Exit polls and candidate victory speeches confirm the truth that yesterday’s electoral outcomes were rooted in concerns about a sagging economy and soaring government spending. But the public records and political philosophies of yesterday’s victors at the ballot box also convey the quiet strength of social issues in the 2010 election. A confident coalition has emerged with a convergence of convictions. The freshman class of congressional Members elected yesterday is the most socially conservative since at least the 1980 class elected on Ronald Reagan’s coattails. The 1980 class included a …
The midterm elections have garnered international attention fueled in no small part by the widespread interest in the Tea Party movement. Editor-in-chief of National Journal’s Hotline, Reid Wilson and Vice President of Government Relations for The Heritage Foundation, Mike Franc looked beyond November 2 in a discussion with foreign media lead by Tim Chapman, Chief Operating Officer for Heritage Action for America. Many people worry that “America is at the edge of something very catastrophic,” and they fear, “we can’t afford to get it wrong anymore,” according to Franc. Wilson …
Thanks in part to prominent female leadership in the Tea Party, the upcoming elections look to be “profound” for the conservative woman and their core issues. “It’s exciting that conservative women have found their voice,” said Penny Nance, chief executive of Concerned Women for America. “We are hoping that this is the year of the conservative woman.” Nance joined Steve Bannon, director of the The Tea Party Trilogy, at this week’s Bloggers Briefing, a meeting hosted by The Heritage Foundation. The second of Bannon’s three newest films — “Fire from …
Playing politics with national security is reprehensible. But it’s nothing new. In 1794, Congress passed a law authorizing construction of ships that would form the backbone of the first United States Navy. The politics started almost immediately. Saving “a few thousand dollars in expenses will be no object compared with the satisfaction a just distribution would afford,” proclaimed Secretary of War Henry Knox as he ordered the six frigates be built in six different shipyards in six different ports. “It was an early example of pork barrel politics, before the …
In The Green Room: RedState.com’s Erick Erickson on Tea Parties, Conservatives, and Government Waste
RedState.com Editor Erick Erickson was recently at The Heritage Foundation to give a talk about his new book, “Red State Uprising: How To Take Back America.” [Watch the full lecture.] Before the lecture, he sat down with Heritage’s Robert Bluey to discuss the book, the Tea Party movement, and how conservatives can retake the country. Erick specifically discussed what the Tea Party movement will mean for politics moving forward. “I think largely it’s about accountability. It really took conservatives until the Harriet Miers nomination in 2005 to really have vocal …
Colin Clark misses the mark in his latest piece for DOD Buzz. Even the title, “GOP To Tea Party: Don’t Cut Defense,” is wrong. The opening sentence is no better. Indeed, it makes two mistakes. “With one wary eye on the Tea Party movement and its potentially isolationist policies,” Clark writes, “representatives of GOP think tanks sent a simple message today: don’t cut Pentagon weapons systems in the belief that the American homeland can be protected without a military that can fight and project power around the globe.” Clark was …
Should the Tea Party movement throw the likeliest bums out of Congress, conservatives still will need to be vigilant, RedState founder Erick Erickson told a Heritage audience Thursday afternoon. Otherwise, he said, surviving legislators – as well as the new guys – will fall back into spend-happy ways. Following the Tea Party’s example, conservatives also need to keep getting better at dramatizing how Big Government hurts everyday people, Erickson said in a talk promoting his new book, Red State Uprising: How to Take Back America. “The Left are masters of …
Despite the media’s negative portrayal, support for the Tea Party is growing at astonishing speed. Over half of the electorate now consider themselves favorable to the Tea Party, according to recent polls. Just this weekend, the Virginia Tea Party Convention, co-hosted by The Heritage Foundation, attracted over 2,000 attendees – the largest state-wide rally to date. Such broad support is remarkable for a movement that began not quite two years ago in scattered local gatherings of frustrated and concerned citizens. Yet when considering the Tea Party’s grounding in the principles …
The biggest foreclosure yet may begin on November 2nd, as voters start foreclosure proceedings against big government. It’s run up more debt than we can afford to pay. The paperwork has been validated. It’s found in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, duly approved and signed by our Founding Fathers. Previous proceedings went awry. President Bill Clinton’s 1996 pronouncement that “the era of big government is over” proved to be empty words, as demonstrated by the subsequent free spending of Congress and Presidents George W. Bush and Barack …
Today, The Heritage Foundation released its 2010 Index of Dependence on Government. This annual report tracks the growth of dependence-creating federal programs, programs that crowd-out what was once America’s great civil society. At one time, social obligations and services were carried out by community groups, family networks and even local governments. Now, an ever growing and ever more unaccountable federal bureaucracy undermines our spirit of self-reliance and self-improvement by making more and more Americans dependent on Big Government. In 2010, we witnessed a record-breaking surge in American dependence on the …
