Give Us Liberty

by Dick Armey

  AMERICA TAKES NOTICE

  AS A FIRST-TIME ACTIVIST, Mark Reeth—one of Matt Clemente’s classmates at Holy Cross who helped him organize the door-to-door effort for FreedomWorks—was astonished by the dedication of the local Tea Party members. “It was so inspiring,” Mark said. “I mean, when you have parents asking neighbors1 to watch their kids so they can spend a few hours going door-to-door, you know that you’re involved with something pretty amazing.”

  The support for Brown was overwhelming. And as election Tuesday drew closer, America began to take notice. It wasn’t long before our office was flooded with phone calls and e-mails from people across the country who wanted to help. Tea Party activists from every corner of America were ready to join in the fight. People were making the drive from Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, even as far as Florida and Alabama, to help with the cause.

  One activist who made the trek from Alabama was a thirty-four-year-old Marine Corps veteran, dad, and entrepreneur named Rick Barber. Rick told us he “went to Massachusetts in the hopes of killing the health care bill”—something he had spent much of 2009 fighting. In an appearance on Good Morning America, Rick captured his motivation in six words: “In 2010 all politics are national2.”

  Activists across the country agreed and support for Brown poured in from all over the country. We heard from Matt Clemente that hotels were booked solid, phone banks were pumping out thousands of calls a day, and you couldn’t drive for more than a minute without seeing a SCOTT BROWN UNITED STATES SENATE lawn sign. Something important had begun to happen; something that few political observers outside of the Tea Party movement could have anticipated. Suddenly the poll numbers began to shift. With every new poll, Brown gained a few points. First he was within 15; then he was within 10, then 5; then he was within the margin of error.

  ON THE BRINK

  BUT IT WASN’T ALL good news coming out of Massachusetts at that time. One week before the election, an in-state activist forwarded an e-mail to FreedomWorks entitled WARNING TO TEA PARTY ACTIVISTS: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT VOTING FOR SCOTT BROWN! The original e-mail was from Carla Howell and Michael Cloud, two prominent small-government advocates. Howell and Cloud are well-respected members of the Massachusetts Tea Party movement, and the e-mail was sent to grassroots conservatives and libertarians statewide. They have both run for statewide office and have repeatedly—and almost successfully—led the charge to repeal Massachusetts’s state income tax.

  In part, their e-mail read, “The Republican Party . . . [is] trying to scare and stampede you and us—Tea Party activists, Town Hall Meeting protesters, and tax cutters—into closing our eyes, holding our noses, and voting for Brown—out of fear that the alternative is even worse. They are wrong. . . . You have a radically better choice. A choice that will advance the Tea Party Cause. A choice that will give us REAL Tea Party candidates and allies in November.”

  This, of course, is the constant tension in politics—deciding whether or not to let the unelectable “perfect” be the enemy of the electable “good.” Unfortunately, as long as free speech is limited in the United States by unconstitutional campaign finance restrictions, it will remain a two-party country. This, of course, is why bipartisan campaign finance laws have been so popular with incumbents.

  The choice of which Howell and Cloud wrote was a third-party libertarian candidate named Joseph Kennedy. By all measures, Kennedy’s views on the free market system and the role of government are in line with most Tea Party activists. He was against the TARP Wall Street bailout, against other government bailouts, against the health care bill being rammed through Congress, against the cap-and-trade energy tax, and in favor of individual liberty. The only problem was that polling showed he was pulling around 1 percent of the vote. As if that wasn’t enough, the market had clearly spoken: individuals had shown their support by giving Brown more than $15 million in campaign contributions, while Kennedy had attracted just $18,000. If Kennedy was slightly better on the issues, we disagreed with Howell and Cloud’s assessment of Scott Brown. A losing candidate who may be slightly better on the issues is not a “radically better choice” than a winning candidate who will be with you on the biggest legislative fights of the day.

  The movement realized this and saw it was in our best interest to support Brown. The inescapable truth was that supporting him was the right decision in order to prevent the election of Martha Coakley as the critical sixtieth Democratic senator and the passage of every bill on the liberal wish list. The Tea Party activists in Massachusetts agreed. Maybe we’re not all as naive as the Left and the media hope and say we are.

