Jen Kuznicki
I know a lot of people who have been in politics for a very long time trust and admire George Will. I understand he has been writing for a very long time and is a trusted Republican.
However, he is no conservative, and is breathtakingly ignorant on what the tea party is, and what it will and has accomplished.
In his column, “Texas’s Ted Cruz gives tea party a Madisonian flair,” he pairs the wins of the tea party with an inevitable loss for a Republican in the presidential race. The title of his column is misleading, because one would consider that the column is pro-tea party.
What his column says, is that the spirit of the tea party will be in 2012, what strengthened the GOP in 1912, even though Wilson won, and that tea partiers and conservatives should celebrate the election of Woodrow Wilson, and if I may go a little further, he does more than just hint that it’s because of the tea party that he believes Obama will win.
And Cruz’s victory coincides with something conservatives should celebrate: the centennial of the 20th century’s most important intraparty struggle. By preventing former president Theodore Roosevelt from capturing the 1912 Republican presidential nomination from President William Howard Taft, the GOP deliberately doomed its chances for holding the presidency but kept its commitment to the Constitution.
I understand that Will is witnessing the events in todays politics from the ivory tower, and has no personal knowledge of what the tea party knows or does, except that he can make the comparison to another time in history where the GOP had a bit of a spine. I get that he believes that conservatives are in the party to tow the line. What Will doesn’t understand is that the tea party is completely aware of what Wilson, TR, FDR, LBJ and BHO have in common.
We may be new to the process, and activism, but not to history. We have read more books on liberty and the framers in the last 4 years than the establishment has read in a lifetime. We have had great people behind microphones on talk radio helping us get the knowledge we need and helping us know how very dire the situation is.
Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny informed a thirsting multitude. Other books by Beck and David Limbaugh were devoured as were many books from the great thinkers of the enlightenment and others. Pocket Constitutions were distributed by Heritage, Hillsdale, and other organizations. Free-market think tanks printed handbooks for new activists, people made time in their lives during these 4 long years to become informed enough to be able to converse about every principle with their friends, co-workers and neighbors. Americans for Prosperity works tirelessly within each state on issues important to that state, as well as for the entire nation.
The American people are engaged in this fight. Everyday people from all walks of life, all income levels, all races, all creeds, all ages are working together without even knowing one another, to get the right kind of politicians in place. The politicians who we believe will do what is needed to bring this country back to a free-market economy and re-establish the Constitution in this great country. This is our second go-round. Most tea party groups and others are well established in their states.
We aren’t just here until November 6th. We are here for as long as it takes.
Now, another thing that struck me when reading Will’s column is the sort of snide arrogance in his parallel.
Sort of, “Hey you tea people, way to go, your purity will cost us the election” kind of attitude.
Actually, the only way his parallel would be accurate is if say John McCain decided to try to get the Republican nomination the second time, and when he lost in the primary due to the force of the tea party, started another party, as he suggested he would last year, in response to the “stupid, foolish” tea party “hobbits.”
If Will had that scenario before him, he could have an interesting and prophetic column.
But that’s not what is happening. Tea partiers know what Obama is doing because we all have our stories. Someone’s coal plant got shut down, a 50 year car dealership was closed, a mine wasn’t allowed to open, a pipeline wasn’t built.
The tea party is We The People in a very true sense of the phrase. And We The People are busy fighting for serious candidates.
Congratulations to all the tea party activists who worked hard on Cruz’s election and all the other elections.
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27 Responses to George Will is Wrong Again
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I guess Mr. Will is setting up the "this is who we'll blame" scenario on the chance that Obama wins come November.
You are exactly right IMHO. But, he has always thought this. If you read his column, you can detect a lot of disgust. He tries to make it sound nice, but it's a slap nonetheless.
No doubt, Jen. It really gets to me, the way the Republican elite think about and treat the Tea Party. They seem to either forget or perhaps they've never acknowledged just who it was that handed the House back to them. Sickening…….
I know, we all know, we all feel it, and they still persist and they are just firming our resolve.
Hence the reason Sarah Palin "went rouge". She saw the Republican establishment up close and personal, and thought "em, not so much". She wouldn't be controlled by them or by the media. The best thing about John McCain is that he gave us Sarah Palin and birth to the Tea Party through patriots like her.
