Rand Paul 2010 | U.S. Senate

The Tea Party movement is the fifth major wave of immigration into the modern Republican Party since World War II. It has brought Americans who had never been politically active to the forefront of the political fight against the Obama administration’s agenda and into Republican primaries as voters, and in some cases, as candidates. The Tea Party movement became the party of opposition and then grafted itself to the backbone of the modern Republican Party as it approached the 2010 elections.

The first major wave of individuals and energy to join the modern Republican Party flowed from the Goldwater campaigns to defeat Nelson Rockefeller for the GOP presidential nomination of 1964. The second wave was the Religious Right movement of Southern Evangelicals and conservative Catholics and Orthodox Jews that coalesced in 1978-1980, joining the movement that helped elect Ronald Reagan. The third wave flowed from the activists who became politicized through the presidential campaign of Pat Robertson in 1988 and then entered state and local GOP politics. The fourth wave was the legions of Ron Paul activists flooding the 2008 presidential campaign with youth, energy, and an ability to put the Internet to work for liberty.

Each wave has strengthened the modern Republican Party. Each brought new voters and talent, and increased the numbers of those not content with voting once every two or four years, but willing to commit themselves to building the Republican Party and its allied structures day in and day out.

And yet each wave has been met by skeptics within the Republican Party worried that the newcomers were problematic — regarding them as “not quite our sort” or even too “radical” or “extreme.” The helpful establishment left chimed in each time, warning that the visibly growing Republican Party was, in fact, weakened, because the new activists would push the party too far to the right to win elections.

One understands why the left would warn Republicans against fortifying their ranks with new waves of conservative activists.

Conversely, it is always odd to watch Republican Party loyalists — the establishment theoretically responsible for expanding the party — resist the integration of each new wave of activism. Local country party chairs comfortable with monthly meetings of the usual, familiar, and few local Republican volunteers reacted negatively to discovering their sleepy meetings overrun by dozens of new recruits full of energy, direction, and a (seemingly irrational) desire to replace the sleepy local leadership.

Read more at The American Spectator

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