In the process, Patrick was verbally assaulted by an old man who graphically described sexual tea-bagging to the high school student. The incident took place during dueling protests in Jefferson City, Missouri, and was caught on two separate video cameras.

Patrick had grabbed a stack of Pocket Constitutions and Declarations offered for free by the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition The Tea Party held a rally on the south side of the Missouri Capitol. He took those Constitutions to the north side of the Capitol where the unions and socialists had gathered to denounce Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

The contrast of the two generations–the dying union generation that demanding more of others with the rising Generation Tea–could not be more stark. Or more encouraging.

On the one hand, you have a creepy old man, speaking filth to a boy. On the other, you have Patrick, politely fending off the old pervert’s sexual advances.

No one could have blamed the young man for popping the old degenerate in the mouth. But Patrick, unlike the old union man, kept his cool and his dignity.

At seventeen, Patrick displayed courage and conviction that some never achieve. His actions give us great hope that America’s tomorrow will be even greater than her past.

The bizarre and unlikely rebellion known as the Tea Party began with only a few thousand people in a few dozen places on February 27, 2009. Those of us who were there in St. Louis or Atlanta, Chicago, or Los Angeles, feel a bit of trepidation as we approach the November 2 Mid-Term. Will we live up to our promise? Or will we live under the growing tyranny of debt, taxes, regulation, and corruption.

With so much at stake, let us pause one last time.  Like a football team before the championship game, we need a moment to reflect on what we’ve done, to lend strength to our companions, to reinvigorate our determination, and to ask God’s favor.  On September 12, the American conservative movement will clear its throat and prepare to sing to the world.

In Washington, DC, Sacramento, CA, and St. Louis, MO, tens of thousands of Americans will gather one final time before the most important election in a century. We will do what we always do at Tea Parties: pray, speak, listen, sing, and celebrate.  While we may be angry, we are also joyful that our words find so many welcoming ears, and that our voices blend with so many others.

We will gather together as a family, full of the drama and petty disagreements that seemed so important—so life or death—a few weeks ago. They weren’t important, of course. They were frivolous. But human nature makes mountains out of mole hills.  Until fate places a real mountain in the path to our destiny.

That mountain is debt, government, corruption, and depression.  Its malignant foliage is stolen power, plundered treasures, and trampled rights.  And while that mountain looks mighty and strong, we know that Jericho’s walls fell to trumpets and prayers.  We know that faith can move a mountain.

In 1787, while leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin posed a challenge to the nation. When asked what the convention wrought, Franklin answerd, “A republic – if  you can keep it.”

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln, in the most celebrated speech in American history, defined the challenge facing America:  whether or not a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure.”

Our challenge is simple: will we go down as the generation that let America fall? Or will history note that we righted the nation on its precarious high-wire act spanning the twin chasms of anarchy and tyranny?

The Founders—the signers of the Declaration—swore a powerful public oath to each other.  “[W]ith a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

When they spoke of “protection of divine Providence,” they didn’t necessarily have physical safety in mind.  They were talking about their immortal souls.

When they pledged their Lives, they were not talking about their free time, but about their mortal existence.

When they pledged their fortunes, they meant every last penny. Hamilton, Jefferson, Morris, Penn, and many others died penniless or deeply in debt.

And when they wrote of their “sacred Honor,” well, seventeen fought in the Revolutionary War, five were captured by the British, eleven had their homes burned.  None recanted.

***

In St. Louis, we will gather under the Gateway Arch—the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. We will have more than a dozen entertainers and speakers, including BigGovernment.com Editor in Chief, Mike Flynn.  We will gather that one last time before November, to draw strength from each other.  Our sacrifices in 2010 pale to puny insignificance when compared to the sacrifices of the Founders. So does so much about us.

I saw Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope under the Arch just before Reagan’s re-election in 1984. I was four days from leaving for the U. S. Navy, and  Reagan was two days from his last election—a certain landslide. Reagan asked, point blank, “Will you vote for me this coming Tuesday?”

The crowd roared, of course.  We’d still be voting for him if we could.

He asked for the vote because not asking means you don’t care.  So I will ask you this:  Will you meet me in St. Louis on September 12?  Will you sing and cry and clap with me?  Will you bring your children and, on the way, tell them they are about to witness a pep rally for liberty?  Will you bring a veteran and thank him or her for the privilege of standing shoulder to shoulder? Will you make September 12, 2010, the gateway to victory in November?

