When is a win declared a loss? When is a plus declared a minus? When are we told that up is down?
We are told such nonsense at election time. And the people who tell us that up is down are the same people who consistently show us that they don’t know the difference between up and down: Washington, D.C. politicians and the Beltway media establishment types who do their bidding.
It is election time again. Which means it is time again for the beltway establishment media, and politicians from both sides, to begin laying the groundwork to blame whatever happens on November 6th on the tea party.
These are the same folks who convinced themselves, and perhaps convinced you, that when the tea party delivered the biggest political shift in America in 62 years–a “shellacking” by the President’s own admission–that it was somehow a loss. And that so-called “loss” was the Tea Party’s fault.
Here is a math lesson from the Tea Party Patriots to Washington DC politicians from both parties–who overspent America into $16 trillion in debt–and to the Beltway media establishment types who sat by while it happened and said almost nothing (until we, the People, spoke up):
2010 MIDTERM MATH:
+ 63 in the House
+ 6 in the Senate (plus Scott Brown in MA)
+ 6 in Governors’ races
+20 State Legislatures flipped
+ Over 720 new State Legislators
= Over 815 Mid Term Victories
Up is not down. And a +6 in the Senate was not a “Tea Party loss,” just because one or two Tea-Party-type candidates did not win.
By Beltway logic, the New York Giants did not win the Super Bowl this year, because they went 9-7 during the season. And, because the Giants failed to convert each and every pass during the Superbowl, and only won by a 4 point margin, by Beltway pundit logic: the New York Giants lost Super Bowl XLVI.
They certainly didn’t “shellack” the New England Patriots, like the Tea Party Patriots shellacked the left in 2010.
The Giants won by 4. The Tea Party Patriots won by over 815.
And let’s put another bit of fiction to rest: the deliberately false myth that The tea Party is radical, that we only speak to radicals, and as President Obama said this week, that we would force a President Romney to “rubberstamp the Tea Party’s agenda.”
If only that were true. But, like so much of what the Beltway elites think and say, it is not true.
In the massive 2010 Tea Party midterm “shellacking,” the Tea Party did not shift those on the right. Republicans voted 94% Republican, pretty much just like they always do. The Tea Party did not shift Democrats, either. They voted 92% Democrat: just like they have voted (give or take 1%) in each of the last 4 elections.
If the Tea Party did not shift those on the left, or those on the right, then who in America responded to the tea party message of fiscal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government, and free markets–in such huge numbers that they fundamentally shifted America’s political map more than any other shift in 62 years?
It was the independents. The “Tea Party independents.”
Tea Party independents left the left (-14%) and flooded the right (+13%) in the 2010 “Tea Party Elections.”
That’s right. We appeal to the independents. Tea Party independents.
Which may come as a shock to those in the Beltway who still believe that up is down.