In a Q&A hosted by the Washington Post last week, Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks– the multimillion dollar Dick Armey advocacy group that fueled the Tea Party movement– said GOP Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck lost his midterm bid because social issues came into play. That’s what a lot of people are saying. It’s pretty much what Buck and Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams said, too. It’s a response that suggests the power and the weakness of FreedomWorks politics.

From the Post Q&A:

Is Christian right leader Ralph Reed invited to the Tea Party?

Q: Ken Buck, certainly a Tea Party candidate, had a hard time in Colorado. Despite strong financial support, he seemed to stumble over social issues like abortion… Buck didn’t manage to catch the wave because Colorado is a fairly purple state and Buck/Tea Party misread the electorate.

A: The strength of the movement is the focus on fiscal issues, which tend to be a uniting factor among a vast majority of Americans, especially given the current economic climate. Social issues have distracted and proven divisive in close races – like Ken Buck in Colorado.

Confronted in the general election campaign with his conservative positions on reproductive rights and homosexuality, Buck pushed back repeatedly by saying that over long months on the stump he had found that voters weren’t interested in social issues.

Buck lost because voters are interested in social issues and saw that his fiscal policy came freighted with hard-right social stands. Voters are concerned with the nation’s budget deficit but if the GOP solution to lowering it means giving up access to the pill and fertility treatments and hope for gay equality, Democratic approaches take on a new shine.

FreedomWorks is laboring to keep the Tea Party message focused on its low-tax-low-regulation corporate agenda and that agenda essentially won out on Tuesday. New GOP House Speaker John Boehner said he has been humbled by the Tea Party movement and that he will listen to the voters.

What is certain is that Boehner will fight the FreedomWorks battle for insurance companies against “Obamacare” as adamantly as Christian right leader Ralph Reed and anti-abortion Americans United for Life and anti-illegal immigration groups around the states will keep pulling at the wheel, steering the new Republican leaders away from the Tea Party’s “focus on fiscal issues.”

Planting his flag, Reed said this week that it was the vast numbers of evangelical voters who identify as tea partiers that fueled the GOP victories.

Kibbe may or may not believe that or want to publicly concede to it but he has made clear what he thinks about it. Minnesota hard-right Christian Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is loved by the Tea Party but she is not loved by the vast majority of American voters or even the vast majority of Republicans. The Christian right movement is a force of the past. It’s not a recession winner. Its concerns will dissipate the Tea Party movement and alienate voters for 2012.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Colorado Independent

The Kinect, Microsoft’s answer to the motion-sensing Nintendo Wii, will have you jumping for joy.
This add-on…

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Independent candidate for Pennsylvania State Representative (District 163), Rod Lacy, submitted his paperwork with 1000+ signatures to qualify for the PA. general election ballot this November. The 163rd district is located in Delaware County. See the Rod Lacy for State Rep. facebook page for more information.
3rd Party – Independent Pulse

Warner, D-Va., told the Deishers that it was important for the private sector to reinvest to create jobs.    He had a similar message for about 50 volunteers before they headed out to canvass neighborhoods along with the lawmakers.


“We’re still climbing out of a deep ditch. . . it’s good yes, that the stock market is back to 11,000, but the stock market at 11,000 doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a job,” Warner said.


He said big companies are doing better now because they cut costs and jobs during the recession while still finding ways to be productive and profitable.    Now, large companies have more than trillion available for growth, while small businesses struggle to find loans and hire employees, Warner said.

Perriello, D-Albemarle County, added that if those companies choose to expand in India or China instead of in the United States, this nation’s economy will continue to suffer.

Warner pointed out that he has asked some company executives who outsource jobs to emerging markets if they would move their own family there, and the answer is always no.    He said that even though they enjoy the benefits of living in the United States, they choose to make a greater profit by helping economies overseas and not at home.


Before the local supporters canvassed local neighborhoods for Perriello, they gathered at Dr. Wally Betton’s Optometry office in Collinsville.    There, Warner praised Perriello’s service to the area.


“What Tom Perriello had done in these two years in probably the toughest time it’s been to be a new member of Congress in modern American history, is he has taken courage, he has taken energy, he has taken a relentless focus on the bottom line of serving the people” to Washington, Warner said.


Warner said a Supreme Court ruling earlier in the year “basically changed all the campaign finance rules in America.”    Now, it is not just business money financing campaigns, but it could be foreign money coming in to support opponents, he said.“   All the outside money in the world and all the kind of misrepresentations and all the half-truths and non-truths that are out there is what he’s fighting against,” Warner said of Perriello.

The Deishers also had told the lawmakers that they were confused by the negative information about Perriello contained in frequent television commercials.


“You don’t know who to believe with all the different ads,” Patsy Deisher told Perriello.


Perriello told her he did not have as many advertisements because his funding comes largely from small private donations, instead of large corporations or even countries.


“In Washington it is easy to spend time only with people who write big checks,” he said.


It is not likely that the Democrats can compete dollar for dollar on TV advertising, Warner said, so he urged volunteers to tell their neighbors, friends, co-workers and others about why they will vote for Perriello.


“Tell them this is a good man; his heart is in the right place,” Warner said.


Later, Warner said he is confident the Democratic Party can hold onto a majority in the House and the Senate in the Nov. 2 election. Perriello also said he thinks Democrats can hold onto the majority in both chambers, but he said he thinks voters will look at the candidates and decide “who’s fighting for the people and who’s protecting the powerful.”


