John Feehery, once a top aide to Speaker Denny Hastert and now a Republican strategist, writes, “It is time to get rid of the Tea Party.”
When the Tea Party started, it was a national movement of good people who were worried about the future of the country.
But today’s Tea Party has morphed into something far different. It has become a collection of wing-nuts, racists, hucksters, extremists, con-men and front-men, who collaborate with Hollywood and left-wing organizations to plot the demise of Republicans in good standing, Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, who is probably the most conservative leader of either party in the history of the Senate.
McConnell himself is taking a different tack, distinguishing between allies and opponents among tea partiers.
I’ve always been and continue to be a big supporter of the Tea Party and the conservative change it’s bringing to Washington. One of the biggest obstacles to that change, however, is the Senate Conservatives Fund, a rogue political operation that has co-opted the Liberty movement for its own enrichment to the detriment of the conservative cause.
McConnell’s approach seems like the wiser one for the party establishment to take, both because it avoids slandering a large group of people (“a collection of wing-nuts, racists,” etc.) and because it stands a better chance of actually achieving the goal Feehery sets out in his closing line: unifying the Republican party.