  This last-minute division from Howell and Cloud proved inconsequential as most activists realized what was at stake and accepted the current reality of our system. Brad Wyatt, a member of the Worcester Tea Party who let the Brown campaign set up shop in his office building, saw his vote for Brown as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to affect the course of the nation. “Many of the Tea Party citizens preferred the libertarian Joe Kennedy (and I agreed with his ideological stances as well), but Scott Brown had the best chance to win against Martha Coakley and the Democratic machine in Massachusetts, and so the Tea Party people solidified their support behind Scott.”

  So the libertarians may generally be counted among the Tea Partiers, but does that just confirm the nagging accusation that our fiscal conservatism puts us on the fringe? Which way Massachusetts’s independent voters turned would let us know—and they make up more than 50 percent of the state’s electorate, so they would also decide the election. Would they line up with the Tea Party movement behind the same candidate?

  Mary Anne Pappas, the grandmother of FreedomWorks’ vice president for public policy Max Pappas, proved to be a harbinger of things to come. A longtime independent, Mary Anne has been casting votes in Massachusetts since she marked a ballot for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944. She’s been voting in Massachusetts long enough to have voted for Ted Kennedy “several times,” and she had voted for Martha Coakley in the Democratic primary just weeks earlier. But by no means has she been a party-line voter. She told us, “I like to know the records of the people I’m voting for and ask around my circle of friends for input. I have also voted Republican at times.” As independent voters like Mary Anne go, so go most elections.

  Max spoke with his grandmother while home over Christmas about the race. He pointed out that Brown would be the forty-first vote needed in the Senate to sustain a filibuster against Obamacare. Mary Anne responded, “I’m not too happy with the bill anyway, and if this will help, I’ll vote Republican and suggest to my friends that they do the same.”

  The election was drawing closer, and it was becoming evident that momentum was on our side. Matt Clemente and the other FreedomWorks activists were pounding the pavement day in and day out to get our side-by-side candidate comparison into the hands of as many likely voters as possible. In-state Tea Party activists were making themselves available to do anything and everything that the campaign asked of them. Scott Brown went from being a relatively unknown state legislator to the champion of the grassroots Tea Party conservative movement overnight.

  Coming into work on Election Day, we noticed that something about Washington felt different. There was an undeniable excitement in the air. After proponents of smaller government had suffered major defeats with TARP, the bailouts, and the stimulus bill, we knew that we finally had an opportunity to send a message: No more. No more frivolous spending and bureaucratic waste. No more lack of transparency and backroom deals. No more failed promises. No more tax increases. No more assaults on our freedom. But it wasn’t up to us to send that message. It was up to the voters of Massachusetts. All that we could do was sit and wait for the results to come in.

  Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the final push was on. Clemente sent e-mails and text messages to everyone he knew reminding them of the importance of their vote. Every town in the area had Brown supporters waving signs and directing people to the po
lling places. After months of tireless work, activists pushed on, making phone calls, walking door-to-door, and driving those who were unable to drive themselves to the ballot box. It is easy to grow restless over the course of a long election cycle. It is easy to become complacent and assume that victory is at hand, but the Massachusetts grassroots community did not give in to such temptations. From the minute they became involved with the campaign until the final vote was counted, the Tea Partiers gave Scott Brown everything that they had.

  The impossible happened as a result. The state of Massachusetts rejected big-government liberalism and voted a Republican to the United States Senate: a Republican who explicitly campaigned on being the decisive vote against the massive health care overhaul so closely tied to Ted Kennedy. And former Kennedy voters were making this happen.

  That night, as the FreedomWorks D.C. staff gathered at a local bar to watch the vote results come in, we received an e-mail to our cell phones. It was from Matt Clemente and the subject read, YOU’RE WELCOME. The message simply stated, FROM ALL YOUR FRIENDS IN MASS.

  We had done it.

  The Tea Party community had come together around an electable candidate and had worked vigorously to get him into office. We clearly were now a true political force with the power to affect elections and influence policy. On January 18, we had gone to sleep in a country in which big-government politicians and Washington elites shouted over the voices of the American public. On January 19, we awoke to a revitalized America. We had awoken to a country in which the voice of the people still mattered, a country in which a group of individuals united by a common cause could still make a difference, a country in which anything was possible. The media and the powerful in Washington had no choice but to take notice.

