By Dick Armey & Matt Kibbe
The movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party. It is aiming for a hostile takeover.
On Feb. 9 2009 Mary Rakovich a recently laid-off automotive engineer set out for a convention center in Fort Myers Fla. with protest signs a cooler of water and the courage of her convictions. She felt compelled to act having grown increasingly alarmed at the explosion of earmarks bailouts and government spending in the waning years of the Bush administration.
President Barack Obama joined by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist was in town promoting his plan to spend a trillion dollars in borrowed money to stimulate the economy.
Mary didnt know it but she was on the front lines of a grass-roots revolution that was brewing across the nation. More than 3000 miles away Keli Carender a young Seattle school teacher and a member of a local comedy improv troupe was feeling equally frustrated. She started to organize like-minded citizens. Our nations fiscal path is just not sustainable she said. You cant continue to spend money you dont have indefinitely.
Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellions name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli who in February 2009 called for a new tea party from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. Thats the tea party ethos.
The tea party movement has blossomed into a powerful social phenomenon because it is leaderlessnot directed by any one mind political party or parochial agenda.
The criteria for membership are straightforward: Stay true to principle even when it proves inconvenient be assertive but respectful add value and dont taking credit for other peoples work. Our community is built on the Trader Principle: We associate by mutual consent to further shared goals of restoring fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government. These were the principles that enabled the Sept. 12 2009 taxpayer march on Washington to be one of the largest political protests in the history of our nations capital.
The many branches of the tea party movement have created a virtual marketplace for new ideas effective innovations and creative tactics. Best practices come from the ground up around kitchen tables from Facebook friends at weekly book clubs or on Twitter feeds. This is beautiful chaosor as the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek put it spontaneous order.
Decentralization not top-down hierarchy is the best way to maximize the contributions of people and their personal knowledge. Let the leaders be the activists who have the best knowledge of local personalities and issues. In the real world this is common sense. In Washington D.C. this is considered radical.
The big-government crowd is drawn to the compulsory nature of centralized authority. They cant imagine an undirected social order. Someone needs to be in chargesomeone who knows better. Big government is audacious and conceited.
By definition government is the means by which citizens are forced to do that which they would not do voluntarily. Like pay high taxes. Or redistribute tax dollars to bail out the broken bloated pension systems of state government employees. Or purchase by federal mandate a government-defined health-insurance plan that is unaffordable unnecessary or unwanted.
For the left and for todays Democratic Party every solution to every perceived problem involves more governmenttop-down dictates from bureaucrats presumed to know better what you need. Tea partiers reject this nanny state philosophy of redistribution and control because it is bankrupting our country.
While the tea party is not a formal political party local networks across the nation have moved beyond protests and turned to more practical matters of political accountability. Already particularly in Republican primaries fed-up Americans are turning out at the polls to vote out the big spenders. They are supporting candidates who have signed the Contract From America a statement of policy principles generated online by hundreds of thousands of grass-roots activists.
Published in April the Contract amounts to a tea party seal of approval. It demands fiscal policies that limit government restrain spending promote market reforms in health careand oppose ObamaCare tax hikes and cap-and-trade restrictions that will kill job creation and stunt economic growth. Candidates who have signed the Contractincluding Marco Rubio in Florida Mike Lee in Utah and Tim Scott in South Carolinahave defeated Republican big spenders in primary elections all across the nation.
These young legislative entrepreneurs will shift the balance in the next Congress bringing with them a more serious adult commitment to responsible restrained government.
But let us be clear about one thing: The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party but a hostile takeover of it.
The American values of individual freedom fiscal responsibility and limited government bind the ranks of our movement. That makes the tea party better than a political party. It is a growing community that can sustain itself after November ensuring a better means of holding a new generation of elected officials accountable.
Mr. Armey a former House Republican majority leader is chairman of Freedomworks. Mr. Kibbe is president and CEO of Freedomworks. They are the authors of Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto out today from HarperCollins.
