By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
The Rainy Day Patriots gathered for their last regularly scheduled formal meeting of the year. Soon the Birmingham area’s largest conservative political action group will be too busy canvassing Florida, helping county officials clean up voter rolls, staffing phone banks, and working too hard to get together for their customary monthly meetings.
Referring to conservatives who attend meetings but do little else, Rainy Day Patriots President Zan Green said, “I am not going to have dead weight in my Tea Party!” and urged everyone in attendance to get involved doing something to help conservatives oust unpopular President Barack H. Obama.
Conservative author and Tea Party organizer, Michael Patrick Leahy, was the guest speaker for the Thursday Night event where over 120 conservative political activists packed the Hoover Tactical Firearms meeting room.
Mr. Leahy is the author of the book, ‘Covenant of Liberty.’ He explained that the Constitution is a secular covenant between the people and the government akin to the religious covenant in Judeo-Christian thinking between God and the people who choose to follow him. Where God promises the people everlasting life and the people promise to obey God’s commandments, according to Leahy the people of the United States willingly agreed to make the U.S. Constitution the law of the land if the government will honor and protect their individual liberties.
Mr. Leahy argues that elites within the government of the United States have over time broken four promises that were in that covenant between the governed and the government.
The first broken promise was to abide by the written words of the Constitution. Mr. Leahy said this promise was “broken before the ink was dry.” Alexander Hamilton was looking for a way get around the Constitution. He wanted a national bank. Leahy admits there was “merit to the idea.” And Hamilton could have asked for an amendment but instead used ‘the necessary and proper clause’ to expand government without amending the Constitution.
The second promise was to refrain from interfering with market economics. The Lincoln administration’s 1862 act subsidizing the transcontinental railroad broke that promise. While the railroad itself was a good idea, instead of letting the free market produce the railroad they began “crony capitalism.”
The third broke promise was to honor the customs and principles of the people. For over 120 years, the federal government’s peacetime domestic spending remained between 2 to 4% of GDP. The Congress ran the government like you ran a business or your household. Then the Depression hit and President Herbert Hoover “tried to spend his way out of the Great Depression” and government spending rose to 8% of GDP. The people elected Franklin D. Roosevelt and he ran government spending up to 10% of GDP (before WWII). President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s ran government spending up to 18% of GDP. “Under Obama that number has rose to 25% of GDP. It will easily reach 30% of GDP if he is reelected. This is financially reckless spending that the founders, especially Alexander Hamilton would despise and detest this.”
According to Leahy the fourth broken promise was that the Congress would make decisions based on thoughtful deliberation of the nation’s business. The stimulus package, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank were all examples of legislation being rushed without thinking the matter through.
After the government broke these four fundamental promises, the governed (the people) rose up and started the Tea Party Movement. The purpose of the Tea Party Movement is to restore the covenant that is the U.S. Constitution. Leahy said, “Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Senate are working on corrupting that covenant.”
Mr. Leahy said, “We are going to hold an election day Tea party like nothing we have ever seen before. Conservatives will defeat Barack Obama.” “This election is about one thing and one thing only: Will the American Republic continue to survive or will the federal elite replace it with a divine right of the state.”
Mr. Leahy predicted that Mitt Romney would defeat President Barack H. Obama in a landslide and that the Republicans would take control of the U.S. Senate. In a column in the Daily Caller, Mr Leahy explained, “The polls are missing one key ingredient: the intensity of feeling and the level of determination among the 28% of American adults (66 million people) who consider themselves part of the tea party or are supportive of it. To these people, 2012 is not “just another election.” It is the defining political battle of our lifetime. Most of these 66 million tea partiers will vote in November. But they will do much more than vote. They will also make unprecedented personal sacrifices in time and money to help get out the vote. To a person, these 66 million Americans believe that if Barack Obama is re-elected, the constitutional republic as we know it will be destroyed. They are determined not to let this happen on their watch.”
Zan Green said of this election, “We are in the final battle. This is it. We either win this war or it is over.”
You can learn more about the Rainy Day Patriots at their website:
