Tea Party Politics - The Great Spoiler and pain in the posterier.

Perhaps Gary North's Best Article ever!

Hip-Pocket Politics: How To Become a Tack

"If you are in the hip pocket of any political party, prepare to be sat on." ~ Gary North


Political victory in the United States is best defined as follows:

Getting your political agenda enacted into law, enforced by the Executive branch, and upheld by the courts.

A definition of political victory that ignores any of these criteria is part of a shell game: getting people elected for their careers' sake, not your agenda.

To achieve this three-part victory, you must be part of a voting bloc that has the power to impose sanctions: positive and negative.

Establishment politicians understand this. They respect it. They have learned to exploit it. They tell their constituents: "You can win through me if you supply the votes to enable me to win (positive sanction) at the expense of my opponent (negative sanction)." This is the politics of the shell game, what I call the Punch and Judy show.

The correct definition of the power to impose political sanctions is this:

Sufficient votes to deliberately keep your party's candidate from winning in November if he waffles, and sufficient votes to elect his replacement two years later.

There is a corollary:

The willingness to run a post-nomination independent candidate against an incumbent member of your party if he has waffled during his most recent term in office.

Any voting bloc that has this ability will not be in any party's hip pocket.

Read More:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north833.html