It’s official. There is now a Tea Party Caucus in the Congress of the United States of America.
Representative Michelle Bachmann filed the paperwork late last week, and the approval was granted almost immediately:
Response from the Left has been about what you might expect. Steny Hoyer took the opportunity to repeat the race-libel against the Tea Party:
“The Tea Party per se I don’t think is racist.”
“There are obviously, as I said on Sunday, I have seen some virulent racist tracks which I believe are harmful to the public discourse and inconsistent with Americans values. You would have to ask the Tea Party whether they agree with those or not. I mean I don’t know who the tea party is number one. You know, the answer to that question is I think that Joe Biden essentially said the same thing in a different, slightly different way. I don’t have any reason to believe the Tea Party itself is racist.”
When asked his feelings about the newly formed tea party caucus he said, “We’ll see how many of the Republicans join the Tea Party Caucus and see whether or not they want to adopt the Tea Party Agenda.”
There are also voices of caution from within Tea Party circles who do not want to see the Tea Party become an extension of the Republican party. Confidential sources, however, have told me that Mitch McConnell has quietly been traveling around the country raising money against potential Tea Party candidates, and Michael Steele has been almost silent in the face of race-libel charges from elected Democrats and the NAACP, so I don’t think there is much to worry about on that front.
Libertarians in the Tea Party should embrace this caucus for a number of reasons. First of all, even though Bachmann’s office denies this, this caucus could prove to be a formidable rival to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. More importantly though, the next time Democrats and their media organs label the Tea Party as racist, by extension they will be calling identifiable members of congress racists, too. It’s one thing for these race traffickers to ruin the lives and reputations of average plebeians, but they might hesitate to do the same to elected officials.
The Caucus has already attracted several members:
- GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN)
- NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX)
- Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) — the ranking member on the Select Committee on Intelligence who is also running for governor of Michigan.
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