AP
Tea Party patriots beware: after calling the grassroots movement “AstroTurf” last summer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed to ABC this weekend that she now shares some of Tea Party views.
Pelosi’s remarks are a subtle acknowledgment that the Tea Party movement is a political force that the Democrats need to blunt to achieve their political agenda.
Coincidently, Pelosi’s comments, made on ABC’s “This Week,” occurred while the Tea Party movement was celebrating its one-year anniversary.
With the Tea Party movement’s major news grabbing events now in the past – a national convention starring Sara Palin and the one-year anniversary – Democrats may sieze on the lull in the action to ram the president’s health care plan through Congress.
The timing sure fits a Democratic blitzkrieg. The Democrats will most likely strike before the next series of Tea Party rallies, which are scheduled on tax day, April 15. The timing is also consistent with President Obama’s televised bipartisan health care summit, in which the Democrats showed no sign of slowing down the health care train.
At the close of the summit, Obama urged Congress to act and then let Americans determine if they agreed with the decisions of their elected officials after the fact. “That’s what elections are for,” Obama said.
Pelosi has expressed a similar sign of urgency, even to members of Congress who could lose their jobs if they vote for Obamacare: “We’re not here to self-perpetuate our service in Congress.” She added: “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”
In their urgency to cement their progressive agenda into our nation’s law, Obama and Pelosi are swimming against the tide of the American people. According to Rasmussen Reports, “52% of U.S. voters continue to oppose the plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats.”
Rasmussen also reports that, “Seventy-six percent of those with insurance now rate their own coverage as good or excellent. The fact that most Americans are comfortable with their own insurance coverage has proven to be a major obstacle for advocates of reform because 49% of insured Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that the plan [currently] before Congress could force them to change their own coverage.”
Notwithstanding Pelosi’s concession acknowledging the legitimacy of the Tea Party movement, the Democratic leadership’s stubborn determination to ram their health care plan down America's throat shows they remain tone-deaf and that they underestimate the Tea Party movement.
And we're speaking from first-hand experience when we say Tea Party patriots will not be fooled or become complacent.
Over the weekend, we were featured speakers for the White Plains, N.Y. Tea Party celebration of the one year anniversary of the Tea Party movement. While we celebrated the amazing accomplishments of the nationwide effort, there was no sign of complacency.
Not only was stopping Obamacare part of the conversation amongst those we saw this weekend but the participants also engaged in a discussion of how to stop the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions.
With respect to health care, the members we talked with were fully engaged in voicing their opposition to Obama’s plan.
Regarding the EPA, members were planning to encourage congressional support for Senator Murkowski’s resolution to prevent the EPA from enacting its backdoor effort to regulate carbon.
Yes, there was some discussion about plans for the April 15 tax day rally, but all eyes remain focused on President Obama’s major policy initiatives.
Speaker Pelosi can take this as a warning: The Tea Party movement continues to prove that “We the People” are steadfast and will remain vigilant in defeating public policies that endanger our liberty.
Deneen Borelli is a Project21.org fellow and Fox News contributor. Tom Borelli, Ph.D., is director of the Free Enterprise Project.
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