Warner and the local supporters at Betton’s office also took time out to wish Perriello a happy birthday. The congressman turned 36 on Saturday.

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Thank You: ELIZA WINSTON – Bulletin Staff Writer

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A bit of inspiring news from beautiful New Zealand:
Celia Wade-Brown has become New Zealand’s first Green mayor – a moment being described as a “watershed” by the party leader.
Green Party members flocked to congratulate Ms Wade-Brown when her narrow victory over incumbent Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast was announced yesterday, with co-leader Russel Norman, former leader [...]
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The Citizen Uprising reported that the state chairman of the New American Independent Party of Missiouri, Roger Nichols, will be seeking the 2012 NAIP Presidential nomination. Nichols is the first candidate to officially announce intentions to seek the 2012 New American Independent Party nomination for President of the United States of America. Read more here>>>
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by Ralph Nader at Nader.org:

The mid-term 2010 Congressional elections are over and the exaggerations are front and center. “A tidal wave,” “an earthquake,” “a tsunami,” cried the Republican victors and their media acolytes.

Wait a minute! No more than 7 percent of the actual voters switched sides to create a 14 point spread. This amounts to about 3 percent of all the eligible voters who produced this “tidal wave.” That is what happens in our winner-take-all system. So when it is said that “the people have spoken,” chalk it up to 7 percent or so switcheroos. The rest voted the way they did in the previous Presidential and Congressional election (and about 28 million voters stayed home.)

Such sweeping descriptions gave incoming House Speaker, John Boehner, even more leeway than usual to play with words when he declared, without further elaboration, that “the peoples priorities and agenda are our priorities.” Mr. Boehner is the consummate corporate logo-man masquerading as a Congressman. If someone drew the logos of all the big companies that have marinated his career and put them on his suit coat, they would run into each other.

How then did the Democrats lose against the most craven Republican party in modern history—a Party that opposes again and again the fair rights of workers, consumers, investors, savers and patients.

Regarding patients, Boehner’s oft-repeated view of the modest, non-single-payer health insurance changes by Congress and Obama—“it will kill jobs, destroy the best health care system in the world and bankrupt our country.” Reporters listen to Mr. Boehner say this repeatedly and do not ask him to explain his wild rhetoric.

So, in listing some of the ways the Democrats failed to defend the country against such Republicans, put near the top not rebutting the crisp lies and abstract assertions that Republican candidates uttered while campaigning or “debating” their Democratic opponents. Listening to debate after debate on C-Span radio, I was amazed at how infrequently the Democrats demanded examples from their Republican opponents each time the words “cut spending,” “cut taxes,” “reduce the deficit,” “deregulate” and “create jobs,” were uttered.

In elections, one side is on the offensive and the other is on the defensive. The offense creates momentum unless it is countered and driven back. Since the Democrats are furiously dialing for the same corporate campaign dollars, it is difficult for them to stand for the people. That is why the Democrats are wishy-washy, reticent and reluctant to put major subjects of abusive power on the table.

Rarely did one hear Democrats state their position on corporate crime law enforcement, huge fraud on the taxpayer (Medicare), anti-collective-bargaining laws for labor, the bloated military budgets, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the flood of corporate subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts, or the grotesque tax escapes for the multinational corporations and the super-wealthy.

They did not want to talk about consumer rip-offs, or the hundreds of thousands of unprotected Americans who lose their lives every year from un-regulated workplace-related diseases/traumas, medical malpractice, air, water and food contamination, or having no health insurance.

Too many Democrats are cowering candidates. Speaker Nancy Pelosi told incumbent Democrats that they could criticize her if necessary to get elected and preserve their majority in the House. Since Republicans made a practice of assailing Pelosi in almost every debate or on every occasion, many Democrats did not rebut their Republican opponents. Some Democrats stated they would not vote for Pelosi as Speaker in 2012. Unrebutted political attacks often influence voters who wonder at mixed messages from members of a Party.

A key Democratic failure was not to keep on Howard Dean, as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Between 2005 and 2009, Dr. Dean, with his 50 state strategy, energized both the DNC and state Democratic Committees. He knew what it took to go on the offensive against Republicans. He produced victories in 2006 and 2008 before his bête noire, Obama’s Rahm Emmanuel, pushed him out.

Dr. Dean would have challenged the Tea Party and slowed its momentum. When the Democrats saw this self-styled conservative/libertarian rebellion receive the first of its vast mass media coverage (especially by Fox News and Fox Cable) in August, 2009 when Tea Partiers loudly showed up at town meetings of incumbent Congresspersons, there should have been a Democratic response. A “Coffee Party” of progressives and deprived workers rebelling against the corporate control that 75 percent of Americans believe is excessive might have caught on.

Instead, the Tea Partiers, in all their disparate strands and wealthy right-wingers trying to take them over, became the daily feature and news of the 2010 campaign year.

Obama came out of his 2008 victory with 13 million names of donors and supporters, along with great enthusiasm from young voters. The Democrats squandered this support. This astonishing blunder happened, in no small part, because Obama turned his back on his supporters and denied their leaders White House access that he so often afforded corporate CEOs—eg. from the health insurance giants, drug companies, and banking behemoths. That’s one reason so many of his 2008 supporters stayed home in 2010 and did not vote. They felt betrayed.

With 23 Democratic Senators up in 2012, as compared with 10 Republican Senators, the Democrats may lose both Houses of Congress. Voters shouldn’t only have the barren choice of voting for the least worst of the Two Parties. Here we go again. Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Independent Political Report