You are so right on. Thank you for saying it like it is
Great article! You nailed the issue right one the head. Thanks!
Will has always seemed rather schizo when it comes to towing the GOP line. For example, he was no supporter of GWB in either of his elections. Sometimes I think he just likes holding contrary opinions to set himself apart.
George Will is as establishment as it gets. He thinks he knows everything and has discontinued any effort to educate himself any further, as a result he is becoming more and more irrelevant and less and less respected!
Good point Jolley!
Remember the great words of Howard Stern: "All democrats are communists. I will never vote for another one." And he also said, "It's an exit boys not an entrance."
No civilization can survive that kills its young.
The Tea Party is not noisy. Or argumentative. They are quietly laying in wait to elect politicians who will help us restore our culture and economy. Like they just did in Texas. And at Chick-fil-A today. In November, they will give a pink slip to the current President in overwhelming numbers, and will speak up every time their voice is needed.
When George Will ditched his bow-tie, I knew he was done for. I suspect he knows this as well.
Yes, yes, yes! And the rest of the media aids these efforts. As I posted on my Facebook page today:
"Let's see – Republican Scott Brown was never going to win "Kennedy's seat" in Massachusetts. But he did. Dick Lugar was "supposed" to beat Richard Mourdock handily in Indiana. But Mourdock won by nearly 20 percentage points. The recall of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was supposed to be "too close to call." But Walker's victory was clear just 48 minutes after the polls closed. David Dewhurst was supposed to crush Ted Cruz in Texas. But Cruz won handily. Detect a pattern here?
Oh, and Romney and Obama are "neck and neck" in the polls. Suuuuuure, they are."
The single biggest piece of evidence of how strong the Tea Party is – and how close we are to defeating Obama – is the panic about the polls. CBS comes out with a NYT poll that shows BHO up by 6 percentage points or more. Same ol' same ol" – they hand-pick a predominantly Democrat audience and then report that as "likely voters."
It's nonsense. If "the polls" are showing Obama and Romney as "neck and neck," my prediction is Romney by 10%. If he picks a legitimately conservative VP, even more. It may not be a Reaganesque blowout, but it will be substantial. And then you can watch Will – and a LOT of other commenters (including conservatives) – gape in astonishment.
Will represents that portion of the Republican party that consistently exhibits a smug self-righteous satisfaction with their own imagined superior intellect. The truth is closer to his representing that portion of the party being supplanted by candidates with a spine. As long as the party is impotent there is a place for the George Wills of the party. The establishment republican party is historically top heavy with guys like Will and short on spine. They despise those who exhibit real strength. The take over of the party is slowly under way, but politics is not an all or nothing proposition. Republicans must learn to be measured and encouraged with incremental progress. Ted Cruz is a great giant step. We need 25 more just like him.
I like George Will and think he has contributed to conservative school of thought over the years. However, he is a Washington insider. He and others like him are used to controlling the message, and framing the argument. That gave them power. It paid for their mansions, private schools and earned them their lofty place in our society for a number of years. Now, with the Tea Party, the internet, and conservative blogs like this one, their egos are feeling a bit bruised. They no longer get to pick the candidates, and frame the message so the voters will fall in line and vote for their "guy". The great democratization of politics has begun and the playing field is becoming more level everyday. There's not much that they can do about it. They know it. But they don't like it.
Now I'm not really very fond of baseball and would probably trust Mr. Will's opinion based upon his affection and long association with the sport. However after watching him politically weave and bob over the past decade I'd put more emphasis on the political opinion of a blind deaf and dumb patriot who just joined the Tea Party last week.
Mr. Will has a problem with our Constitution along with the body of distilled traditions upon which this country was also founded. Of what profit would a legislature full of RINO's be if we suffer the loss of the whole country when they side with democrats? George should be more worried about whether the Country survives the next four years and recognize that Romney's best chance is because of the Tea Party and not despite it although it may be in spite of Mr. Will and his establishment brethern.
