April 15th Indiana Tea Party Activists...please read this message

The host of Revolt At The State House and editor of LibertyFile.com, Sean Shepard, wrote to us about his concern that the national tea party movement is a deceptive arm within the Republican Party purposely activated to herd well meaning newbie activists straight into a web of deception in order to use these individuals to further consolidate power within the Republican party.

The Republican Party is not accountable to the fact that it is equally responsible for bringing forth the financial crisis in America. Don't believe me? Then consider who signed the first bailout bill. Hint: It wasn't President Obama. We hope the tea party activists don't fall for the glitz of the mainstream media they are using to entrap you, and instead contact and join arms with any of the below mentioned groups who know the issues, can help you grow, and will welcome you into their ranks and our widely growing coalition of liberty activists.
--Melyssa for HFFT


Sean Shepard writes:
Where were all of these "conservatives" when it came time to oppose the massive spending of the Bush Administration, the failure to address social security, the invasion of a weak foreign country, the stunning increase in Medicaid/Medicare benefits, failure to pass the FairTax, or even (less helpful to the economy), the Flat Tax? Was there even one year when the Federal Budget stayed the same or was less than the previous year? There were six years there to do all kinds of good things, but all we got was bigger government and more debt.

Republicans get religion when they aren't in power then, once in, they are just as big government and big spending as anyone else. Does anyone REALLY believe that Bush (or McCain) would not be employing Keynesian influenced economic solutions also? As has been often noted the past few years, at least with the Democrats you get "truth in advertising."

It is exciting to see all of these tea party protests and to see a new group spring up to support the effort. I think the argument is that we didn't need another new group fragmenting people and competing for resources, there were already existing groups.

The Republican Liberty Caucus exists for libertarian Republicans who still hope to someday restore the party to something it maybe once was when Goldwater was around.

The Libertarian Party is there for people who finally realize that voting for what you believe in is more important than supporting the 'club' that continues to let them down.

The Campaign For Liberty exists to promote smaller government, lower taxes, sound financial systems and Constitutional government ideals.

The Democratic Freedom Caucus is the Dems variant of the RLC.

We have all kinds of great organizations like The Mises Institute, Downsize D.C., Americans for Fair Taxation, The Peter G. Peterson Foundation and others.

I'm a bit offended by the note above suggesting that all of these great activists, including great people like Andy Horning who have warned about this stuff for years, should be reaching out to the new "tea party" folks. Should they not be contacting all of these others and saying, "Hey, we're finally on board."

Most of the reports I hear is that the tea party organization seems to be a bit insular and closed off, BUT, I have no first hand knowledge of this. Again, why doesn't anyone in any of these other organizations know who these people are?

Like I've said before, we need all the help we can get but we do need to be guarded against factions with common cause competing against each other. Everyone needs to lay aside their ego and their partisanship and realize that only by uniting efforts can effective change be brought about.

At the same time, there are people in Indiana that have put A LOT of time and effort into promoting the right things, often at great personal expense and detriment. People like Andy Horning (popular former LP candidate and pro-liberty activist), Ron Heilman (past State Director of Americans for Fair Taxation), Mark Rutherford (past long-time Chair of the Libertarian Party of Indiana), Melyssa Donaghy (Hoosiers for Fair Taxation, Indiana Voters League), Melissa Lineberry (Campaign for Liberty) and more recently Charlie Kochenash (current Indiana RLC head) should not be suddenly shoved aside or stepped over just because others all of the sudden woke up, many of them likely to go back to sleep once they get "their (party) guy" in the White House again.