And when you leave those fairgrounds in St. Louis, Washington, or Sacramento, will do one more thing?  Will you, on your way home, stop and tell two people—friends or strangers—where you were and why you went?

The date is September 12. The time is high noon.  The place is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The reason?  Well, the reason is simple.  This is our next rendezvous with destiny.

Douglas played William “D-FENS” Foster, an engineer at a defense contractor who has a really bad day.  Some described the movie as “an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.” Foster became an iconic anti-hero, symbolizing the people who (stealing Bill Clinton’s line)worked hard and played by the rules, yet found themselves at the bottom of the heap in the post-Cold War era of 1993.

Foster’s wife (Hershey) has left him.  He’s moved in with his mother. Making matters worse, Hershey’s obtained a court order barring Foster from visiting their young daughter, whom he loves more than life itself.

On the little girl’s birthday, everything falls apart.  Foster gets laid off from the defense contractor job.  The police remind him he’s not to go near his wife or daughter.  And in one memorable scene, a fast food chain’s rules interfere when Foster just wants breakfas:

When I read about Jetblue flight attendant, Steven Slater, Falling Down comes to mind.

And it’s not just me.

According to a new Wall Street Journal/MSNBC Poll, two-thirds of Americans believe the worst is yet to come for the economy.  Democrat pollster Peter Hart sees Steven Slater as metaphor for voter sentiment.

Mr. Hart said the 2010 contest is being pulled by the sentiment associated with the JetBlue flight attendant who fled his plane via the emergency chute after an altercation with a passenger. Calling it the “JetBlue election,” Mr. Hart said: “Everyone’s hurling invective and they’re all taking the emergency exit.”

Like William Foster, Steven Slater seems to symbolize—in exaggerated form—the mood of the American people.  We’re fed up with bureaucracy and petty rules, “minute and uniform,” as Tocqueville put it,  “. . . through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.”

Steven Slater broke through, alright.

In 1993, ordinary Americans—the Tea Party before it had that name—were ready to rumble.  After the Reagan years had restored some semblance of normalcy following the weird 1970s, Bush and Clinton conspired to impose a “new world order” that was inconsistent with our constitution, to use 18th century lingo.

On November 6, 1994, the American voter signaled our disgust with Washington’s incompetence and encroachments. We switched controll of Congress from Democrat to Republican. In 2006, the voters reversed themselves, returning Congressional control the Democrats.  The voters wanted a change.

It worked. Sort of.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 12,398 when the Nancy Pelosi’s surgically enhanced hand snatched the Speaker’s gavel from Denny Hastert.  Today, the DJIA opened at 10,300 and some change.  Some change, indeed.

In 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent. Today’s it’s 9.5 percent and rising, according to Timothy Geithner.  Yesterday, new unemployment claims unexpectedly rose by 2,000 for the second week in a row. Consumer spending slowed. The national debt has increased 21 percent since the Democrats took over Congress—and sole authority to tax and spend.

Even with all that bad news and angst, there is great news ahead. Elections offer Americans the opportunity to take control of their lives and their future. In 2010, the shift in power from Washington to the people could be  of a historic scale.

Can you see November?

We learned that this administration is bent on subverting republican government. Article IV of the Constitution — and its guarantee of a republican form of government — means nothing to Obama, the Congressional majority, and Obama’s Supreme Court appointees. Obama rules by decree. Elena Kagan’s okay with banning books.

November 2 is our last chance to stop the free fall into tyranny.

In many states, including my home state of Missouri, passions rage in advance of the August 3 primary. I understand. To a degree, I helped enflame those passions by launching a tea party in February of last year.  But that was before we fully understood what’s going on in Washington—before we realized that Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats (not to mention Woody Allen and Ed Schultz) believe in tyranny.

On August 3 and November 2, I will follow the advice of the wisest man I every met, William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley’s rule for picking a candidate was simple: “Always support the rightward-most, viable candidate.” I would ask the same of everyone whose advanced the cause of liberty in the past seventeen months or longer.

Some good, sincere people want to tear down candidates they believe are less than ideal.  In some election years, I’m inclined to do the same.  But not this year. Not with what we know.

