…and when it comes from someone as rock solid as Tom White, it’s gotta sting just a little:
Most of us who consider the TEA Party to be the best and greatest hope for putting America back on the road to prosperity and freedom could only sit back in horror and frustration as we watched a small group of ideologues place their collective heads where the sun don’t shine and support “candidates to nowhere”.
Ouch. Read it all.
Consider for a moment that Tea Party supported candidates have virtually run the table in every Republican primary leading up to Virginia. This means one of two things happened last night:
(1) The trend continues and George Allen is carrying the Gasden Flag forward in November, or:
(2) The Tea Party not only suffered a catastrophic defeat, but was stopped cold in a smoking ruin of debt, defenestration, and disaster from the presupposed leader of the revolt.
Perhaps — and I’m just throwing this one out there — George Allen was the true Tea Party candidate?
Tom White summarizes his view:
Fortunately, in this race, a lot of TEA Party members saw Allen as the best chance for winning the seat and joined in his campaign to defeat Kaine. At least that is a start in working with Allen should he be successful in November.
Marshall and Jackson ran admirable campaigns and ran on the issues and did little to harm the Republican brand going forward and gave no aid and comfort to the enemy – the Democrats.
The same is not true of Jamie Radtke. When the rest of the world reached the point that the contest was over and Allen had won, Radtke shifted tactics from a positive campaign about fiscal conservationism and constitutional integrity into a campaign to exact as much harm and damage as possible to George Allen.
And if this is what the TEA Party is to become, then we have already lost. The campaign run by Radtke brought dishonor to both the TEA Party and the Republican Party and was an affirmation to all that those outside of the TEA Party movement that the TEA Party has an extreme and dark side.
The numbers don’t lie… and that’s pretty hot heat coming from a Tea Party stalwart like Mr. White.