Does he recall that Wilson won because TR ran on a 3rd party and that the Tea Party supports the republican candidate? Does he really believe that Tea Party enthusiasm for Mr. Romney has the same negative impact as if a 3rd party existed? Ordinarily he may be able to convince most of his readers that his opinion counts but in this heated political climate his opinion is not likely to remain unnoticed by the new political class (the Constitutionalists) that goes all out to make long odds the sure thing. On second thought I don't think I'd put much emphasis on George Will's baseball assessments. From what I know about politics and where Mr. Will now stands on the subject I can no longer assume he will be any more accurate about baseball predictions either.
Going to have to respectively disagree with this. I think you're reading things into Will's column that are simply not there. He's drawing a parallel between the principled position that stood up to Teddy's progressivism, the same that elevated Cruz over Dewhurst, but not necessarily between the fact that the GOP lost the Presidency in that year. He just made that point that, at the time, it was the price that had to be paid and that they were willing to pay it to do the right thing. That's a compliment to the people of the time, not prediction for this year's election.
I simply don't see how anything in his column, which provides a vigorous and definitive defense of Constitutional government, can be construed as anti-tea party. He is celebrating the Tea Party for standing up to the progressive establishment in the GOP, and comparing it to previous efforts where conservative won the intraparty battle of ideas, and the positive results they produced. In other words, I really don't get this post.
Well, if that is the case you would think he might do so more clearly and with less innuendo, elitism and provocation. We should not have to ask Krauthammer for an interpretation.
From my perspective he might as well have mentioned Christine McDonnell and Sharron Angle in his narrative.
Well Brian, you have to consider that Will is a wordsmith. He absolutely is. So, the wordsmith used the words, "By preventing former president Theodore Roosevelt from capturing the 1912 Republican presidential nomination from President William Howard Taft, the GOP deliberately doomed its chances for holding the presidency but kept its commitment to the Constitution."
Then previous to that comment, he said that conservatives should "celebrate" the 1912 "intraparty struggle" because it's just like what we have now.
The election of Woodrow Wilson was because the progressive right (TR) decided the constitution was too restrictive to his power. To celebrate that TR broke off to a new party because the GOP "deliberately doomed" it's chances by not picking him? Last I checked, the tea party is voting for Romney, not breaking off into a new party.
The bottom line is, that Will knows the meanings of words, and so do I.
Dead on!
George Will . . . won't.
Beware wolves in sheep's clothing. A common cliche'? Yes! but still good advice. Is there any chance Will is on Soros' payroll like McCain?
That is how they (libs and some republicans) hope to win – make people afraid of the Tea Party, when they are exactly who we need to have the best chance of recovering this country to morals and prosperity. God has his plan and it will not fail, but He blesses those nations that follow Him.
Remember Will, the beltway 'conservative", supported Howard Baker over Ronald Reagan. Will is part of the Rhino establishment who always thinks conservatives can't win. Its painful. We conservatives know Rhinos like McCain and Dole were hopeless. We knew Romney would get to the general campaign and not attack Obama the way he destroyed Santorum and Newt in the primary.
They all listen to the same club, parrott the same lines. Watch the morning talk show when any of them mention Sarah Palin's name. They all roll their eyes and sigh like Nicole Wallace. Palin was a woman who hit the road , like in Texas for Ted Cruz last week, helping conservatives win in 2010 and they act like she's a “problem”. Only in the GOP establishment is a beautiful, charasmatic principaled political star like Sarah Palin is considered a liability. The idea that she would be offered a prime speaking slot after Cruz's win is a joke. The rhinos don't like conservatives if the truth is told. .
We should oust Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy. Young Guns. Yeah right. More like pop guns. Give Boehner his crying towel and put in Paul Ryan who understand the problems this nation faces, can articulate the solutions and has guts. The GOP establishment just wants our votes. Nothing more. I hate the Democratic party and how radical they've become but at least they fight for what they believe in. That's why the spineless Rhino hate the Tea Party and Palin is because they WANT to fight for first principles and the Constitution . The Rhinos just want to be in on the deal to help fund the welfare state and manage the decline. Ask yourself. If your in a street fight who would you want by your side. Eric Cantor or Sarah Palin (LOL). I'll take Momma grizzly 7 days a week and twice on Sunday