Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Milton Wolf comments on the Lugar defeat


Here's what I wrote in my last Washington Times column, Romney Revolution:
Democrats didn’t understand the Tea Party movement in 2010, and they don’t understand it now. That’s fine. They suffered historic losses because of their blissful ignorance, and they will do so again. The more interesting question is whether the Republicans understand.
I (presciently? brilliantly? fortuitously?) continued...
The Tea Party, it’s important to realize, will not simply get in line with Republicans. Its members are prepared to be Mitt Romney’s best friend, or his worst enemy. Just ask former Utah Sen. Robert Bennett or former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Republicans whose careers ended abruptly at the hands of the Tea Party. There is, as author and blogger Glenn Reynolds said in the title of his book, “An Army of Davids” who yearn to breathe free and simply have run out of patience with politicians of either party who think otherwise.

Gone are the days of the blank check. Republicans, before the Tea Party, gave President George W. Bush a blank check, and he gave us “no bureaucrat left behind” and the largest expansion of Medicare in the history of the program. Mr. Bush’s blank check also gave us Mr. Obama, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and with them the rise of the government-centered society that puts us on the path to becoming a second-rate, European-style social welfare state.

Tea Party members will pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to restoring our republic, but they will not give President Mitt Romney a blank check
Add Richard Lugar to that list.