Organizing Tea Party protesters is a nearly impossible task. This new American resistance movement is leaderless — and not looking for a leader. A leader, any leader can be defeated. A single person can be imprisoned or murdered with minimal effort. Worse, revolutionary leaders have a bad history of sliding into the role of dictator once the revolution is achieved. George Washington was a rare exception to this rule and because of that the United States was blessed with a century of prosperity.
One trouble with leaderless movements is that they are difficult to define. This makes it terribly difficult for the bobble-heads on the evening news to describe them in thirty-second sound-bites.
Mark Skoda is the chairman of The Memphis TEA Party. On a national political level, that makes him… nobody. At the recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, he announced the formation of the Ensuring Liberty Corporation and an as-yet-to-be-named political action committee. Even in Tea Party circles, that doesn’t mean much. In the tea party movement, everybody is in charge. Mark specifically pointed out that his organizations are not affiliated with the Tea Party Nation or any other parts of the tea party movement.
Mark’s announcement did one thing though, that may become very important. The announcement included an official platform for his group which may become the basis for tea party platforms across the nation. The most important parts of this platform are the First Principles:
- Fiscal responsibility
- Lower taxes
- Less government
- States rights
- National security
This is a very good set of principles. It states what needs to be stated and it leaves out some of the divisive issues which have caused problems for the 912 movement and for Ron Paul’s candidacy before that. The principles it defines should be supported by everyone in the tea party movement.
