Winning Ideas

Larry Margasak, reporting through the AP Press has it right.

Right now, the tea party has a toe hold in the Republican power structure and Republicans have control of one house of Congress. That is not much of a political base.

Progressives still control the presidency, the senate, the universities, the public schools, the unions, the big banks, Wall Street, the big insurance companies, and the press.

If the tea party is to succeed in its goal of restoring freedom, the next two years must be about ideas and not about policy.

IMHO, the tea party must transition from simple obstructionism to full engagement in the war of ideas. The tea party most go beyond slogans for limited government to a discussion of how and why freedom works.

The tea party must press on issues to show why progressive constructs like the Federal Reserve, government insured mortgage backed securities, CDOs, credit default swaps, employer based insurance, etc., continue to fail.

This game where progressives create failed systems then project the failures on the free market is absurd.

To restore freedom, the Tea Party movement must engage full force in the war of ideas and demonstrate how and why a free market out performs a controlled market.

The tea party must come up with true free market alternatives to the contrivances of the progressives.

Simply winning a few seats during a midterm election is not enough to stop our nations progress on the road to socialism serfdom.

If the tea party fails to engage in a discussion of ideas, the fruit of the 2010 tea party will simply be that the progressives in the Republican Party will grab power from the progressives of the Democratic Party.

That is not much of a gain.

Unlike socialism, freedom cannot won through a partisan victory. It is won by the way people choose to live their lives. To restore the American espriement of a free society, the tea party needs to move beyond simple obstructionism to a broader discussion of the way freedom works.