Tea Party Activists Should Choose Policy over Personality

A lot has been said of “principle over party” by the tea party movement in the last year. They stuck to their guns so strongly as to support a third party candidate over the Republican candidate in New York’s special District 23 election, because they felt the Republican candidate didn’t align closely enough with the principles they held so dear.

Videos on YouTube abound of tea party protesters shouting down and booing Republican speakers who dared come to their events to speak after voting for 2008’s financial bailout package. Over and over again, tea party leaders stress that this is about principles, not partisan politics- they could care less who has what letter next to their name. They only want people who stand for the right principles: limited government, individual liberty, Constitutional rule of law.

But there’s an important aspect of “principle over party” that cannot be overlooked. If the tea party neglects this one important thing, it will be doomed to fail in its attempt to limit and reverse the relentless expansion of government into our lives. That one crucial factor in its success is for the tea party to remember policy over personality.

While someone may have a good personality, a personality that seems conservative, down-to-earth, and middle-American; while a politician on stage might say everything you agree with and believe deep down in your heart; while that person may strongly affirm all of your principles… he or she might not really believe in them.

Is it so hard to think that a politician might capitalize on the tea party movement by telling us what we want to hear? Is it so impossible to believe that a politician would lie? There’s only one way to find out if someone believes what they say, and will truly work to advance your principles in our government: and that is to carefully examine this person’s past policies.

We can not- we absolutely must not take politicians at their word when they affirm limited government, individual liberty, and Constitutional rule of law. In truth they always affirm these things on the campaign trail (in both parties) because these are the things most Americans want. The truth lies in how they’ve governed or legislated in the real world. We can find this out by looking at past records.

How can we tell the true believers from the wolves in sheep’s clothing? Thoroughly research a candidate’s past history in office as an executive or legislator. Did the government grow under their executive tenure? Did budgets increase? Were more employees added to the state’s payroll? Were there tax increases? Governors should not be let off easy for these things unless they happened over the governor’s veto.

If the person was a legislator in a state or the national Congress, we can’t hold them responsible for everyone else’s votes, but we can hold them responsible for their own. Did they vote for imbalanced budgets? Tax increases? Bailouts? More regulation? More spending? Then look at what a politician has vocally supported in the past. Have they expressed support for bailouts and government take-overs of private industries? Have they endorsed any candidates who violate any of these warning signs listed above?

If you can answer yes to any of these questions, you should be very, very wary. People can make excuses all day, but in the end, that’s how the enemies of freedom get away with taking away all our liberties piece by piece. There’s always an excuse. “Oh we needed to make just this one exception because the company was too big to fail.”

Yes, tea party activists should hold principle over party. But it’s no good if tax-and-spend, regulate-anything-that-moves, big-government politicians do what we can only expect them to do and lie to get our votes. Affirming our principles is not enough. Having a good personality is not enough. Having a great head of hair is not enough. We need to look at their past policies before giving them a dollar of our money or our precious votes.