JackinMichigan's blog

On the Mackinac Center for Public Policy website - three important items that answer the questions Tea Party activists have been asking, “what next?” and “what else can we do?”

Pasted below is the first, “Tea Party Activists have Attitude.” Also check out “Ten Minute Tea Party Activist” and “Candidate Quesionnaire for Tea Party Activists.”

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Tea Party Activists have Attitude

Samuel Adams, widely believed to be the instigator of the Boston Tea Party, once said that it didn’t take an activist majority to prevail, “but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

Setting brushfires requires attitude, especially during a time described by Adams, “when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, (and) our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

The following describes an attitude that, if widespread, would vastly improve the incentives of lawmakers to honor the principles of limited government.

1. Tea Party activists aren’t impressed that their politician is a “nice guy.”

Being likeable isn’t needed for a person to succeed in America. An insufferable jerk can build a billion-dollar corporation from scratch, employ thousands, save the whales and cure cancer.

What he can’t do is win an election. To gain votes in a democracy a candidate must be likeable. The reason political campaigns feature photos of the candidate’s family and pets is not because they want voters to assume that he or she has a responsible record on taxes and spending.

Therefore, the last thing that should ever impress a Tea Party activist is a politician who’s a “nice guy.” Simply put: They’re all nice guys, so get over it and ignore it. Hold them accountable for their deeds rather than their smile. The Tea Parties were a reaction against a lot of very nice guys doing very bad things.

2. Tea Party activists don’t presume virtue in party labels.

Political parties are extensions of the politicians that they elect. They are mere instruments to gain power, not virtuous machines that exercise that power in noble ways.

Example: During the term of President Bill Clinton the budget actually had a brief surplus, while spending soared under President George W. Bush. Likewise, while Michigan Republican lawmakers boasted of their collective resistance to the $1.4 billion income and business tax hikes passed in 2007, most of them voted for most of the increased spending it funded.

There are countless other examples. An experienced patriot treats the promises of politicians and political parties with equal (and substantial) skepticism. Use political parties only as tools toward your ends, not theirs. Your loyalty is too valuable to sell so cheaply.

3. Tea Party activists really know their own lawmakers’ voting records.

If the “nice guys” aren’t a reliable source for a full and accurate picture of their records, and the party label doesn’t do it either, then experienced patriots need to find this information on their own.

At the state level, two free tools make this much easier in Michigan. The first is MichiganVotes.org, which provides a plain-English description for every vote cast by every member of the Michigan Legislature since 2001. The second is Michigan Capitol Confidential, a periodical that gives more details on votes involving concerns regarding limited government.

An experienced patriot should use both of these tools, and compare how his or her lawmaker measures up by asking these critical questions:

• Does the lawmaker always vote with their party, no matter what?
• If there are a handful of dissenting votes for or against the limited government side of an issue, which side does he or she tend to fall on?
• Do most of the bills he or she introduces expand the size of government, or reduce it?

4. Tea Party activists follow the money.

Is your lawmaker getting financial support from those whose values do not match up with your own? It’s not hard to find out. For most past and current Michigan legislators, go to the “Search Voting Record” tab on the MichiganVotes.org homepage, choose a representative or senator and click “search.” A link to a list of the legislator’s campaign contributors appears below his or her photo. For members of Congress find this information at OpenSecrets.org. (Go to “Politicians and Elections,” “Donor Lookup.”)

5. Tea Party activists know they don’t have to get elected to change the world.

They understand that electing a handful of virtuous lawmakers won’t solve the problem either, because what needs to change are the incentives operating on the entire political establishment. Here’s how Milton Friedman described it:

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”

More often than not the most important effect of an election is who gets defeated, not who gets elected. When a politician loses for “doing the wrong thing” the incentives change for all of them.

6. Tea party activists don’t “repress their feelings” regarding fiscal malpractice.

Having discovered the real records of elected officials in their own area and elsewhere (see Items No. 3 and 4), Tea Party activists share this knowledge widely with friends, family, colleagues, internet contacts, etc., letting all and sundry know how their lawmakers are behaving, and sharing their feelings regarding the ones who are misbehaving.

7. Tea Party activists focus on what unites them, not things that may divide. Those uniting things are:

• Grievance: Chronic fiscal irresponsibility, now become acute fiscal extremism.
• Target: A self-serving, self-perpetuating political class that no longer represents the will of the people.
• Goal: Restore genuine representative, limited government by changing the incentives on elected officials.

See also: “Ten-Minute Tea Party Activist” and “Candidate Questionnaire for Tea Party Activists.”

