Purpose

I lay no claim to be THE spokesperson for the Tea Party Movement.  To the contrary, I regard the Tea Party Movement as being a barely organized informal gathering of American patriots who sacrificed their time by either attending tea parties across the country or in some other way by providing their support for the ideals originally conceived at the time of our founding.  I consider myself to be such a Patriot.  My purpose is NOT to create a new political party.  I am completely opposed to the thought of a third party because I believe such an action would divide the vote of American patriots and thus dilute the fall vote.  We cannot afford this.  It is in the spirit of all American Patriots and the original Sons of Liberty that I conceived this blog. 

The purpose of this blog is to enable Tea Party Supporters to leverage our grassroots movement and to communicate our attitudes about national issues in the form of a platform for consumption by political candidates.   This blog will not take the form of the typical candidate survey that offers a series of sentences that you can simply indicate whether you agree or disagree.  This blog will provide a statement of policy as proposed by myself or a guest blogger (I am not an expert in every important national subject).  Readers will then be encouraged to comment on the policy and upon the conclusion of debate the policies may or may not be restated to conform to those ideas expressed within the debate.  Where disagreements remain, those disagreements will all be capable of review by the eventual candidates who are the ones ultimately responsible for selling themselves to us and to the remainder of their constituency.    

Consider today who normally put together the state and national platforms for the major political parties.  Those involved are typically senior politicians or persons entrenched in the party hierarchy.  There is little control afforded to grassroots movements such as ours.  I actually have no desire to change this.  My desire is only to put forward ideas, present those ideas for debate and make those ideas accessible to all candidates.  All that I ask is that these ideas be treated respectfully as the grassroots positions they represent.  By setting standards we will also be able to monitor our representatives and to determine how each senator and each representative votes in relation to where our grassroots movement stands on issues.   

I already have a list of topics that I intend to cover over the course of the 2010 campaign and well beyond into 2011 and 2012 for the next presidential election.  Topics included in 2010 may be restated in 2011 or 2012 depending upon the ever evolving political environment.   Additional topics can be created by an email to ThePatriot@TheTeaPartyPlatform.com.  As the primary writer of this blog I will reserve the right while providing credit to the writer to adopt any such policy statement as the primary statement of policy or publish it as a comment contrary to my position on that topic. 

A comment section is available to readers to enable debate and discussion of policy.  The eventual objective will be to create understandable policy statements and comments that communicate our position(s) on important issues to those who contend to represent us in the fall election.  This will only happen if this blog attracts a significant audience that makes us impossible to ignore. 

Philosophy

Our forefathers left us a legacy that must be preserved.  They did not get it right the first time.  The Articles of Confederation were found to be insufficient to maintain the government our founding fathers sought to create.  Even the Constitution has been subjected to 27 amendments.  However, of particular importance is that our forefathers provided a means to amend the Constitution understanding that time would present problems and that we would need a method to modify its limitations.  Fortunately as well, they made this difficult to do.  By so doing they sought to prevent a tyranny of the majority and prevent a temporary airs of politics to embrace a fad or fancy that took advantage of a minority of the people. 

Today we find ourselves with a Congress that does not listen and that regards itself as elite in every sense of the word.  This isn’t true of every member but it is sufficiently true to provide a real threat to our liberty.  We also have a court system that has gone beyond its intended boundaries and has rendered interpretations based upon what they believe to make good policy or rendered decisions that have no grounding in the Constitution at all but conform instead to their own sensibilities as to what they believe the Constitution should say rather than what it does say.  The Constitution is not a living document.  It is my contract; it is your contract with our government.  It is the people who were intended to be sovereign and it was the people who specifically limited the power of the federal government and reserved all other power to the states or to themselves.  All other positions to the contrary are in direct defiance to the Constitution. 

Our leaders take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.  How can they be true to this oath if they attempt to modify it by methods other than the method provided within the document itself?  What is the Constitutional authority for the federal government to take over industry?  What is the Constitutional authority for the government to involve themselves in healthcare, mortgage loans or provide special favor to one group over another?  These intrusions of government into our lives that extend beyond the boundaries of the Constitution must be reversed and resolved.  The platform topics that are identified on this blog are only a beginning of the many areas where this is true and where we as patriots must confront our government and demand a course correction.   We will rely upon other readers of this blog to identify others and to draft a platform position and persuasive arguments for addressing these additional topics.  We are confronted with a large task but just as with any journey, it can only begin with a first step. 

Rules:

1.       To post a comment you must provide your e-mail address.  It will not be published with your comments.

2.       I ask that all ideas be treated respectfully and debated in comment areas on the merits. 

3.       Vulgar and profane comments will be deleted. 

4.       Personal attacks will not be allowed and will also be deleted. 

5.       Contrary arguments are encouraged.  It is important that we get this right, not that any one individual “win” an argument. 

If we do this right it should be educational, informative and entertaining.   It should provide us all a grounding of our political positions and teach us all why we are republican, democrat, libertarian, green, independent, etc.