In 2010, we have a choice between liberty and tyranny.  The candidates of one party will vote with the President on every issue on which he demands their loyalty.  We saw this in healthcare. We saw it in finance “reform.” We saw it on stimulus. We saw it on budget reconciliation. The President’s party would vote for human extinction if Obama asked them to.

In such a perverted environment, I believe we have a duty to stop the descent into tyranny, even if that means supporting a candidate who falls short of our ideal. To tear down the rightward-most, viable candidate is to tear down the last the defense against tyranny. If that’s why we started the Tea Party movement, then I wish it had been still-born.

Put another way, between Hamilton and Jefferson, I’d choose Jefferson.  But I wouldn’t destroy one to elect the other.

The NAACP has apparently decided  to call 20 million American patriots “racists” for advancing liberty and economic opportunity. Their evidence?  Attendance at a Tea Party–anywhere, anytime. Specifically, according to the Kansas City Star (via Jim Hoft):

The resolution, scheduled for a vote as early as Tuesday by delegates attending the annual NAACP convention in Kansas City, calls upon “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

At midnight, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sent a resolution condemning the NAACP’s false and defamatory statement to the organization’s Washington bureau. We took this action because we will not stand for their lies.

The Tea Party’s principles are simple and clear:

• Smaller federal government
• Lower taxes
• Fiscal responsibility
• National security
• Federalism

Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried.  In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism.

Each of these First Principles protects the rights of every American—the rights inherent in our humanity, not phony “rights” invented by a bureaucrat.  We stand for rights given by God that no man, no government, can justifiably deny or diminish.  Our principles are the very same principles that the NAACP stood for in 1909 but has wandered away from since the 1970s.

When you look at the crime and poverty and family breakdown of the African-American community, where median household income is below that of illegal aliens, you see a half-century of failure by the NAACP. When you consider that the NAACP blocks every effort to educate the poor through school vouchers, you realize that the NAACP is all about power for a few, not opportunity for everyone. When you see that the NAACP refuses to condemn New Black Panther Party calls to murder police officers and babies, you understand how far that organization has fallen.

None of those persistent problems was caused by the tea party movement, yet the principles of the tea party are exactly what’s needed to wind down the multi-generational destruction in the African-American community.  As I have said repeatedly, we measure compassion by the number of people lifted out of poverty, not the number who remain trapped. We promote hope and achievement through liberty, safety, and pursuit of happiness.  That’s all we want.

The NAACP was once a vital weapon in the war against segregation and oppression. All that’s left is abigoted and malicious shell that does far more harm than good for people who need a break.

The NAACP should give reason and decency a break by withdrawing its false and defamatory attack on the tea party movement.

As an original tea party organizer, this shift doesn’t surprise me. By “this shift,” I refer to the the tea party’s popularity waning among Southerners and people aged 18 to 29. The poll shows that a full 50 percent of Americans now have a negative view of the tea party.

Sure, there may have been some chicanery with the questions to skew the results. But only a true shift in sentiment would result in change this big. After a year of wall-to-wall coverage of “tea party,” this downshift should come as no surprise.

I think there are several issues here:

1. Rand Paul’s performance since the primary has been a net negative.  I pointed out on Larry Kudlow’s show on CNBC the day after Kentucky primary that Paul’s candidacy is not a referendum on the tea party movement. Nothing is. But he and some tea partyers insisted on linking the two, and his handling of controversy has been less than spectacular.
2. In Nevada, Michigan, and elsewhere, leftists have created fake “tea party” parties that have damaged the brand by running Democrats pretending to be tea partyers. The idea is to split the center-right vote to allow the like of Harry Reid back into Congress.
3. In-fighting among tea partyers has left a foul taste in the mouths of many. This development shouldn’t be a surprise. The tea party movement has no structure or hierarchy to keep order, and it’s filled with people who are new to this arena. We make mistakes, people.  Get over it.
4. Some disenchanted Republicans who were early tea partyers have returned to the GOP. That doesn’t mean they won’t continue to fight the good fight. It means they’ll do so under a banner they’re more familiar with.
5. Zealots and purists have splintered off and driven away more pragmatic reformers. We’ve seen this in numerous places across the country.  When the zealots lose, they tend to take their balls and go home. They also tend to turn off the people who just want their country back.
6. After a year of hearing “tea party, tea party, tea party,” many people are probably just tired of hearing about it.  I am tired of hearing about it. I want to rack up some damn wins and get about fixing the country, and really don’t care what was call the thing that does it.
7. We’re in The Dip

These shifts in sentiment should come as no surprise. Instead, they indicate that our movement is growing up.  Part of that maturation process involves channeling our energies into outgrowths of the tea party movement.

