Grover Norquist is predicting a second, even larger Tea Party wave, via Breibart.com (h/t Instapundit):
“We are about to have a Tea Party second wave that will dwarf the first wave and that is because while ‘spend too much’ brought the Tea Party into existence, we’re about to walk into ‘spend too much, regulate too much, and tax too much,’ all together. It’s going to be a perfect storm of annoying government behavior, which is devastating to the economy, and I think the small business community which is particularly hit by Obama’s tax increases are going to lead the fight bigger, stronger, tougher than the last Tea Party.”
I think he’s right.
I hope that Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection will be at the forefront of that wave. It’s one of the reasons I asked Leslie Eastman, who had been helping at CI and has her own blog, to start keeping track of the Tea Party movement for LI. Anne also has a background not only in the movement but also in studying what motivated Tea Party supporters to become politically active.
The first Tea Party wave was a threat to Democratic control of Congress, and the response was vicious demonization and false accusations of racism.
Operation Demoralize is the Democrats’ attempt via sympathetic media to convince opponents of the Obama agenda that there is no hope and no alternative but capitulation.
Post-election, Operation Demoralize is in full swing. We are told the permanent liberal majority has arrived, that we live in a media bubble and cocoon, and that we were dishonest — not just wrong — in our 2012 assessments.
Expect Operation Demoralize to go bipartisan. Already we are told to blame the Tea Party movement for not taking back the Senate, even though more “moderate” Republicans lost their races than Tea Party supporters. (Todd Akin uniformly and incorrectly is described as a Tea Party candidate, when he was not.)
In reality, the Tea Party movement gave rise to our next generation of leaders, including Marco Rubio (the establishment backed Charlie Crist) and Ted Cruz (the establishment backed David Dewhurst).
Every time you hear cries about how the Tea Party movement is racist or part of the too-old, too-white problem, remember that the two Republican leaders who are best positioned to reach out to a group which should be our natural ally, Hispanics, came from the Tea Party movement.
The movement can be its own worst enemy, if we allow personal interests in fame and fortune to override the message. We need to fight the self-aggrandizing tendencies in some of the more monied Tea Party organizations.
The second wave is an answer to the disaster at our doorstep, so expect the demonization of the Tea Party movement to increase. Dramatically.
Unlike the first time, however, we know what to expect. And unlike the first time, the economic problems facing the country are so severe that a movement based in economics and individual economic freedom will resonate beyond its base.
We have nothing to fear but our own demoralization.
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