Maybe you read the Wall Street Journal more faithfully than I do, but I was impressed especially with the long article summarizing the effect of the Tea Party Movement we can expect.
Under "Riding High", we're reminded (11/2/2010) that the movement has risen higher than any of us could have imagined a year ago.
Ms. Martin, who was an unpaid leader of the Tea Party Patriots for more than a year, started receiving a salary in July. And, every month, she and others host a conference call open to the leaders of any affiliated tea party organization in the country. Between 300 and 500 people typically dial in to hear about local activities and plans of the national leadership.
Ms. Kremer is paid for her work at Tea Party Express, too, and the organization is gearing up for two years of trench campaigning up to 2012. Whether, and who, her group will endorse a presidential campaign is the "million dollar question," she says.
How these groups and others handle the transition from grassroots organizing to the business of policy making will help determine if it is a revolutionary movement in U.S. politics or one of the lively, but passing, episodes of popular discontent that spring up in bad times.
Despite the rift between Ms. Kremer at Tea Party Express and Ms. Martin at the Tea Party Patriots, both women agree the movement has re-established a place at the table for many Americans who felt ostracized from the political process.
And whoever is elected today, they say they intend to be around to hold them accountable.
"These people going to Washington do not have a blanket of trust from us," says Ms. Kremer, "If they do not do the job they are sent there to do, they will be fired, too."
Yes, and Bob Boggs reminds all the rest of us that we had better say we'll join the "accountability thing" or we will be as guilty as the crooks are because we let them get away with it.