Perhaps the most powerful image from the Tea Parties is the video of South Carolina GOP Congressman Gresham Barrett being relentlessly booed at the Greenville event.

Some are suggesting that the way to give the Tea Party movement long term impact is by using it to encourage people to run for local office. Gresham Barrett's smackdown suggests that defeating candidates may be more effective for getting at the real root of the problem, which is incentives within the system that push whoever's in office to do the wrong things.

Electing a few sterling characters won't change that. But if one or a bunch of political establishment hacks get "taken out and shot" - figuratively speaking, of course - that does change incentives, and behavior.

Milton Friedman said it well:

"I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office."

Turn that around and the point becomes clear: It needs to become politically unprofitable to do the wrong things. At this moment the most important thing about an election is not who gets elected, but who gets defeated. So rather than electing candidates, the movement should make defeating them its goal.

This applies to incumbents and also to open-seat races, where the front-runner is almost always a member-in-good-standing of the political class. Make that identity the issue, and defeat those people. Make political-class membership a political death sentence for candidates.

Back to that SC congressman being booed at the Tea Party: Talk about "changing the climate of public opinion" - that kind of thing is an incentive changer, especially if it marks the beginning of the end of this establishment pol's career.

Atlas shrugs for a day, or half a day?

At the Lansing, MI teaparty I saw thousands of solid middle class citizens mostly in the 40s, 50s, 60s. People who have worked all their lives, followed the rules, tried to build a nest egg.

These truly are the Atlases who carry America's economy.

What if they all took a powder for a day?

What if every small business closed for a day?

Maybe even just an hour. A national "Shrug-Out."

Let me suggest that there's a more fundamental question that people on this site should be asking: What is the point of puttng Rebublicans back in power - of repeating 1994? Did that restore limited government? Did that restore free market principles?

This site is called "Next Right," not "Next Republican." The true enemy of limited government is an inbred, self-serving, self-perpetuating, bipartisan political class that to retain its hold on power is ever so happy to play handmaiden to the interests of the permanent government class (the welfare/regulatory state bureaucracy) and to legions of rent seekers. The ideas of Adam Smith and James Madison are considered weird to them. They don't represent the people; instead, the government has escaped the control of the people.

How does just electing more Repubs solve that fundamental problem?

The two parties aren't going away, but all these netroots tools suggests that they may become less important to elections and governance. Everyone's swooning over how Obama used internet tools, but they're not noticing so much that his use of them had little or nothing do with the Dem party. Yet many of the discussions here are about how the Republican Party can put these tools to work for it.

Well maybe it can't. The netroots tools worked for Obama because people on that side were inspired by the man. He - not the Dem Party - created the energy that powered all that dispersed online activity.

Now tell me, what part of the GOP brand can ever excite that kind of energy? You know the answer: Nada. Even if Republican officeholders hadn't spent the last decade throwing mud on the brand a political party will never inspire that kind of energy. Only individual candidates or ideas/movements can do that.

Ideas and movements - keep those words in mind as you read the following:

Whatever you think of Sarah Palin - brilliant or a buffoon, the future or a dead end, a mistake or an inspired stroke - the really, really important thing about her is what she represents in the core dimension of American politics today, which is the people vs. the political class: She is on the correct side of that divide. That's why she insprired so many at the grass roots. That's why she has such high approval ratings as governor.

And by the way, being on the right side is not something that can be faked. No standard-issue, status quo pol can pay a consultant to convince the people that he's really not a member of a class they hate. He either is or isn't. There are not more than a tiny handful of officeholders in any state who are on the right side of that divide. Palin (and maybe Jindahl) is the one who's gone highest.

I am totally agnostic about whether Sarah Palin is the future or a dead end, and I'm not suggesting that we make Sarah the figurehead or the candidate. But in defining this dimension - the people vs. the political class - what she represents is absolutely the future. Or should I say, it's the only future worth working for, and the only one that might inspire the masses in a way that brings about a restoration of limited, representative government. Because isn't that what most of the people reading this website really care about?

BTW, the energy that Ron Paul generated came from the same source. Yeah, he cranked up a lot of nuts and is pretty quirky himself, but he excited so many at the grass roots because they knew he was on the right side of that all-important divide, the people vs. the political class.

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"So what's your solution, 'JackinMichigan'?" some might be asking. Hey, one thing at a time. To get the right answer you have to ask the right question, correct? That's what I'm trying to do. It may take some time to discover how to crack this much larger nut, but there's a lot smart people on this site and most of them care about the right things (I think), so let the brainstorming begin.

Post deleted - apparently federal courts have ruled that voters cannot recall members of congress.