Senator Robert Bennett

Tea Party Effect On Conservatism: Representative Bob Inglis And Senator Robert Bennett As Victims!

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The rise of the Tea Party Movement has had a deleterious effect on the Republican Party, leaving in its wake the defeat of a solid conservative Republican who dared to defy the extremists of the movement, who have promoted irresponsible rhetoric and advocated right wing populist ideas!

Representative Bob Inglis of South Carolina is one of the victims of the movement, a person with a solid conservative record in the House of Representatives, but unwilling to go along with the irresponsible statements, actions and beliefs of this right wing populist movement!

Inglis will leave Congress at the end of this year as one Republican who refused to call Barack Obama a Socialist or contend Obama does not have a birth certificate! He also believes the politics of personal destruction is wrong, and that global warming really does exist!

Inglis does not believe in tearing down institutions or promoting character assassination, which he contends the Tea Party Movement is active in advocating! He calls the Tea Party right wing populism as similar to the French Revolution in its irresponsibility! They are acting in a demagogic way, and he worries that it is destroying mainline conservative values!

Another Republican similar to Inglis in views and attitude about the Tea Party Movement is the defeated Utah Senator Robert Bennett, who is being replaced by Tea Party favorite Mike Lee in January!

Many mainstream conservatives are concerned, as Inglis and Bennett are, that the Tea Party radicalism will lead to the destruction of the GOP, and that it is a danger to the political stability of the nation!

In many ways, it can be compared to the anti immigrant, extremist views of the American Party, known unofficially as the Know Nothings in the 1850s!

Ignorance, prejudice, nativism, and hatred, combined with extreme libertarianism and constitutional “originalism” in the direction of Justice Antonin Scalia’s 18th century views is a threat to the future of the nation, and we are now at a crossroads of potential division the most dangerous since the Civil War! 🙁

Tea Party Extremists Gone Amuck: Defeat Of Utah Senator Robert Bennett!

Ronald 1 Comment

Senator Robert Bennett of Utah would be considered, by any reasonable standard, to be a solid conservative Republican, certainly in no way a liberal or moderate.

This man, a Mormon whose father Wallace Bennett served in the Senate before him; the grandson of the seventh president of the Mormon Church; and married to the granddaughter of the ninth President of the Mormon Church–was unable to win a fourth term nomination at the Republican State convention today!

What stood in the way of this senator, who voted against abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and marriage, health care reform, energy standards proposals, even emergency funding for Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina–and for the Patriot Act and tighter immigration controls, and repeal of the inheritance tax and support of the flat tax which favors the most wealthy taxpayers, among many other votes?

You would not believe that the vote which doomed Senator Bennett as NOT conservative enough, was his decision to support, as many others in the Senate and House did, the “bailout” of Wall Street institutions introduced by the Bush Administration in the fall of 2008, and continued in 2009 by President Obama’s Administration!

This event, the rejection of Senator Bennett, is an example of the absolutely sickening, crazy, loony Tea Party Movement’s influence, and a warning to Senator John McCain, Governor Charlie Crist and many others–establishment Republicans with a solid record of accomplishments for conservative causes–but also an element of individualism and maverick nature who DARED to use their brain, rather than ideology, to do what was the proper thing to do in a dire emergency, as we had not seen or experienced in 80 years!

The fact that what the US government has done has indeed worked toward the beginning of an economic revival does not matter to these lunatics! They are such “puritans” regarding their backwards ideology that they do not care what harm they do to the party which has best represented their right wing interests for all these years!

This is a warning to the GOP–continue to embrace the Tea Party extremists–and IF the American people have any common sense, these right wing rebels will be rejected at the polls this November!

Obviously, SOME of these characters will manage to get through and poison the political atmosphere, but Democrats MUST do whatever they can to keep the ship of state on an even keel, as a Tea Party takeover of American politics would be the triumph of insanity and harm the long term future of the United States!

By the way, there is the possibility that Senator Bennett will wage a write-in campaign for his seat, since this rejection was not in a primary where all registered Republicans could vote. With a famous name in Utah politics, and 18 years in the Senate behind him, it could occur that Senator Bennett will yet overcome the wingnuts who defeated him in the state convention today! For a state that is solidly conservative Republican, his eventual write in victory is the best that could be hoped for!