Why Compromise is Bad for America

Rob Eichmann, the Republican state committeeman from Gloucester County, wrote a guest editorial in Sunday’s N.J. Star Ledger about why the Tea Party is bad for Conservatives.  He may as well just have written why it’s bad for moderate members of the GOP.

Mr. Eichmann expresses dismay over the humor of some Tea Party websites in their representations of Obama.  The picture to which he takes exception and is shown in the column depicts Obama wearing a tank-top tee shirt that says, “No Job, No House, No Gas, No Food, No Problem – C’mon, Baby, Gimme One  More Chance.”  He also cites websites that boast of Obama punching bags and Tea Partiers bragging about “shooting Lefties.”  One Tea Party leader, he says, called a woman an “ugly Lib.”  They’ve said much worse about us.

Personally, I gave my nephew a rare Obama bobblehead doll dressed in a money suit, and have Obama and Nancy Pelosi squeezeheads.  Humor is a difficult concept, especially for Liberals when they become the butt of jokes themselves.  They’re not used to it.  As for showing the current president respect, perhaps Mr. Eichmann doesn’t recall George W’s first inauguration parade, when Liberals lined the streets, catcalling to him and throwing garbage at his limousine. 

We’re supposed to be the tea party of tolerance, are we?  Of impeccable manners, even temper, good sports, and door mats for Liberal vitriol?  We’re supposed to shrug when they call us “tea-baggers”?  We’re supposed to hold our pinkies in the air while we drink the Progressive Kool-Aid?  We’re supposed to quiver in our shoes when adolescent independents reprove us for criticizing Obama even while they laugh at The Daily Shows’ daily Conservative barbs?

“Gone are the days when the tea party hoped to be a bridge between the parties of those fed up with politics as usual,” Mr. Eichmann opines. “Nowadays, the tea party is viewed by many voters — especially swing voters — as angry, divisive, partisan and, in some instances, racist.”

Since Day One, the Media has depicted us as angry, divisive, partisan, and racist – in some instances, he admits.  You’re darned right we’re angry and partisan.  But we are not divisive.  We’re simply standing our ground.  The Tea Parties are not responsible for dividing Americans into racial, ethnic, and gender-based entities, all clamoring for their share of the federal pie.

Mr. Eichmann says there was a time when the Tea Party represented hope for conservatism and America, when it was still a grassroots reaction to Liberalism and its overreaching program.  When our focus was narrow, Mr. Eichmann approved of the Tea Party.  But too many volunteers “burst the old pathways of activism, spreading in all directions…Existing group simply couldn’t organize them quickly enough.”  And control us?  No, indeed.

We didn’t need anyone to organize us.  We organized ourselves.  “Without leadership to provide ‘focus’, dozens of local warlords,” Mr. Eichmann writes, “began to call the shots.”  Imagine that?  American citizens taking matters into their own hands – and without Republican bullet points telling us to compromise and negotiate.

Eichmann bemoans the lack of political experience of these “tribes,” many of whom didn’t even bother to vote before 2009.  Gee, why was that?  Could it be the Republican voters were frustrated with compromisers and negotiators?  The Tea Parties don’t democracy, at all, he tells confused independent voters.  We understand enough.  We don’t need lessons on what kind of government we have – a federated republic.   “A representative democracy requires patience and compromise. That’s the way a republic works.”

A representative democracy, Mr. Eichmann, requires representatives who actually represent their constituents’ wishes.  We have no patience with representatives who compromise away our American values or pander to independent voters who don’t even realize that Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house; that the words were spoken by an actress on a Liberal, late-night comedy show.

In voting for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, Conservatives were mocked for electing a former actor.  Now, we are mocked by actors for holding Conservative values.  Tea Party members are hard-working activists who deserve better than to be smeared by concocted caricatures drawn by the Media and even moderate Republicans like Mr. Eichmann.

Mr. Eichmann should know we have as much to fear from Bill Pascrell’s Democrat rival, Steve Rothman.  This is what he said, in part, on NJ12 on Sunday:

“I’ve faced down the Tea Party – and they showed up by the thousands.  I held 10 town hall meetings; Pascrell held none.  Ask yourself who’ll bring home the federal money?  Ask yourself who’s the most Progressive Democrat?  That would be me.”

The GOP does not wish to align itself with the Tea Parties and claims that it holds the key to Conservative values.  Compromise is not a conservative value and it is not the way a federated republic works.  If we were to surrender every value, every principle, and every belief to Liberal mockery, Progressive agendas, and Independent dithering, based on adolescent notions of acceptance and peer pressure, we would not be a federated republic at all, nor even a democracy; America would be a socialist tyranny.

Mr. Eichmann and the GOP may fret all they want over the perceived “antics” of the Tea Party.  Meanwhile, we will continue our job of educating the public about the growing size of an encroaching, bureaucratic government and the danger it poses to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.