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Because I had urged state GOP opposition to Obama’s Common Core Standards in an Oct. 1 FlashReport post, I received an invitation to attend the Tea Party California Caucus (TPPC) meeting/rally at the convention on Saturday.
I am on friendly terms with many Tea Party members, but I disagree on some of the basic tenets so I do not identify myself as Tea Party. Nevertheless I went to the meeting, and I have to admit it was a mind blower. I dragged along my wife, who is not afflicted with my hunger for politics, and even she was mesmerized.
Doug Lasken
I can’t remember the last time I was in a room with that kind of energy, unless it’s the auditorium of my high school for a pep rally. It was really something to see adults exhibit adult passion, rather than adult calculation, with such ease and force. I saw real emotion, real intensity of purpose. In spite of myself I felt at home, because this is the kind of passion I feel when I object to the Common Core Standards. The standards are a scam, and it makes me angry. I don’t want American education controlled by vested interests such as publishing and testing companies, who make millions- or in the case of CCS, billions of dollars with no one calling conflict of interest. I want the Republican Party to be that voice calling. Why the GOP? Because the Democratic Party won’t do it. Whether the GOP takes up the call remains to be seen.
It was also thrilling at the TPCC rally to be among other people who are as shocked and outraged by the news, confirmed by a blasé President Obama, that we are already in a surveillance state and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. I was as one with the crowd on that one (one of the TPCC resolutions addresses the subject).
So I was captured by the mood and felt I was among kindred spirits. But my heart sank when I noticed a banner near the podium featuring a portrait of George Washington and this quote, “Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the people’s liberty’s teeth.” As it happens, I think there are some people, schizophrenics for example, who should not have liberty teeth, and I know of no other entity than government with the resources to detect such people and disarm them (one might add that our firearms did no good in preventing the surveillance state) . I’m not comfortable with the NSA’s data grabs, yet I would be comfortable with laws designed to restrict firearms from crazy people.
If the poster weren’t enough, Tim Donnelly, Assemblyman from the Lake Arrowhead area and aspirer to the CA governorship, proclaimed that, “He (Jerry Brown) better keep his hands off our guns,” followed by “We’re going to frack our way to prosperity!” You guessed it: I do not get a warm glow in my heart when thinking of fracking.
Donnelly delivered a pointed attack on his GOP rival for the governorship, former lieutenant governor Abel Maldonado, whom he called a “traitor” to the party, and I gathered that Maldonado’s seeming acceptance of gay marriage and abortion rights had a lot to do with this. As it happens I have no problem with gay marriage and am not a zealot for Pro-life (nor am I a zealot for Pro-choice). I suddenly felt quite isolated.
I enjoyed a brief respite when one speaker attacked SB 48, an absurd law requiring that homosexuals and persons of various other sexual persuasions be identified with their persuasions in social studies textbooks (I wrote about SB 48 in FlashReport), but my comfort level sank again as I noticed that many speakers invoked God as part of their arguments, claiming that what they wanted was God’s will. One man actually proclaimed, “God is on our side!” which I’d never heard before without irony, and for good reason. When God is invoked on both sides, we know where that leads. It also concerned me that one of the opening prayers invoked Jesus. What message is that? That only members of the Christian religion are welcomed? There’s as much mileage in that as invoking Vishnu or Mohammad.
It was also news to me that the TPCC does not identify with the Republican Party. Speaker after speaker told how he or she had quit the GOP years ago when the party lost its way. The atmosphere was one of conspiracy, and there was a breathless moment when someone reported that TPCC’ers were being denied the floor on some motion. I looked forward to a lively debate on the TPCC resolutions at the general session on Sunday.
After the meeting my wife and I enjoyed some food, drink and schmoozing at a few hospitality suites and then drove the two hours home to Woodland Hills. Sunday morning I drove back (I can’t remember the last time I drove to Anaheim three times in three days) and watched the general session, where the engaging fireworks I had expected did not materialize. The resolutions committee report seemed to come and go without any discussion of anything. Towards the end of the meeting I ran into FlashReport editor Jon Fleischman and asked when the debate on the resolutions would happen. Jon explained that all four TPCC resolutions had already passed. It had taken about five seconds, the time it takes to say, “All in favor…all opposed…” Where’s the fun in that? Seriously, I wouldn’t expect the media to pick up on passage of the CCS resolution at all, since they tend not to notice peaceful events. Unless the board of directors and Chairman Brulte take up the cause directly, it will be lucky if the CCS resolution gets any press at all.
Outside the general session, I encountered a circle of TPCC members, many of whom I had seen Saturday night (they included Assemblyman Donnelly). Their spirit of outside opposition persisted, in spite of the four resolution wins. Perhaps they perceived the party’s easy cave on the resolutions to be a tactic in itself, and perhaps it was. Without a sense of outraged ostracism, will the TPCC be able to keep its underground intensity? We’ll see at the March convention.
One of the TPCC speakers on Saturday asked rhetorically if the Tea Party should stay in the GOP or form a third party. The crowd seemed ready to cheer either way, but the speaker said that he chooses to stay in the party and take it over. Beyond my own problems with several Tea Party positions, there remains the strategic problem that the positions in question are supported by no more than 25-30% of the electorate, and that is most emphatically not a winning percentage, as the last presidential election made evident. That’s something to think about as the party, per the convention slogan, “builds itself from the ground up.”
Doug Lasken is a retired LA Unified teacher, recently returned to the district to coach debate. Reach him at doug.lasken@gmail.com