Are we winning?

That is the question that I go aback and forth on more so than any other. Some days it looks like we are losing ground, others, it looks like we are gaining ground. I am gradually coming around tom the notion that we are gaining ground for a host of reasons.

First: Healthcare was planned on being wrapped up in July, complete with public option and abortion funding. It is December and there are no signs of anything in cement yet on healthcare beyond grandstanding by Harry Reid who now is pushing a bill so far from Pelosi's that it would never get out of the mitigation process where the House and Senate Bills are merged.

2nd is Cap and Trade. we all know that nothing of substance barring the "dissolving of the bones of Neptune" will come out of Copenhagen. Congress has made it loud and clear that there is absolutely no support for any treaty coming out of Copenhagen.

While there are issues we are losing on, such as Mitch McConnell (Republican senate minority leader) complaining abut Democrat spending while having one of the largest earmarks in the Omnibus (DC speak for BOVINE SCATOLOGY) spending bill, (I hope the American people overwhelmingly support ousting anyone in on Capitol Hill who has requested even one earmark). WE are winning at the local level. I now have a good understanding of how pro liberty candidates are pushing a takeover of the Republican party at the local level. These last days where I have not been writing, I have been attending several local 9/12 type grassroots meetings spanning Broward, Dade and Palm Beach Counties in Florida. There is a local plan being carried out all over the country, following the model that was quite successful in Nevada. There are wolves in sheep's clothing here, some of which have founded a "Tea Party" party to try and hijack the split between independents and republicans knowing that if successful, the split will leave Dems with sufficient numbers to win the 2010 midterms if they can achieve sufficient turnout. That is why I am not going into total details of what these people are doing and what their agenda is. I will end my post with this Article out of the local news section of the ultra liberal Palm Beach Post which I think speaks for itself. (Sorry no time for alot of fancy pics as I have a debate to attend! Hope to see some of you locals there!!!!)

Conservative Tea Party and 9-12 activists won't know for a year or more if their September march on Washington succeeded.

But their visits to West Palm Beach have already produced results.

Palm Beach County commissioners on Tuesday are poised to enact ethics rules that include a key provision urged by local

9-12 and Tea Party groups.

The ethics change, which gives added independence to an anti-corruption inspector general, illustrates the rapid local development of the two grass-roots movements, neither of which existed when 2009 began.

It also points to future challenges as activists decide how much to focus on local matters or the national issues that originally brought them together.

"We are interested in national (issues). The problem is they're not paying attention to us," said Shannon Armstrong, an insurance claims adjuster and mother of three from suburban Lake Worth who started a local 9-12 group. "But on the county level and on the local level and with some of the mayors, they're actually listening to us."

The Tea Party and 9-12 movements were sparked by cable TV personalities, fanned by the Internet and kept ablaze by the federal stimulus, bailouts, cap-and-trade legislation and health care overhaul.

The Tea Party movement took its name from the anti-tax Boston Harbor uprising of 1773 and a Feb. 19 rant by CNBC's Rick Santelli suggesting a "tea party" to protest an Obama administration mortgage bailout proposal.

On April 15 — tax day — hundreds of tea party rallies to protest federal spending took place across the U.S., including a West Palm Beach event that drew more than 1,000 people.

The South Florida Tea Party group, started by 31-year-old financial planner Everett Wilkinson and others, now has more than 6,000 names on its e-mail list.

Groups often collaborate

The 9-12 movement was inspired by conservative talker Glenn Beck, its name meant to evoke the unity Americans felt after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Its principles include belief in God and the goodness of America and the supremacy of individual rights and the family over government.

The local 9-12 group started by Armstrong has more than 400 members.

In Palm Beach County, the 9-12ers and Tea Partyers often work together. Many members of both groups took buses to Washington for a massive Sept. 12 march.

Back home, both groups got involved in the county ethics issue after State Attorney Michael McAuliffe and business and civic leaders pushed reforms that include an inspector general to investigate corruption and waste in county government.

The legislation originally gave the county commission power to remove an inspector general if five of seven commissioners found cause.

To the 9-12 and Tea Party groups, that gave too much influence to the commission, which has seen three of its members go to federal prison since 2006. Both groups promoted an online petition calling for a "100 percent independent" inspector general and collected more than 2,800 signatures.

Loxahatchee Groves Vice Mayor Dennis Lipp worked with both groups on the issue. Lipp and Fred and Iris Scheibl, a Palm Beach Gardens couple active in the Tea Party and 9-12 groups, met with some individual commissioners before a Dec. 1 preliminary vote on the changes.

They pitched a compromise preserving the county commission's removal vote, but requiring an independent ethics panel to also approve. If the independent panel disagree d, the inspector would remain.

Commissioner Karen Marcus met with the 9-12 group in the summer and with the Scheibls the day before the Dec. 1 meeting. She proposed the compromise and her colleagues accepted it.

After working with the 9-12 group, Marcus said, she was impressed by "the way they went about it — by educating themselves, reading up on everything, making appointments and talking to everybody. They weren't unreasonable."

Attorney David Baker, the head of the coalition of business and civic groups that pushed the overall ethics revamp, welcomed the involvement of the 9-12 and Tea Party groups.

"While their political philosophy may be different from mine, certainly they are very concerned about public participation in government. I think that's great," Baker said.

Finding common ground

Commission Chairman Burt Aaronson, one of the county's most prominent Democratic partisans, disagrees with much of the Tea Party and 9-12 national agenda, but said that doesn't influence him on local matters.

He supported the groups' inspector general recommendation, but voiced reservations about giving so much authority to the unelected ethics commission.

"They got what they wanted. Everybody seems to be OK with it," Aaronson said. If there are problems with an inspector general in the future, Aaronson said, "the county commission is absolved of (responsibility for) anything that may go wrong by the ethics commission."

County Attorney Denise Nieman, after consulting Lipp, Fred Scheibl and others last week, has proposed tweaking the removal provision in advance of Tuesday's final vote. Instead of the five-member ethics panel having veto power over a commission vote, the power would belong to a seven-member entity that comprises the ethics panel plus appointees from the state attorney and public defender.

Lipp said he shares many of the 9-12 and Tea Party groups' views on national issues, but thinks they should focus on local concerns.

"National issues are really interesting. But you can really get stuff done at the local level," Lipp said.

Focus on Wexler seat

Armstrong, the chief organizer of the local

9-12 group, said she was mainly concerned about her family, job and church until a multibillion-dollar financial industry bailout at the end of the Bush administration became "the big red flag for me." This year's economic stimulus bill, health care changes and other national issues motivated her and her husband to start the 9-12 group.

While Armstrong and others also have become involved in local issues, Tea Party organizer Wilkinson says he prefers to keep his main focus on federal spending and national issues.

National and local politics will intersect in the upcoming special election to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton. The Tea Party and 9-12 groups are vowing to play a role, even though Wexler's district is a liberal Democratic stronghold.

"We expect the Wexler race to be a national race that's going to be fought vote by vote. … The Tea Party movement is committed to getting out the votes en masse for candidates that support us," Wilkinson said.

Even if a candidate supporting Tea Party principles doesn't win, Wilkinson said, a strong showing in the special election would be "an extreme blow to the liberal left."

Ed Fulop, a 9-12 activist, says activists shouldn't care about the long odds.

"There's no doubt it's going to be tough. But just because it's tough doesn't mean it's not right," Fulop said. "If it's truly about principles, it doesn't matter if it's a fight we can't win."