A Tea Party Challenge

I spend a few minutes several days a week speaking with my parents. They are in their golden years and every Christmas that I can celebrate with them is another answer to a year's worth of prayers.

They are true blue (or is it red these days) Republicans. They have never voted anything but Republican (except for a few silly Stupak votes) for decades. It is my parents, and people like my parents, who are the biggest challenge for tea party enthusiasts.

Tea party folk such as myself needn't waste our breath trying to compel progressive democrats onto a path of economic sanity--these are people who truly believe that the socialist model is what is best. That same thirty percent of the population believes that wealth equals greed, that greed equals imperialism, and that imperialism convicts America of crimes that not only can never be forgiven, but will also cloud whatever maneuverings America might make in the future. To that thirty percent of the population, America is an ill-conceived sociopath that needs to be jailed or transformed--and socialism is the way to do so.

My parents are of a different lot. They believe in the goodness of America and the goodness of its people. They believe in the country's industriousness, the vision of its founders, and in the moral character of a country whose wealth makes it possible for its people to donate billions of dollars annually to survivors of disasters and plight around the world.

This morning my Mother was interested in who I think would become our next president. I sighed as these conversations always take a familiar turn. I was noncommittal only throwing out a name or two behind which I would gladly hold a banner. She replied with a familiar tenor, "I think Romney or Huckabee would be good."

Predictably, my face fell.

This is not to say that I believe that those two Republican stalwarts would not be more than a mite better than the typical stumblebums the Democrats put forward--I do believe they would be much better. Yet, if the tea party has meant anything to me and to others within the movement, Romney (a very good man) and Huckabee (another very good man) will do little to put the brakes on our American crisis; a crisis created by generations of do-good government bureaucrats who also thought they knew all the answers.

When it comes to selecting their next presidential candidate, Republicans must embrace a candidate whose philosophy on government and governing is different than the candidates they have been putting at the head of the ticket these last few election cycles.

In the last presidential election Republicans put most of their support behind big-stater "maverick" John McCain, big-stater Mike Huckabee, big-stater Mitt Romney, and big-stater Rudy Guiliani. The only small government Republican in the lot was the uninspired Fred Thompson who posed no serious risk to the establishment and bowed out around Valentine's Day.

Republican voters in the next presidential election, such as my parents, need to embrace candidates who believe in a smaller government and in a wise citizenry capable of solving most of its own problems. They should not pursue anyone among the stable of recent Republican candidates who feel the need to build a larger benevolent government with all the powers and resources necessary to solve the peoples' problems for them.

My parents have fond recollections of the Party of Reagan; a party that believed in the goodness of America. But in the long run, I'm afraid, that sentiment has compelled too many voters to choose candidates based on their party's legacy rather than on current party member philosophies.

I'm going to work on my parents. Will you work on yours?