The Tea Party is the Third Party

By Joseph Curl at The Washington Times:

Back in 1900, there were six candidates for president — from six different political parties. But since the 1950s, it’s been two main parties, with a Green Party here and a Reform Party there (Ralph Nader seized 0.7 percent of the vote as a Greenie in 1996, and 2.7 percent in 2000; Pat Buchanan pulled down a whopping 0.4 percent as a Reformer in 2000).

The times they are a-changin’. There’s a new power force in Washington, and it’s running the show right now, deciding the very fate of the nation (if you believe the White House on the calamity that would befall America if the debt ceiling is not raised to pay for things we can’t afford).

It’s an interesting take. Beyond that, it’s an attractive proposition to me. That is, the Tea Party acting as its own party. However I don’t agree with Curl’s conclusion. The Tea Party isn’t a third party. The Tea Party is simply restoring the GOP to its former glory. At the risk of sounding cliché: we didn’t leave the GOP, the GOP left us.

Many of the former Republican powerhouse names are hailed by the Tea Party as shining examples of leadership. From Ronald Reagan to Calvin Coolidge, Tea Partiers laud the conservative policies of former Republican leaders (that is, the conservative ones). What’s happened recently is that we’ve got a sack of RINOs¹ that have run on a conservative platform to get elected and then abandoned those principals once in office. They’ve caved to the temptation of going along with the Washington way of doing things. They toe their new party line instead of their own principals. Quite simply, they’ve lost their way, and they’ve taken the GOP with them.

This is not lost on the American people. Many RINOs thought it would be. They felt safe because they told themselves “We live in a two party system, if we can motivate our base with a conservative message, we’ll get (re)elected.” Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for America, the 2010 midterm elections proved that Americans are completely in tune with their representation. Tea Party candidates were elected in droves, and they’re sticking to their principals. This, to the outrage of establishment Democrats and to the frustration of establishment Republicans:

The tea party members of today…abandoned their leader and left him twisting in the wind, caring not a whit about his threats. What they care about is spending, basing their intransigent stance on this simple fact: You cannot take in $2.5 trillion and spend $3.7 trillion. Perhaps they do know how to govern after all.

Let’s hope they can restore the GOP before the ways of Washington gets hold of their wallets, morals, and sense of decency.