MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina–Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) called on grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers across the country to organize and fight back against the GOP establishment’s efforts to stamp out the movement during his speech to the South Carolina Tea Party Convention here on Sunday morning.
Gohmert argued that conservatives need a ground game and an organized strategy to stop House Speaker John Boehner, Karl Rove, and the Chamber of Commerce from destroying the Tea Party movement. He rendered a lengthy quote from the infamous scene in the classic movie Animal House, where Bluto riles up the fraternity to fight back against the administration when things seemed darkest for them.
“So, a big national organization of corporations has declared war on us,” Gohmert said.
So, some guy with a whiteboard has declared war on us. So, the Speaker may have declared war on us. Let me borrow from Animal House: “What’s all this laying around stuff? Why would anyone just lay around when our liberty, lives and loves are on the line? Did someone say let it go? The war’s over? What? Over? Did someone say over? No. It’s not over until we decide it’s over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No! Well it ain’t over now! Because when the going gets tough, the tough get going!” What happened to the Tea Party I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts? This could be the greatest time of our lives but you’re going to let it be the worst because we’re afraid to go with Louie. We might get in trouble. Just kiss my aspen tree. From now on, not me, I’m not going to take it. We’re not going to take it anymore right? We’re going to stand up and take our country back!
Earlier in his speech, Gohmert said the the vote on the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the bailout, was the most important vote he ever faced in Congress.
“I think TARP was the most defining vote since I’ve been in Congress. It was wrong. You don’t nationalize private–it was wrong. It desensitized people to what $700 billion was, which opened the door for a $900 million stimulus, for Obamacare, for all these things. It was wrong. It broke my heart.”
Gohmert said former Rep. John Shaddegg (R-AZ), who voted for TARP but then later expressed regret to Gohmert about the vote, is an example of how certain people who cast bad votes can be forgiven–as long as they do not do so repeatedly, and actually understand why what they did was a mistake.
“I love John Shaddegg,” Gohmert said. “Before the end of that year, he said: ‘Louie, I was wrong to vote for TARP. I deeply regret it.’ We can forgive people that make mistakes as long as they can acknowledge them and make sure it’s not going to happen again. But don’t be on every issue all the time on every position and expect us to think that’s great.”
Gohmert then turned his attention on the mainstream media. “We have a mainstream media that sold its collective soul so cheaply to get this administration elected that they have to do whatever they can to preserve that little price they got for selling their soul,” Gohmert said. “They’re doing it. To heck with journalistic integrity. They’ll say or do anything.”
Because of the combination of all of this, and because of the far-left views of President Barack Obama, Gohmert then argued the Obama administration is out of control.
“What’s going on these days?” Gohmert said.
We’ve got the NSA getting logs of every call you make. The IRS is weaponized like Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. A law enforcement arm of the U.S. was forcing the sale of guns to people so they could get them to drug cartels to kill hundreds of Mexicans and even at least one or more Americans. You got a U.S. administration supporting rebels in other countries that are infused with America’s greatest terrorist enemies but the administration cannot even call them “radical Islamists” that they are, while we’re punishing countries like Egypt that has finally stood up them. We have Republican leaders who are not content to lose presidential elections but now they think we need to get moderates who will stand not for anything but for everything.
Soon thereafter, Gohmert added that the Obama administration’s policies have caused rifts between the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, particularly Israel but others too. “We have betrayed repeatedly our best friend in the Middle East, Israel, to the point that they don’t trust us and they don’t know what we’re going to do,” Gohmert said.
Now it’s not just Israel. Some of us have met with leaders, other moderate Muslims from Egypt and other countries, and they tell us privately: “We just don’t know if we’re going to be the next ally you throw away. You’ve done it repeatedly with your allies.” They ask: “How is it you don’t understand that the Muslim Brotherhood is at war with you and that’s really who you went to war with after 9/11, you finally figured out who was against you, and now you’re helping them all over the world?”
Gohmert said this administration’s continued push down all of these “is insane.”
“We weaponized not only the IRS but other agencies like EPA, OSHA, Department of Justice,” he added. “Can you imagine being in the State Department, Justice Department, Homeland Security and you see abuses of your Constitution and trying to figure out where do you go to report it? Where do you go to report it? There’s nowhere right now. I can tell you because I have those people come to me.”
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