Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Tea Party isn't just talking to conservatives
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Chip Tarbutton
Tarbutton, of Fincastle, is on the Board of Directors for the Roanoke Tea Party.
As a member of the Roanoke Tea Party I read with interest Art Heberer's commentary on the Roanoke Tea Party titled "Tea Party needs to broaden its appeal" published Sept. 2. We're glad Heberer took the time to come to the rally on July 4. We also value his feedback and opinions. We did want to clarify some points made in his article.
At the July 4th rally, we invited every local representative and local political party to attend. This included Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Constitutional Party representatives. No Democrats chose to accept our invitation. About half of the scheduled speakers were from the Libertarian Party, the Constitutional Party or from other organizations (We had a Fair Tax representative and radio personality Brian Gottstein speak).
The second half of the agenda was open to anyone, although we ran into some time constraints and not as many people got a chance to speak as we would have liked. A few speakers toward the end did discuss social issues, but this was not a main focus of the rally, and they are not issues the Roanoke Tea Party is actively pursuing. We believe in freedom of speech, and speakers comments were completely theirs and theirs alone.
Heberer also contends that we are just conservatives talking to conservatives and that we need to broaden our appeal by discussing issues such as unresponsive politicians and a general disrespect for the principles in our Constitution. He also suggested an ad campaign.
This is something we are working to address. At the Roanoke Tea Party meeting on Aug. 15 at the Roanoke Civic Center, we unveiled our four principles and did not feature any speakers but people from our own group. We criticized both parties for their spending practices. Our four major principles are: rule of constitutional law and national sovereignty, limited government based on 10th Amendment federalism, private property and free-market economics and individual liberties
These are principles that, in our opinion, are not conservative or liberal. These principles are the very foundation of our nation that all Americans should embrace. We don't believe many people truly understand how recent decisions in Washington are imperiling these principles, but based on what we are seeing at town hall meetings, people are definitely starting to wake up.
We are working on several initiatives to become more high profile, but since we are a true grassroots movement, money is always an issue. We organized a bus trip to the Taxpayers March on Washington on Sept. 12 and other local events. Our main goals are to educate and mobilize voters to go to the polls and take back Washington from career politicians who are driving our country to the brink of economic and political disaster.
More information on our group can be found at Roanoketeaparty.com. We certainly encourage all concerned citizens, especially Heberer, to join with us as we move forward.
