Tea Party

The Sun editorial "The GOP confronts its 'stuffy old men' problem" (March 19) was right on the mark. My solution is to divide the Republican Party in two. One part would consist of the conservatives, the religious right, the tea party, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann. You can throw in Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The other party would consists all Republicans who still maintain their principles but who don't have "no" in their vocabulary. They should nominate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for president.

Among the casualties of the 2012 presidential election, along with Mitt Romney, was the vanishing breed of moderate Republicans of which he once was a star, until his embarrassing lurch into conservatism. Mr. Romney first failed to win the GOP nomination in 2008 as a moderate governor of heavily Democratic Massachusetts. Four years later, he shed the middle-road path followed by his late father, George Romney, who won three terms as governor of Michigan but failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Republican Gov. Rick Scott was one of those tea party stars whom voters believed had the courage of his convictions when he promised, as recently as last summer, to block The Affordable Care Act in his state. But last week, writes the Orlando Sentinel, "Scott made an abrupt about-face, embracing a three-year expansion of Medicaid coverage for about 1 million low-income Floridians that will be paid for by the health care law. " Mr. Scott said, "I think this is a common-sense solution to dealing with this for the next three years where it will give us the time to think about how we can improve the system.

Finally, the night has come. Adrienne and Brandi are going to be at the same place, at the same time. Will it get violent? How much of her own foot can Brandi fit in her mouth? Will they finally give the rest of the Housewives something new to talk about? First things first -- the Lisa/Kyle showdown. Lisa is finally fed up with Kyle riding so hard for Adrienne, without any measure of consideration for anyone else. They sit down for drinks and Lisa (who seems way more upset by this than you'd think she'd be)

Only a few days into the new year, the Grand Old Party has a huge political hangover from the events that rang in the tidings of 2013. First came the escape from the fiscal cliff that saw its speaker of the House, John Boehner, embarrassed by his flock's failure to back his 11th-hour Plan B to avert it. Passing the ball to the Democratic-controlled Senate was an abdication of responsibility. Then Mr. Boehner was hit with surrender of the GOP's never-new-taxes pledge. Worse, the abandonment came with a violation of the party leadership's so-called Hastert rule allowing bills to pass only with a majority of Republican members of the House voting in favor.

"It's not all I would have liked," said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, speaking of the deal on the fiscal cliff, "so on to the debt ceiling. " For Republicans, the battle over the fiscal cliff is only a prelude to the coming battle over raising the debt ceiling -- a battle that will likely continue through early March, when the Treasury runs out of tricks to avoid a default on the nation's debt. The White House's and Democrats' single biggest failure in the cliff negotiations was not getting Republicans' agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

Reports of the death of the tea party are greatly exaggerated. For about two years now, certain observers have been declaring the demise of this insurgent tendency within the Republican Party. However, despite recent headlines, we should expect to hear more from the tricorn-hat crowd, especially if they continue to raise money. The news of late suggests that establishment Republicans are staging a counterinsurgency. Speaker of the House John Boehner has removed four tea party darlings in the House from prominent committee positions.

Letter writer John Franchy ("More restrictive gun laws are not the answer," Dec. 20) misrepresents certain statements by the Founders and certain historical facts. The assertions he makes can be found in tea party talking points disseminated over the previous week. He paraphrases Benjamin Franklin, "They who give up essential liberty to (purchase) a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. " Mr. Franklin was not commenting on the balance between government powers and individual liberty.

When will liberals stop living in the past? Specifically, when will they accept that they aren't all that stands between a wonderful, tolerant America and Jim Crow? I was in the room when, during the Democratic National Convention, civil rights hero John Lewis suggested that Republicans wanted to "go back" to the days when black men like him could be beaten in the street by the enforcers of Jim Crow. I thought it an outrageous and disgusting bit of demagoguery. The audience of Democratic delegates cheered in a riot of self-congratulation.

The most ironic part of the partisan fight over the "fiscal cliff" is that, if Republicans want Barack Obama to act according to Republican principles, they should encourage the president to do nothing and simply let the country - and the Republicans - go over the cliff on Jan. 1. Doing so would be bad for the American economy. Many economists believe the coupling of massive spending cuts and simultaneous expiration of income, payroll, earned-income and alternative minimum tax breaks could plunge the U.S. economy into a recession after four years of digging out of the last one. But why should Republicans care?