In a remarkably candid statement Sunday on Fox News, Jim DeMint said if the Republican Party does not live up to it’s principles when it gets back into power, it will be dead. He is right, but I have a better idea. Do not give them the chance to screw up.
As the elections of 2010 now approach, many of us are starting to look beyond those elections. One of the primary goals of the tea-party movement is to replace the Obama regime.
As we look to 2012, the Republican establishment is going to try and sell us on the idea of supporting one of the big names. After all, they are the ones that can win … at least that is what they will tell us.
My response is, “I was born in the dark, but it wasn’t last night.”
To be blunt, if we elect one of the establishment candidates, he will finish the business Obama started.
So far, none of the big-name candidates has made the case to be Obama’s replacement. When we chose a replacement, we cannot simply choose some other guy.
If the election theme of the GOP is, “We aren’t Obama,” or, “We are the other team,” then we will see a disaster straight from Obama and his Alinsky followers’ dreams.
Obama has done massive damage to America. He has spent money we do not have. He has expanded government at an unbelievable rate. Whoever our candidate for 2012 is, he or she must understand, the job is not simply to stop what Obama has done.
There is an old joke: “With Democrats, you get more of the same; with Republicans, you get less of the same.”
That will not cut it this time. We cannot have a president who thinks that it is simply time to put Republicans in charge of those programs or who simply thinks that we can manage these programs better than the Democrats. We need a president who plans on destroying these programs.
2012 will mark the 100-year anniversary of two tragedies. The first is the sinking of the Titanic, and the second is the election of our first “progressive” president. Wilson started many “progressive” government programs, including the progressive income tax. Since the Wilson administration, socialism has grown in each administration. More in Democratic administrations, less in Republican, but still there was growth. The only exception was the eight-year term of Ronald Reagan.
In the last 50 years, Nixon, Ford, Bush I and Bush II expanded government almost as much as the liberal Democrats did when they were in power. This has to stop. This is our last chance. If we fall for the bait-and-switch the GOP gives us again this time, we are done.
As we look for a leader that the tea-party movement can coalesce around for the 2012 election, we see the big names – Romney, Gingrich, Palin – and some of the lesser names – Pawlenty, Huckabee, Pence, Thune and Barbour. None of them has shown themselves to be the candidate we need.
We need another Reagan.
I am not waxing nostalgic for the ’80s. We need another president with the commitment of Ronald Reagan.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he brought with him a commitment. He had seen the evil of Soviet communism and vowed during his eight-year time in the White House to destroy it. A few months after he left office, the Berlin wall fell and on the day after Christmas, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
In the late ’70s, in many places, it was cool to call yourself a communist. By the time Reagan was done with communism, only a few cranks would even dare call themselves by that label.
We have witnessed the evil of liberalism. We have witnessed the attempts by liberals to eliminate freedom in this country.
The candidate the tea party embraces must be a Reagan. He or she must have the commitment to dismantle socialism. Dismantling does not mean simply slowing the growth of government, but eliminating wasteful government programs. Whoever our candidate is, he or she must be committed to destroying liberalism in an eight-year term in office. The candidate must have the desire to make liberalism as much of a pariah as communism.
I have a dream. My dream is that we find our Reagan to run in 2012, and then in 2020, we will have a choice between a conservative Republican and a conservative Democrat.
That is my dream, my goal and my vision. And to quote the famous words from Apollo 13, “Failure is not an option.”
Judson Phillips is president of Tea Party Nation.
