Tea Party: R.I.P.

By Tim King

It seems like Senator Rand Paul is the last standing member of the Tea Party. Maybe there are one or two others but neither one of them is as courageous, principled, and just plain delightful as the junior Senator from Kentucky.

Paul has been an advocate for our Constitutionally protected right to privacy for decades. So it wasn’t surprising when, in May of 2015, he stood in the Senate to begin a ten hour filibuster against National Security Agency spying on Americans by saying:

“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,“ he said as he began his filibuster. “That time is now. And I will not let the PATRIOT Act - the most unpatriotic of acts - go unchallenged.”

Rand Paul - Thanks to Wikipedia

Senator Paul did not have the support of more than two or three Republicans, or the Tea Party, when he stood up to protect our privacy rights.

Not much had changed when Sen. Paul threatened to filibuster the  extension of NSA spying and a deficit building spending bill this last January. Neither the Republicans nor the Tea Party stood with Paul against spying on American citizens and building colossal deficits. The fact is, Mick Mulvaney, a former Tea Party Member of Congress, was the guy behind the deficit expansion spending bill opposed by Sen. Paul. Mulvaney is Donald Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.

You can count on Rand Paul to stand up for Americans’ freedoms and for fiscal responsibility. You know what he’s for. When it comes to the rest of the Tea Party you have no clue what they stand for. It changes depending on the President’s Tweet-of-the-day.  A $30 million military parade? We’re on it Mr. Commander-in- Chief. Take guns away from people without giving them Constitutionally protected due process? Can do, sir!

The thing about Tea Party sellouts like Mulvaney is that they smelled power so they shed their principles for a desk in The Donald’s Swamp.

With Rand Paul as the last of the Tea Party in Washington I thought I’d check the local TP group. Surely they haven’t abandoned theTea Party principles of fiscal responsibility and the Constitution. The real Tea Party is here in the Heartland, I thought, and not in some fetid political swamp in Washington. Out here our values are not for sale.

So I checked the Facebook site of the Central Minnesota Tea Party.

The last post to the Facebook of the Central Minnesota Tea Party was on January 17, 2017. It celebrated The Donald’s “courageous” executive order “that will pause the resettlement of Third World refugees in the United States for 120 days while a system of “extreme vetting” is put in place.”

After that the site went dark. Perhaps they were disappointed with The Donald as they learned more about him. They had supported him during the campaign. Also of interest on that Facebook was that the Central Minnesota Tea Party was liked by Minnesota Republicans.  The GOP and the TP are the same, it seems.

Another friend of the CMTP was the Central Minnesota Tea Party Patriots. But the Patriots Facebook went dark last September. There is a national organization called the Tea Party Patriots. When I checked in early March they were asking members to call Congress to pass a spending bill without connecting it to help for DACA recipients. But by then the deficit building budget busting spending bill was already passed. Better late than never. Like Mick Mulvaney, the Patriots supported big deficits and opposed helping immigrants. 

I checked one more on-line location; the Central Minnesota Tea Party blog. Somebody has been posting articles there on a regular basis for years. Maybe I could learn what at least one TP person believes. When I visited the blog I was offered a chance to meet Asian ladies. The ad said, “100% Verified Members Seeking For Love”. I passed on that. 

The first blog article was about how liberal Californians are moving to Colorado and ruining that bastion of liberty. Next was an article celebrating the first year of freedom loving Donald Trump’s presidency. There was an article claiming that the reason Muslims are stupid is because of their genetics. Another article complained that immigrant kids in English as a Second Language classes were obese, had cell phones, and were getting free breakfast from schools. Another claimed that Muslims are preparing for armed warfare in Sweden and that the U.S. is next.

There were no articles about the Constitutional right to privacy or due process. Fiscal responsibility and deficits weren’t mentioned.

So, it seems that if you want to bash an immigrant, hate a Muslim, want an Asian lady, or to just be mean and afraid, the tattered remnants of the Tea Party are for you. But if you’re interested in privacy rights or due process under the law or fiscal responsibility in the government, you’re stuck with Rand Paul. Or you could try the ACLU.