The Tea Party Crashers:  Rick Perry and Glenn Beck

            I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Republican Party (nor the Democratic Party for that matter).  What Glenn Beck did to Debra Medina on Wednesday is just another reason why.  Immediately following Beck’s attack, Rick Perry began running thousands of “robo calls” using Beck’s attack.  The Governor “doth protest too much, me thinks” (Shakespeare), and might be running a wee bit scared (Linda Curtis).

            My advice to Rick Perry is to keep running – down your toll roads.  The fact that Beck, Perry and now Kay (shame on you girl!) are attacking Medina makes me want to support her all the more. 

            You see, independents love a fair fight and we detest the party machines for their dirty tricks.  Although independents span the political spectrum, and therefore many of us don’t exactly fit into the Tea Party movement, we appreciate what is going on here.  Medina is standing up to the party hacks and saying that ordinary people have – quite simply – the right to think and say whatever they believe without being demonized.  The party hacks will never stand for that.  But you knew that already, right? 

            Beck’s attack on Medina should be taken as a signal and a warning to tea partiers that the Republican Party will do and spend whatever it takes to crash and burn your party.  There is a better place for you.  It’s called the independent movement.  But let me give you fair warning.  We are of the belief that nothing is going to change about policy in this country, unless we build a united movement (across the ideological divide) for political reform. 

            We tried to build a united front for reform back in the 1990′s when Perot-led independent movement came on like gangbusters.  But the Republican Party co-opted and then killed our agenda (deficit reduction, term limits and campaign finance reform).  The rest of the movement killed itself off arguing about which litmus test we would use to denote a “true reformer”.  Let’s not keep replaying this bad movie.

Linda Curtis

Independent Texans