Ensuring Liberty and similar organizations allow the tea party passion to yield actual results. The tea party movement is indispensable for its passion and energy and new blood, but 10,000 angry people don’t win elections. Ten thousand voters, multiplied by tens of thousands precincts, win elections. Ensuring Liberty—founded and directed by local tea party organizers from several states—combines the spirit and values of the tea party with strong campaign experience and a Congressional caucus.

Together, the people, the passion, and the principled accountability give grassroots conservatives a tool for managing Washington that we’ve never had before.

So what can  you do?  How can  you take this passion, this glorious coming together that we’ve experienced since February 27, 2009, and turn it into a wild victory celebration on November 2?  Let’s start with this list:

1. Invest in an organization that is engineered to win important races and to hold the new Congress accountable.  I helped launch Ensuring Liberty to do just that, and we need your support to get there.  Please join today so you can tell your kids, “I helped ensure your liberty. Now clean up your room.”
2. Take personal responsibility to register everyone in your house to vote.
3. Launch a community building  project like St. Louis’s Block Captain and Liberty Evangelism project. Give people the power of personal freedom by handing them a Constitution with your email address on it, saying, “Please take this as  a gift. Please read it and decide for yourself whether Washington is living up to the promises in those documents.”
4. Use the buddy system to make sure everyone you recruit votes in the primary and on November 2.  That means you commit to getting someone to the polls, and someone commits to making sure you vote.  Take ownership of this job.  Let nothing stop you.
5. Put in for vacation on November 1, 2, and 3.  Do it right now. Your kids need you to get out the vote on their behalf.  Let nothing stop you. (You will still be partying on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., so you might as well not even think about working that day.)
6. Vote early and get your friends and neighbors who agree with you to vote early.
7. Every night before you go to bed, write a positive journal entry describing the feeling, the sounds, the news of November 2 and 3.  Go ahead and project. Describe Ed Martin’s victory speech when he unseats Russ Carnahan in Missouri.  Or write about Nancy Pelosi breaking down in tears as she kisses the Speaker’s Gavel good-bye.  What will Frank Rich say?  How about Paul Krugman?  Keith Olbermann? What could be more fun than hearing Chris Matthews describe the “Tea bagger temper tantrum” that overturned Congress?   Write Rush Limbaugh’s opening monologue for November 3.

The name of the movement doesn’t matter. It never did.  Names are symbols.  The name came from the name of an event—a “tea party” held to demonstrate that we’d had enough. That phase is over.  Everyone knows we’ve had enough.  Now it’s time to act.

Who Comprises the ELPAC

Very simply, ELPAC is led by six people from some of the most effective local Tea Party organizations in America:

• Mark Skoda of The Memphis Tea Party
• Steve McQueen of The Quincy Tea Party
• State Sen. John Loudon (MO-Ret.) of St. Louis Tea Party
• Rose Corona, a California farmer and Patriot
• Brad Ehmen of The Quincy Tea Party
• Bill Hennessy of St. Louis Tea Party

While you might not recognize all of these names, I do. These are the people who have been in the fox holes with us since day one. They are bold and resilient fighters for freedom. They are the men and women we turn to for counsel, support, advice, strength, and help across the Mid-West and across the the nation. We share mutual faith in each other. The men and women on this list have skills to win elections with grassroots activism. They embody what happened in NY-23 and Massachusetts.

Why the PAC’s Work is Crucial

When we launched our local tea parties last spring, none of us had any idea we were creating the political stir it did. We did not know there would be more events. We did not know we’d slow down the socialist tsunami that was descending on America. Some might have hoped for such an outcome, but none of us was so arrogant as to expect it.

The Ensuring Liberty PAC is one critical piece of the puzzle that will cause a massive change in the makeup of the U.S. Congress in 2010.

How the ELPAC Will Help Change Congress

Traditionally large donors contribute large sums to large PACs operated by the two major parties. Those organizations (like the National Republican Congressional Committee) hire K Street consultants to help favored candidates win their elections. When K Streeters and the GOP brass win your election for you, you better do as they say.

