Copyright 2010 James R. Conner
There is an interesting article in the Flathead Beacon about Tea Party infighting which is definitely worth reading. It starts out with the viewpoint that the GOP and Tea Party aren’t the same, but in my opinion the article doesn’t offer much in the way of evidence to back it up. There sure are a lot of Republicans aligning themselves with the Tea Party, and there sure are a lot of “Tea Party” candidates posing as Republicans or as Derek Skees says, RINOs.
One thing is certain, allowing Tea Party posers to run the Republican party is a sure way to alienate main street Republicans.
And Skees is the perfect example to prove this point, as a profile on Skees in the Whitefish Pilot reveals: There is nothing mainstream about him.
Main street business man? Skees admits in the article that his business isn’t doing well, in fact it’s down 80 percent. Perhaps if he didn’t spend so much time down at the local Perkins teaching “Constitutional Studies classes” (Skees lacks a college degree) then his business might be doing better.
Like with other Tea Party Republicans, moderate and independent voters are likely to be turned off by some of the more extreme positions Skees takes. For example, Derek Skees is a member of Freedom Action Rally–the folks who advocate for citizen grand juries even as the initiative failed to garner any signatures. This nutball idea is a perversion of democracy and would allow tea party Republicans to bring indictments to any citizen who disagrees with their ideas.
With a party full of candidates like Derek Skees, the trick for Republicans will be how to distance themselves from the Tea Party without alienating the supporters they are counting on to make up for their lack of ideas and quality candidates.
The problem is that people like Skees aren’t going to let them.
Thanks to James R. Conner at the Flathead Memo for the use of this neat Derek Skees photo.
you are judged by the company you keep.
if montana GOP wants the benefits of tea party affiliation; it will have to accept the risks. in november.
any organization which considers reinstating violent bigots as members is no longer a political asset, but a liability.
I agree with you problembear, I think this is going to come back to bite them.
again and again. we haven’t even reached the worst fetid layer of this worm pile yet.
Some intelligent reading for you all:
Imprimus Newsletter http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty
I forgot all of the great things the stimulus package did for us nation wide. As I drive around the state I could only see all of the great projects in MT that needed to be but wouldn’t have been done otherwise. Good to know some of the others around the nation. Thanks for the link.
“Citizen Grand Juries”. Thats the same thing the Freemean were doing. There really is not any difference at all between these clowns and their forefathers in the Freeman movement.
LChad i have long felt that the tea party was headed for self-destruction when they started shouting down people at town hall meetings, attracting an element of fringe radical extremist groups like neo-nazis, bigots, homophobes, white supremists, fringe religious sects and the like.
any message of hatred and fear is going to attract looney tunes, and soon those looney tunes take over because more timid people step back and let them run the show. this is what you now have with the montana tea party. the few thoughtful and sincere patriots you may have once lured to the tea party are beginning to question their enrollment when crazy people run the meetings because they shout louder and are much more obsessed than non-crazy people.
you can’t have it both ways. you can’t support crazy people and expect sane people to follow you.
Ok so Mr. Skees is a poor businessman who is down 80%, is a white supremist and a tea bagger and probley a birther as well so regular nut job, and his wife is also a little on the nuts side as well sends out pink letters and does commercials and wears a mask on occasion. Do they have any children or wierd uncles in the family of the lilly white teabaggers???
Soon we will see LChad and a group of the brightest Tea Baggers burrowed down in some house having a stand off with government authorties.
[...] fact, TEA Party Republicans like Derek Skees are already proposing the ideas to make it possible, such as citizen grand juries–Freeman-style vigilante judicial systems which can breed militias as their enforcement arm [...]
[...] of Skees, including the fact that Skees teaches a course on the scary “5000 Year Leap”; that he believes in Citizen Grand Juries (a favorite of the militia movement, especially the Freemen); that there were more wing-nuts at the Liberty Conference than just Red Beckman (list attached); [...]
I just love the anonymous slaggery hitting the blades from this site.
Not one real person in either the headliner position or in the comments up until here.
Typical cowardice (which is bipartisan, sadly) in terms of people putting their names to what they say.
If you have the courage of your convictions, sweetheart, then back them up.
There are plenty of “real people” that comment on this blog. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you are really lost.
[...] Skees (R-Whitefish Kalispell) is beyond a student of constitutional history. In fact, he’s a teacher of it down at the local Perkins. However, the bills he’s presented this session demonstrate that he not only understands [...]
[...] with Montana values is hardly surprising news. Anyone who followed the Montana Legislature even in passing quickly became aware of his entirely unorthodox and embarrassing positions. Time Magazine even [...]