Requiem for the Tea Party — it takes a governor

Whether or not Lisa Murkowski manages to rage against reality as successfully
as South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond, who last won a write-in contest,
it is Joe Miller who has pointed the way to the millennium. He holds a lantern
in the cold Alaskan twilight, but most of the rest of the Tea Party was co-opted
the moment it started being called a Tea Party. The original ideas hatched and awakened
simultaneously in 37 states after NH state rep Dan Itse proposed a Jeffersonian
states-rights defense against federal overreach. But it might have been better
had he never done that Glenn Beck interview. A maturing framework for this will,
as Texas Gov. Rick Perry said recently, take governors, not Congress or a
President. But it will take longer.

Perry has written a book about this. Fed Up: Our Fight to Save America from Washington
is described as a polemic that casts federal policies as a “legitimate
threat to America’s continued leadership in the free world.”

“It is the governors from both parties who must lead this fight,” Perry told
the Dallas Morning News.

As always, change will be driven by economics, not speeches, particularly when
the realization begins to dawn that the well of healthy agrarian states in the
center of the country is now being asked to support the welfare states on the
edge. The NY times asks this weekend, “Can NY and CA be saved?” Not with the recidivist
politicos they just elected. Look to John Thune and Kristi Noem of South Dakota;
look to Joe Miller in the longer term; they would be better as governors. Look
to South Dakota and Alaska as rising karma and NY and CA as receding. But for
now, consider Tea Party only a harbinger, like the nullification crisis of
1832, and a warning.

Miller brings to the political process the animal spirits of a MacKenzie River
husky, the kind that is half wolf. While the new Congress will be the familiar
fad diet, possibly with the always popular government shutdown number thrown in;
get thin quick, then get fat again. It is inherent in the process — the
abstraction — of detached, centralized government. A “30-year-plan”? Are you
kidding? We can’t see beyond Tuesday and we borrow to get to Tuesday. We have
become like Konrad Lorenz’s trained geese who blindly follow anyone who taps
their shell, then become compelled to gluttony when they lose the bearings of
their natural lives. By losing our first attachment to state, to region, to the
place we belong on the earth, we, like the “Survivor” candidates, lose our
bearings on the earth itself: Like Lorenz’s geese we lose our Mother.

Michael Boldin of the 10th Amendment Center was there at the beginning. In September,
he gave a speech in Fort Worth, Texas, and said there are a few core beliefs
that guide him in everything he does. They should be retrieved from the detritus
of the Tea Party, perhaps as an anthem. They are:

Rights are not “granted” to us by the government — they are ours by our very
nature, by our birthright.

ALL just political authority is derived from the people — and government exists
solely with our consent!

We the people of the several states created the federal government — not the
other way around!

The 10th Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that which
has been delegated by the people to the federal government in the Constitution
— and nothing more.

The People of each State have the sole and exclusive right and power to govern
themselves in all areas not delegated to their government.

A Government without limits IS A TYRANNY!

When Congress enacts laws and regulations that are not made in Pursuance of the
powers enumerated in the Constitution, the People are not bound to obey them.

Visit Mr. Quigley’s website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.