington for This?
Filed under: Health Care , 2012 President , Congress , Tea Party , Health Care Reform , 2012 Elections Dean believes Americans are too libertarian to accept an individual mandate and says the tea party movement is more populist than the congressional GOP.
In the wake of last Tuesday’s election there has been much debate on the effect that the Tea Party label had on candidates for office. Last week, MSNBC’s First Read came out with an analysis of Tea Party candidates showing they only managed to win 32% of their races . Unfortunately, the approach taken by MSNBC, by looking at all races without regard to the competitiveness of the district, has the potential to misrepresent the impact of attaching one’s candidacy to the Tea Party movement. In order to get a better handle on the true impact of the Tea Party label it is useful to restrict our discussion to a list of Tea Party candidates in races that were considered competitive leading up to the election. The following analysis is based on the list of 138 Tea Party affiliated candidates from the New York Times . In the interest of leaving out sure winners and sure losers, races rated as “Solid Democrat” or “Solid Republican” were excluded from the analysis (67 solid ‘D’ races were dropped and 8 solid ‘R’). This leaves 30 races rated as “Leaning Democrat,” 23 races rated as “Tossup” and 10 races rated as “Leaning Republican”. In order to get at the central question of whether Tea Partiers were underperforming what a “normal” Republican would have done in the district their performance, it is then useful to compare the performance of the Tea Partiers on the ballot with the Cook Partisan Voting Index of the district. One final note, due to the uniqueness of what went on in Florida and Alaska they have been excluded from the analysis. The data in full: State Cook PVI Party Tea Party Candidate Win/Loss Open or Challenger Performance vs. PVI Kentucky R+10 Republican Rand Paul W O 2 Colorado EVEN Democratic Ken Buck L C -1 Nevada D+1 Both Sharron Angle L C -4 Pennsylvania D+2 Democratic Pat Toomey W O 4 Wisconsin D+2 Democratic Ron Johnson W C 7 Delaware D+7 Democratic Christine O’Donnell L O -10 State District Cook PVI Party Tea Party Candidate Win/Loss Open or Challenger Performance vs. PVI Arizona 7th D+6 Democratic Ruth McClung L C 2 Arizona 8th R+4 Democratic Jesse Kelly L C -6 Arizona 5th R+5 Democratic David Schweikert W C 5 Arizona 1st R+6 Democratic Paul Gosar W C 0 Arkansas 4th R+7 Democratic Beth Rankin L C -25 Arkansas 1st R+8 Democratic Rick Crawford W O -4 California 18th D+4 Democratic Michael Berryhill L C -12 California 11th R+1 Democratic David Harmer L C 0 Delaware At-large D+7 Republican Glen Urquhart L O -9 Florida 22nd D+1 Democratic Allen West W C 9 Florida 24th R+4 Democratic Sandy Adams W C 16 Florida 2nd R+6 Democratic Steve Southerland W C 7 Hawaii 1st D+11 Republican Charles Djou L I 5 Idaho 1st R+18 Democratic Raul Labrador W C -8 Illinois 17th D+3 Democratic Robert Schilling W C 9 Illinois 8th R+1 Democratic Joe Walsh W C -1 Illinois 11th R+1 Democratic Adam Kinzinger W C 14 Illinois 14th R+1 Democratic Randy Hultgren W C 1 Illinois 10th D+6 Republican Robert Dold W O 8 Indiana 2nd R+2 Democratic Jackie Walorski L C -3 Indiana 9th R+6 Democratic Todd Young W C -2 Kentucky 3rd D+2 Democratic Todd Lally L C -9 Maine 2nd D+3 Democratic Jason Levesque L C -7 Massachusetts 4th D+14 Democratic Sean Bielat L C 3 Massachusetts 10th D+5 Democratic Jeff Perry L O -9 Michigan 15th D+13 Democratic Rob Steele L C -4 Michigan 9th D+2 Democratic Rocky Raczkowski L C -1 Michigan 7th R+2 Democratic Tim Walberg W C 3 Michigan 1st R+3 Democratic Dan Benishek W O 5 Missouri 4th R+14 Democratic Vicky Hartzler W C -9 Nevada 3rd D+2 Democratic Joe Heck W C 3 New Hampshire 1st EVEN Democratic Frank Guinta W C 11 New Mexico 1st D+5 Democratic Jonathan Barela L C 1 New York 22nd D+6 Democratic George Phillips L C 2 New York 25th D+3 Democratic Ann Marie Buerkle W C 3 New York 20th R+2 Democratic Chris Gibson W C 8 New York 13th R+4 Democratic Michael Grimm W C 0 North Carolina 8th R+2 Democratic Harold Johnson L C -11 Ohio 13th D+5 Democratic Tom Ganley L C -5 Ohio 1st D+1 Democratic Steve Chabot W C 8 Ohio 15th D+1 Democratic Steven Stivers W C 15 Ohio 6th R+2 Democratic Bill Johnson W C 3 Ohio 16th R+4 Democratic Jim Renacci W C 0 Pennsylvania 12th R+1 Democratic Tim Burns L C -3 Pennsylvania 4th R+6 Democratic Keith Rothfus L C -8 South Carolina 5th R+7 Democratic Mick Mulvaney W C 3 Tennessee 4th R+13 Democratic Scott DesJarias W C 6 Texas 27th R+2 Democratic Blake Farenthold W C -1 Texas 17th R+20 Democratic Bill Flores W C 5 Virginia 11th D+2 Democratic Keith Femian L C 2 Virginia 9th R+11 Democratic Morgan Griffith W C -6 Washington 2nd D+3 Democratic John Koster L C 2 West Virginia 1st R+9 Democratic David McKinley W O -8 Wisconsin 8th R+2 Democratic Reid Ribble W C 8 Wisconsin 7th D+3 Democratic Sean Duffy W O 10 A few observations “worth reading”: Tea Party candidates in the Senate races performed pretty well but not quite as well as their counterparts in the House. Tea Partiers in Senate races end up with an overall average of -.33 vs. PVI, basically performing on average as you would expect a Republican to in the Senate races. Tea Party candidates in competitive races in the House won 60% of the time. Overall Tea Party candidates in the House outperformed the PVI of their district by +.47%. In the Senate races there is a difference in Tea Party win rate between challengers and those running for open seats. Challengers won one and lost two against incumbents as the incumbents really did a pretty good job of defending their seats. In the open races though, Tea Party candidates had success. They picked up three out of the four races for open Senate seats. Tea Partiers in House Races fared better against incumbents. Eighty-five percent of the Tea Party races in the House were against an incumbent. Of that group Tea Partiers outperformed the PVI of the district by +.60%. The bottom line is that despite the current media narrative, and the loss of three high profile races by Tea Party backed candidates (Colorado, Nevada and Delaware Senate Races), being the “Tea Party” candidate was not the detriment to a campaign that some would have you believe. In fact, by looking only at races that were truly competitive, we find that Tea Party candidates actually perform better than one would expect the generic Republican candidate to perform. Going into 2012, that is a fact that pundits and politicians ignore at their peril.
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Tea Party Beats the Average in Competitive Races.
Filed under: The Capitolist , 2010 Elections Bachmann’s announcement sets up the first leadership contest between a tea party favorite and a member of the more mainstream wing of the House Republicans, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas.
