It's not your Tea Party,but you can cry if you want to

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Daria DiGiovanni finds the reaction from Ron Paul's followers to Sarah Palin's Tea Party address "not only incendiary, but much more troubling" than that which came from the Left and its in-the-pocket media. The Left mostly got its undies in a knot over Gov. Palin's palm notes, going after her on style more than substance. But the Ronulans were much more hysterical, claiming that Citizen Palin had "hijacked" the tea party movement:

Kleinheider lamented it was "the beginning of the end," as Palin used her platform not to encourage and inspire more grass-roots activism against massive government spending, but to set herself up for a 2012 run. On a personal note, one of my Plaxo contacts repeatedly posted a succession of status updates, asking if Palin had deliberately "stolen" the Tea Party from Ron Paul.

Excuse me, but Ron Paul’s Tea Party? When did a movement started by fed-up, everyday Americans become the domain of any politician, let alone Ron Paul?

I have news for the Paulnuts: I’ve been involved in the Tea Party movement in South Florida since it began a year ago on the corner of US 1 and Oakland Park Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale. And from the very first day, not only were participants equipped with signs decrying bailouts, stimulus and socialism, but also placards of support for the US Military, strong national defense, waterboarding, Gitmo and treating radical Islamists as the enemy combatants they are — not as common criminals.

Having been fortunate enough to attend the 9/12 March on Washington last year, I can honestly report that the vast majority of the approximately one million in attendance were just as concerned about Global Jihad as they were about crony capitalism, the welfare state and the assault on individual liberty.

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In her speech, Palin correctly pointed out that protection from enemies foreign and domestic is listed among the limited responsibilities ascribed to the federal government by the US Constitution. Therefore, much like Reagan’s approach to communism, our philosophy in regard to Global Jihad must be "we win, they lose". So while she excoriated D.C. to get out of the way of small business by obliterating oppressive, job-killing regulations and to remove the barriers to the pursuit of individual happiness by reducing taxes, she also demanded that our president start behaving like "a Commander-in-Chief, not a law professor standing at the lectern."

DiGiovanni says Sarah Palin's assessment of Obama’s foreign policy weakness is accurate, though it may be something the Ronulans don't want to hear. Yes, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate would consider running for president in 2012. So what? She made no secret of it. As for "regurgitating" the GOP platform, it is a list of principles which many in the Tea Party agree with. just because too many elected Republicans have abandoned those principles is no reason to slam Gov. Palin. She is calling for the party of Reagan to return to its conservative roots.

All across the country Tea party activists are working from the precinct level on up to take control of the Republican Party. If the Ronulans don't like that fact of life, that's their problem, not Sarah Palin's.

- JP