I finished this month’s issue of Imprimis (The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty by Stephen F. Hayes) and my first cup of coffee as the sun came up over my kitchen table this morning.   His last paragraph has lingered in mind all day:

Most Americans don’t agree with the president’s priorities.  And many of these Americans are now active in the Tea Party movement, a movement that has succeeded in starting a serious national conversation about a return to limited government. (Emphasis added)

The entire piece is worth reading and a conversation is a good start but I hope the above is an understatement of epic proportions.  This movement better be a good bit bigger than a discussion about ideas…this needs to be about big actions and effective results.  The referenced “return to limited government” can no longer fit nicely into some ambiguous task to “reform”.  It should be understood that this will require completely dismantling large portions of the federal behemoth that will be openly hostile to the movement every step of the way.  There will be many casualties and turncoats among the elected ranks along the way and, while the immediate electoral needs in the upcoming midterm are obvious, a continuous grooming of and planning for replacements and improvements needs to be well underway before all of November’s ballots are counted.  We want our guys in there now but, as a local car dealer advertises, we “aren’t married to none of them”.

The point to that little diatribe is that this is more than a conversation and it better be much more than a single climactic, cathartic electoral eruption in early November with lots of immediate devastation and the impression that the worst (and the hard work) is over and the healing can begin.  History needs to record the next half decade or more as an American political tsunami to the right.  Certainly the period since between late last March and the approaching November, if not actually beginning a year before that, should in retrospect be viewed as the drawback when it was clear to all what was coming next and the midterms will be the first waves crashing over the beach.  The relentless onrush should peak in November 2012 and the surging tide needs to continue through the following midterm.  That is the type of persistence…active support for and positive pressure on our elected representation…required to battle the entrenched evils already codified into the bureaucratic monstrosity that aims to choke the liberty out of the American dream.  I hope the Tea Partiers are up to the task.

While a sweep of some size may already be dealt into 2010, it is also already in the cards that the elections of 2012 will be the fight for the future of the republic as we know it.  Battle plans are already being drawn.

I suspect we will see familiar themes from history emerge before Christmas…there is only one liberal/progressive playbook and it really isn’t all that long.  The complete failure of the current administration, the current congress, and the current agenda will need to me mitigated…and blamed on us, of course…so the narrative will shift to the country being “ungovernable” and the presidency as “too big for one person”.  This will be relentlessly pounded into our collective psyche by the loyally incurious media for the better part of a year.  That will lay the groundwork for the all-but-certain Biden exit and “spectacular” announcement of the liberal dream team…still president and his number two, of course, but (wink, wink) effectively co-presidents…and the only ticket smart enough, progressive enough, electable enough and, not to mention, diverse enough to save us from ourselves.  Obama-Clinton-2012 is its name and that, my friends, is what ultimately stands between you and freedom on the other side of the approaching storm.  (Sorry to break the bad news to those who assumed we had already weathered through mid-storm…you aint seen nothin’ yet.)

And that’s the way I see it from the oppressive summer Texas heat of August 2010.  Prepare yourselves appropriately.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?