Last week, the Chicago Tribune published a commentary piece I wrote about the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Chicago. They’ve been camped out near my office for the past few weeks, and I decided to engage them in conversation on my way home one night.

The media has likened the Occupy Wall Street protesters to the Tea Party, making the case that these protesters are the left’s version of the small government movement that has swept the nation.

Let me be clear: The Occupy Wall Street protesters and the folks who hold tea party rallies are not the same, and I do not believe there is any real opportunity for a union between the two groups. But what I learned that night is that these movements both are rooted in the idea that this country is moving in the wrong direction.

If we look back to the 2008 presidential election, I’d argue that part of the reason President Obama won is because he strategically listened to disaffected economic conservatives, independents and Republicans. He took what he heard and then crafted a message for them, ultimately winning over some who normally vote for Republican nominees. Though we knew then and know now that he was being disingenuous, the lesson should not be lost on us; we cannot ignore the value of listening. (more…)

Shocked? We are….

Is this the sort of thing you would expect to hear from John Tillman, the chairman of the Illinois Policy Institute, a “conservative” think tank, after walking through #OccupyChicago?

“It was delightful.”

Delightful? When I think of delight, I think of lying on a sunny beach with an ice-cold tropical fruit drink; I think of laying in a hammock on a breezy day reading a mind-stimulating book or sinking my teeth into a delicious cheesecake. But when I am at an Occupy protest, the last thing that comes to mind is anything remotely delightful.

In fact, I find the whole experience miserable and terrifying: the constant banging of over-turned garbage cans, the blowing of bull horns, and the repetitive hypnotic chanting of brainwashed flea-infested loons. When I head down to an Occupy protest, it is certainly not with any intent to have a delightful experience. It is with the intent to expose what is really driving these radical left-wing nut-jobs. It’s a responsibility I feel that is necessary to preserve whatever freedom and liberty we still have, and quite frankly to help do whatever is in my power to save our great country.

Here is some footage you may have already seen about who is behind this movement, from EAG Foundation:

I certainly understand that there are some halfway “sane” individuals down there. And I can also agree there are a couple of similarities in the displeasure with our economy between the “Tea Party” and Occupy protesters. Namely, the opposition to bank bailouts, for which we on the “right” have been ridiculed and deemed racist, for the last two and a half years.

But I can hardly see how it is effective for the tea partiers to join forces with these well-documented card-carrying members of the Communist Party U.S.A., Party for Socialism and Liberation, anti-Semites, American Nazi Party, 9/11 truthers, and the rest of the dirty hippies that are now receiving training from domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

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On October 1st, 2011 tea party groups from around the Midwest gathered at the TEACON convention in Schaumburg, Illinois. Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi stated that he became outraged when he heard this event was taking place in his own backyard in the Illinois 8th congressional district. Raja told the Huffington Post that he planned to lead a protest against the event, which featured the likes of Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart and presidential candidate Herman Cain.

Once Raja made his appearance at the protest, he denied having planned the protest and claimed that he was deferring to, and joining, the protesters who already showed up outside the convention center. There were approximately eight protesters in total, one of whom we can confirm, in the following video, is a communist. To be fair, when asked if he supported the Communist party, Raja replied that he did not; however, when asked how he felt about joining communists and how his potential constituents might feel about him protesting other Americans alongside communists, he said “I’m okay with protesting the TEACON convention,” and “I think the constituents want us to stand up to the Tea Party.”

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A message was sent to both the Republican and Democrat parties yesterday at polling stations across America, especially on the east coast. The perennially blue New Jersey now has a Republican Governor-elect. In Virginia, Republicans swept the top three spots in state office with Bob McDonnell winning that state’s gubernatorial race. Virginia was the coveted swing state last time around, a state that Keith Olberman cited as an example of permanent change. Interestingly enough, in exit poll questions asking voters why they chose the folks they chose were answered with one word: “change.”

New York’s hotly contested 23rd district was of epic soap opera proportions, a problem which is the direct result of party loyalists inability to see past their own navels. On October 16th I launched DumpDede.com and together with Bill Hennessy, held a last-minute presser (drive-bys and party hacks ignored that it was given on six hours’ notice and tried to use the crowd size as a way to neutralize the scope and power of the movement) and called on the GOP to dump the RINOs and support conservative Doug Hoffman. I heard “politics is local.” Absolutely – and when it is a federal congressional seat, a seat with a vote that could be the tiebreaker on legislation that could affect us all, the boundaries that separate districts and states fade away.

If you insert “conservatism” whenever you hear Doug Hoffman’s name, you get the point.

That’s not what the race was about.

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On Thursday, the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition called on the Republican Party to denounce the New York Republican Congressional Committee’s selection of über liberal Dede Scozzafava and their crusade against Doug Hoffman, bona fide conservative, backed by the Conservative Party. Tea party groups, frustrated after carrying the water for a hibernating party only to be ignored and attacked as “divisive” by certain GOP leaders, have demanded that Republicans “put up or shut up” when it comes to conservative leadership.

On Friday, at noon central, myself and fellow St. Louis Tea Party organizer Bill Hennessy will hold a short press conference announcing the reclamation of the Republican party from those moderates who falsely espouse “big tent” philosophies, but have little actual record of drawing in independents, Democrats, Libertarians, minorities, women, and youth – a record like the tea parties possess. The big tent already exists; the limited scope comes from leaders like Newt Gingrich who persist in the belief that Democrat-lite is the only way to win a race. Conservatism, when presented in full strength at the ballot, wins at the ballot. To suggest otherwise is to discount the millions who’ve taken to the streets since February in this new conservative revolution.

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