More on the Tea Party

So for my next post I decided to critique a post on the blog Power Line, one of the conservative blogs on the list of suggestes sources. However, I'm still not as knowledgeable on current politics as I ought to be, and the authors are so much more knowledgeable in contrast, so I went with a topic about which I have at least some background information.

It is actually two separate posts, both found here, (sorry, it requires some scrolling down), and posted on Tuesday, October 12.

The author is one of three for the blog, and he, along with the others, seems to be a credible source. I can tell from the ammount, frequency, and content of their posts that they are all quite knowledgeable and up to date on current events and policy. His intended audience is probably the many, many followers of his blog, but anyone who wants an opinion on a particular event or issue could also benefit from reading his comments.

Okay, his claim: The Tea Party is transitioning from being viewed as a nuiance to being regarded with much more respect and recognition, and the vehicle for this transition is money. I agree with his opinion, and I believe it doesn't just apply to the emerging Tea Party. At all levels of politics, the ammount of money you have is critical to how successful you are as a candidate or a party. Without sufficient finacial support, the policies a party or candidate wishes to advertise and eventually pass won't be as easily made public and it would be much harder to gain support for them, much less implement them if they do manage to get passed. The Tea Party, especially a few of its candidates for senator, are now raising enough money to become competetive and actually make a difference. I also realized how far the group has come when I read and article from the National Journal in the textbook on pgs 172-173, which refers to the now actual "Party" as a populist movement characterized by a series of unorganized and nonassociated "tea parties" (rallies) all over the nation. Now, candidates from the Party including Sharron Angle, Kristi Noem, and Michele Bachmann from Minnesota, have raised millions of dollars for their campaigns, sometimes surpassing their Democratic and even Republican opponents, as well as shocking many. I think the ability of new candidates with new ideas to raise so much money shows that there are still many Americans willing to not only form, but support their own opinions when they are represented by a political group. I think the addition of a new competitive group to the political atmosphere of our country is a healthy reminder of the rights of free speech that our country was founded on, and that the Tea Party especially will offer an alternative to the constant Democrat vs. Republican system of politics. It will also bring new conservative ideas into the relm of politics, as well as cause more citizens to take an interest in what is happening in their government. I'm curious as to how many more candidates the Tea Party will support, and how it will progress from here!