The ELPAC will perform services for candidates similar to those previously performed by NRCC and the like. We will identify candidates who arose from the Tea Party movement and who espouse our values on fiscal responsibility, limited government, national security, and low taxes. If a candidate strays from our values during the election, we will exit that race and let everyone know why. This PAC is modeled after the successful approaches of the Quincy and St Louis Tea Parties, as well as others.

Candidates whom we help win can and should feel an obligation to remain true to our values throughout their term in Congress. If they do not, we will target their careers for political destruction as surely as we target certain incumbents now. For the first time in my memory, we will have members of Congress beholden to . . . the people they represent.

Who the ELPAC Will Support

Back in February 2009, we thought, as did many of you, that we might need a new party in America—one comprised of the great many people who were fed up with business as usual. As time wore on, two factors disabused us of that notion:

1. The urgency of direct action required that most of our energies in 2009 go into stopping the White House and Congressional leadership from flipping the USA into a socialist empire. Remember, Obama expected to takeover healthcare, impose the Cap and Trade multi-trillion dollar tax scheme, and eliminate the secret ballot for workers before Congress recessed in August. We put all of our energy and time into stopping those atrocities. Frankly, I believe that the urgency of our actions in 2009 were a blessing when combined with the second point.

2. A third party would have created a permanent ruling majority of statist and progressives. As I studied the matter and spoke to people smarter than I am, I realized that the 3rd party move could only help those who want socialism. Just creating a 3rd party would consume most of the center-right’s energy, time, and money for at least 2 years. And after that, at best, the 3rd party would pick up a few seats in Congress while splitting the center-right vote in hundreds of other states and districts giving Democrats a massive majority in both houses. Sorry, people, but that’s not standing on principle: it’s standing on our brains.

ELPAC will mostly support conservative candidates running as Republicans who have a reasonable chance to win with our help. For candidates like Doug Hoffman, we will provide the third element he lacked: a serious, well-coordinated ground game. In these races, we believe ELPAC will be THE difference. In this election, we believe all of us will be part of the margin of freedom’s victory.

How ELPAC Measure Success

Some of us have heard that we must not support candidates affiliated with a party. That’s great. But it’s a recipe for disaster. Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts felt so good because politics is a game measured by wins and losses, just like any other game. We keep score in this world. And political success means WINNING ELECTIONS.

We will measure ELPAC’s success when some conservative—most likely a Republican—accepts the gavel from Nancy Pelosi’s trembling hand in January 2011. If that does not happen, we fear that the forces of socialism and tyranny will use their power to silence all dissent in America. That’s not fear-mongering; that’s history.

How the ELPAC Evolved

ELPAC is the natural and necessary next step in the Tea Party’s progression. The Boston Tea Party led to stronger colonial legislatures that led to a strong Continental Congress that drafted the Declaration of Independence. The rag-tag Minutemen led to state militias that led to well-trained professional Army under George Washington, and that Army defeated the British.

The “Nationwide Chicago Tea Party Protest” of February 27, 2009, led to a multitude of Tea Party coalitions that led to formal Tea Party groups. Some of those groups have formed PACs, non-profits, and even LLCs. ELPAC is one of these. ELPAC is a professional army seeking to wage political war against a corrupt and corrupting leftist government. By God’s grace, we will prevail.

How Tea Partiers Can Help

The millions who rode to the sound of the drums in 2009 will continue doing exactly what they started last year: attend the rallies, call the radio stations, write the newspapers, march in the parades, make your signs, tell your neighbors, knock on doors, send out emails, fill the town halls, register conservative voters, canvass for the right politicians, sing the praises of liberty and low taxes, pursue happiness and good government, fight for your right to live free . . . or die.

In 2009, we asked for very little in the way of donations. We told our patriots that the time would come for them to invest their dollars in political campaigns. That time is just around the corner. ELPAC will use their donations to win critical races, replacing the current Congress with one responsive to the Tea Party’s agenda. It’s as simple as that.

Finally, we ask Tea Partiers to pray. ELPAC is not the only Tea Party PAC trying to take back Congress from the statists and progressives. Together with these other PACs –and with you—we will win. But we need the prayers, the strength, and the devotion of everyone who has attended a Tea Party or 9-12 event. Six folks, however dedicated, cannot win this war without undying help from millions of others. The Tea Partiers have stood by this country and this cause for a year. We ask for their prayers that ELPAC and its cousins fulfill our missions to save America from the hellfire of socialism and tyranny.