Letter: Republicans need to wake up and enjoy liberty

Letter: Republicans need to wake up and enjoy liberty

Lance Thate, Chairman
St Augustine Tea Party

Dear Editor:

The Republican National Committee recently released a “2016 presidential straw poll”. They asked people to choose names that they would most like to see as the Republican Presidential nominee in the 2016 election.

The extended list of 32 Republican presidential nomination hopefuls has people on it that are not even constitutionally qualified to serve as president or vice president. It does’t seem to bother the Republicans that some of the people on the list do not meet the “natural born citizen” requirement. Perhaps because they gave the current occupant of the White House a pass, they naively think that the Democrats will extend the courtesy. [Obama’s Father was a British Subject at the time of his birth.]

Karl Rove, the architect of failure

As progressive Republican leader Karl Rove and the GOP elitist leadership attacks the base of their own party and the Tea Party in particular, the public increasingly refuses to identify themselves as Republicans. Recent Gallup poll shows only 25% claiming to be Republicans. 42% identified themselves as independents. This finding is what Town Criers have been experiencing since January 2012.

The Town Criers are a committee of the St. Augustine Tea Party who weekly engage the national audience that visits the historic district of St. Augustine Florida. There has been a continual movement away from the Republican Party as it continues to be complicit with the Democratic progressive agenda.

The “Republican Establishment” cares about one thing and that is pushing its own brand of progressive governance while pretending to be Conservative by supporting the “Right to Life” issue. In his memoirs, Barry Goldwater warned his fellow Republicans that this approach to Conservatism would lead the GOP to ruin in the long run. I believe we are now at that point. The statist Republicans do not care about freedom or liberty. They have progressed beyond the Constitution as have the Democrats.

They do not care about being the Party of Reagan. They no longer are advancing conservative ideals or a conservative agenda. If the truth be told, they never did. Reagan was rejected by the Republican leadership and embraced by the people. I believe that the Republican leadership will nominate yet another progressive for president.

Currently, the leadership is pushing Chris Christie and Jeb Bush. Tea Party and Liberty minded people will not support them.

According to a recent Glenn Beck radio broadcast, of late no friend to the Republicans, Beck immediately rejected former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, radio talk show host Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. They all support big bloated government.

Is it possible that the next President of the United States will be elected as an independent? Senator Joe Liebermann was elected as an independent candidate after Democratic leadership rejected him for not following the party line in the Connecticut primary. Perhaps this will be the increasing pattern in the 2014 and 2016 elections.

Despite the shunning and outright disdain for Constitutionalists by John Boehner and Karl Rove, the Tea Party Movement, as reflected in the growth of Independents, will continue to grow in voter preference.

The early romance between the Tea Party and the GOP is over. The Tea Party support was the best thing that ever happened to them. It just was not in the Republican Party to wake up and enjoy Liberty.

The Republicans have filed for divorce. The Tea Party will not contest it.