Battered Tea Party syndrome

We are all familiar with the sad tale of battered women who keeping taking their abuser back because they fear they have no place else to go, until eventually, their abuser kills them. It is heartbreaking for Libertarians to watch our friends in the Tea Party and other liberty activist groups in the GOP follow that same dismal path.

The Establishment GOP has regarded the enthusiasm and passion of the Tea Party as something to be used when convenient, but when the Tea Party puts forth reform candidates, those candidates are savaged with dirty tricks, rumor and smear campaigns just as though they were Democrats. We have just seen such a tactic here in Virginia Beach when the Establishment GOP resurrected a parliamentary dodge unused for over 30 years to deny Tea Party activists a place in the Party leadership.

They think they can get away with this because they know the fiscally conservative Tea Party is not going to abandon the GOP to vote Democrat, so they can be taken for granted.They have no place else to go.  So long as that remains true, the Tea Party’s quest to reform the party from within is hopeless. The Tea Party will be used when convenient but otherwise pushed aside and ignored in party policy.

But the Tea Party DOES have someplace else to go true to their principles. It is time for them to recognize that they are, at heart, libertarians. If they want to get the attention of the GOP, the only way to do it is to take their energy and enthusiasm where it is welcome and respected. Join the Libertarian Party. If you are in Virginia, it is as simple as clicking the “Join the Party” tab above.

At worst, demonstrating to the Establishment GOP that you can take your energy elsewhere might make reform possible, and better, you might well find that the Libertarian Party is where you will be valued and respected and that it was your true home all along.

Might a mass defection of Tea Party activists to the Libertarian Party allow a Democrat or two to win and election the GOP might otherwise have captured? Perhaps, but considering the GOP’s disrespect for its own Liberty activists and its accelerating drift away form conservative principles to just maintaining power, how much worse could that really be?