Jon Ralston and others are now reporting that the nightmare duo of Sharron Angle and Sue Lowden are plotting their return to the Nevada political scene. Despite the many successes for limited government that the Tea Party won us in the 2010 midterms, the completely botched attempt to unseat Harry Reid still leaves a bad taste in many mouths.
As the 2010 election cycle started, it was hard to find a seat that the national Republicans coveted more than US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s. Knocking him out of the Senate would have been a huge victory for the GOP/Tea Party in the wake of the ObamaCare battles he had presided over. Sadly the national GOP establishment completely failed to understand what the Tea Party actually represented. Acting as if the movement were formed to oppose Obama and support the GOP, they assumed the position of dictating to a grassroots movement that was decidedly against being dictated to, regardless of who was doing the lecturing. Obviously the Tea Party movement came to a head during the Obama Administration, but the resentment against big government policies had been building for some time. George Bush’s tenure had done as much as Obama’s to generate anti-DC establishment feelings. GOP leadership during Bush had evaded any of the core principles that most conservatives identify with. By 2010 the conservative grassroots were as frustrated with the GOP establishment as they were with the Obama administration. Hence the immediate backlash when Sue Lowden was chosen by the party machinery to run against Harry Reid. Lowden had served a period in the state senate during the nineties, but was mainly know for her time as the Nevada GOP chairwoman from ‘07-‘09. During which she was vilified by supporters of Ron Paul when she disbanded the convention to name the GOP delegates to the national convention for the presidential nomination… which John McCain had already secured. Paul supporters had managed to gain control of the convention and were attempting to name delegates that supported Paul when Lowden intervened and brought a halt to the entire process. Delegates supporting McCain were later selected on a conference phone call that didn’t include any Paul supporters. While it might to be hard to fault Lowden with stopping the publicity stunt that the Paul supporters were attempting to pull off, the whole situation was off putting and tarnished Lowden’s creditability with the grassroots.
So in 2010 when Lowden, who hadn’t held elective office in over ten years, was basically hand-picked to be our next senator by the establishment, it rubbed the rank and file conservatives the wrong way- yours truly included. The Tea Party movement wasn’t focused on replacing Democrats with Republicans, it wanted to replace big government politicians with small government ones, regardless of what party they belonged. By failing to take into account the feelings of the Tea Party, the GOP doomed the race against Harry Reid, but it was going to get very embarrassing before it ended.
The Tea Party responded in the worst possible way, instead of attempting to unite support of both elements of the GOP behind a mutually agreeable candidate, they threw their support to the radical Sharron Angle. While I share a fair amount of views with Angle, such as eliminating the Department of Education and moving Social Security toward privatization, she supports these views with the most shrill, off putting tones and statements possible. Instead of appealing to reason, logic and factual analysis to support the vision of small government, she rants about big government conspiracies and scare tactics. Most disturbingly she represented a bad fusion of religious conservatism and those who believe that limited government is the best option. Those of us who espouse the classical liberal viewpoint of limited government, the way our founders did, must at all costs resist the pull to incorporate religious beliefs into our model of government. To attempt to legislate our moral and ethical views into law is to trespass as greatly as the modern left who attempts the same thing. The battles for morality should be kept in the private sector as our earlier generations did when they advanced their causes through private charities and groups to keep the state from interfering in the private individuals lives.
After some embarrassing comments about a chicken, Sue Lowden was defeated in the primary by Sharron Angle. That brought us, and the country, into an even more humiliating campaign against Reid which ended in failure. For those of us who find ourselves in the middle of the GOP party ideals, the 2010 senate race exposed the worst of both sides- big government republicans against radical religious libertarians. Since then the party has struck a bit better of a balance between the two sides, but still has trouble forming a coherent message that represents middle of the Republican Party. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan may have been the big names to come out of the Tea Party success of the past few years, but even they have struggled to mark out clear free market, personal freedom positions they claim to embrace. If the tide of big government is to be rolled back, then we must declare not only our principles but our methods as well. Repealing Obamacare would be a good thing for America, but what would the GOP put in its place? As long as the Republicans fail to articulate to the public its goals, they will continue to be cast as obstructionists.
Categories: Uncategorized
Stovepipe Sentinel 
Leave a comment