  After the election was over, Matt Clemente told us about his eighty-seven-year-old Aunt Ginny. She was a lifelong Democrat. In her first presidential election she, like Max’s grandmother Mary Anne, voted for FDR, and she, like many Massachusetts residents, adored the late Ted Kennedy. She had never voted for a Republican and Matt was under the impression that she never would. But in Scott Brown she saw more than just another Republican candidate. She saw the same thing that led grassroots activists to drive cross-country and the same thing that led Tea Partiers to dedicate months of their lives to one man’s campaign. In him she saw a much needed check on one-party domination and the corrupting influence such power can have on even those with the best intentions. In him she saw the future of America, the future of freedom, and a return to sanity in Washington. That is why she, like 52 percent of Massachusetts voters, cast her ballot for Scott Brown.

  To earn the grassroots support, Republicans will have to be bold on policy that will get to the heart of the problem: Americans think government has grown too big and spends too much. Our job as the voters in this country is to supply the boldness for party leaders by making it clear we’ll be participating in November for those who are as bold as we are in our desire to limit Washington’s power.

  That is how we exert our influence over the Republican Party.

  A CONTRACT FROM AMERICA

  GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS HAVE ALREADY presented great ideas we will push aspiring politicians to embrace—for their own good, and for the country’s sake. One of the best ideas comes from Ryan Hecker, a Tea Party leader in Houston. Ryan realized the Republicans, having so recently failed to govern as fiscal conservatives, didn’t have the credibility to present their own Washington-created contract to the American people. So he set out to build the infrastructure that would enable the American people to offer one themselves for politicians to sign on to. Ryan launched a Web site in mid-2009 called ContractFromAmerica.com to gather ideas from across the country for a new contract, a Contract from America.

  Over several months he received thousands of ideas from every corner of the country, boiled them down to twenty-two by combining the most commonly submitted points into coherent policy positions, and then put the list out for a national online vote. He received hundreds of thousands of votes from grassroots activists on his site and presented the final ten as the Contract from America before forty thousand activists at our Tax Day Tea Party held on April 15, 2010, in front of the Washington Monument.

  THE CONTRACT FROM AMERICA

  We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

  Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

  The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

  The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

  PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION. Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.

  REJECT CAP & TRADE. Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.

  DEMAND A BALANCED BUDGET. Begin the constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike.

  ENACT FUNDAMENTAL TAX REFORM. Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution.

  RESTORE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY & CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMITED GOVERNMENT IN WASHINGTON. Create a blue-ribbon task force that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the U.S. Constitution’s meaning.

  END RUNAWAY GOVERNMENT SPENDING. Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.

  DEFUND, REPEAL, & REPLACE GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE. Defund, repeal, and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries.

  PASS AN “ALL-OF-THE-ABOVE” ENERGY POLICY. Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

  STOP THE PORK. Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a two-thirds majority to pass any earmark.

  STOP THE TAX HIKES. Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011.

  One of the pr
imary concerns we repeatedly hear at rallies is that no one in Washington is listening. The Democrats increased this perception by passing the health care legislation, employing extraordinary procedural trickery, that much of the country had vociferously opposed. Instead, they belittled the protesters. If the Republican Party ignores this Contract from America, they will be signaling to us that they aren’t listening, either. They know it exists—we’ve told many of the leaders in Washington personally. And some have wisely embraced it. It is our job to make sure many more do.

  If the Republican Party wants to find its way back into power this year, it will need to live up to its promises of limited government, embrace the Tea Party movement, and allow the movement to guide the agenda. This is the formula for success for everyone who believes in limited government, whether they currently belong to the tea parties or the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or some other party or no party at all.

  Republicans want to get elected, and we can influence the outcomes of their elections. As fiscal conservatives, we are the center of American politics. We are the elusive independents in the middle who decide elections year after year. So they need us.

  But we need them—and their well-built infrastructure—too.

  The establishment and the media will never understand that the goal of our peaceful revolution is not just getting Republicans elected. We should not waste our time being concerned when they make that simple accusation. We know our goal is to use the Republican Party to shift the center of gravity in Washington to small-government conservatives—that’s to say, we aim to get Washington’s agenda in balance with the convictions of Americans outside the Beltway.

  NO TIME TO CELEBRATE

  A SEISMIC SHIFT IN American politics was being generated from the ground up.