The Tea Party movement has been (with justification) been labeled as just another branch of the Republican Party. The Wizard thinks, however, that the real fidelity of a Tea Party person should be to the principles embodies in the United States Constitution.
Long time readers will know that the Wizard spent some nine months of his life back in 2007 - 2008, working with the Floodway Coalition of Houston, in their desperate property rights battle against Houston City Hall, to roll back revisions to Houston's Floodway ordinance, which if it were have been allowed to stand would have resulted in a $2 billion - $3.5 billion regulatory taking by the City of Houston of 10,000 properties along Houston's creeks and bayous. The ordinance was perpetrated by former Mayor Bill White (a Democrat, now running for Governor), and the Mayor was strongly backed by Republicans on City Council like former CM Toni Lawrence. The floodway regulatory taking represented a bi-partisan oppression of Houston's citizenry.
One of the Floodway Coalition's attorneys who conducted the legal battle against the City's uncompensated regulatory takings of the property of Houstonians was Bruce Mosier. Mr. Mosier, a long time property attorney and a Democrat, currently works for Harris County. The Wizard personally saw how Mosier defended the property rights of Houstonians (read one notable case here), many of whom were completely unaware of what had happened to them, and how important it was that a group of citizens and their legal counsel were working for them.
Yesterday, the Wizard attended the League of Women voters event at the George R. Brown convention center. I was wearing my Houston Tea Party society shirt, but I was also wearing a tag stating that I was supportive for Mr. Mosier. At one point I was stopped and harshly attacked by one woman, who I could tell was a Republican from some buttons she was wearing on her shirt. She said the Republican was well qualified, but the Wizard strongly stood his ground. There was no way that I was going to be budged from my support of Mosier.
The Tea Party movement needs above all to remember that you need to watch what individuals who are in office or on the bench actually do on issues while they hold office, no matter whether they have an (R) or a (D) behind their name. The Wizard will never support Toni Lawrence, for example, if she ever again tries to get elected. It is when it comes down to the issues where the party labels become murky and break down, and it is where politicians stand on issues that really matter. Just ask Delaware Senator Mike Castle, whose loss to Tea Party upstart Christine O'Donnell this past week rocked the national Republican establishment.
So, the Wizard is going to make his pitch to his Tea Party and Republican friends not to vote straight ticket, but to cross party lines and vote for Bruce Mosier for County Civil Court at Law No. 4 of Harris County, Texas in the November 2010 election.
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The Wizard's crossing of party lines to support a political or judicial candidate should not leave open my motives, but rather it should open the question of the information that the citizenry has available to them when they are being asked to vote in elections. Someone recently told the Wizard that the upcoming November 2010 elections in Harris County are going to feature the longest ballot in the history of the American Republic. There are literally over 70 judicial races (civil, criminal, family court, and state district), as well as congressional races, state representative races, school board races, a bond issue out in Katy Texas, three propositions on the City of Houston ballot, as well as the race of Texas Governor. The Wizard himself didn't even know that there was the judicial position that Mr. Mosier was running for until a few months ago, and if someone as active as the Wizard didn't know, then what hope does that leave for the citizens who choose not to be active?
Some of this is self inflicted. The State of Texas has created this complicated, bifurcated system of justice, whereby judges are elected in the state. Civil cases are shunted off in one direction, while criminal cases go down another pipeline. Then the civil cases are subdivided into several different categories. Then top that off with all the political races, and it quickly becomes apparent that the political classes are dumping a horde of questions on the citizenry.
In the face of this, it's easy for citizens to simply throw up their hands and not participate, perhaps thinking that it doesn't matter (or make a difference) in many cases how they vote or what they do. For many who are not politically active by choice and do not have their noses pressed up against the glass, the short cut they take in the face of this overload of politics and information is to simply to roll into the voting booth, vote straight ticket along the party line, and then they're outta there. If someone like myself crosses party lines for a candidate, they are immediately thought of with suspicion by those who seek to rope me in on the party line, and find that we have to explain ourselves when in fact it should be the other way around. It is the politicians and parties who are the ones that need to be explaining themselves.
The Wizard has long resigned himself to the insanity of the decision making process of politics, having long ago encountered the public ignorance literature, as well as the public choice literature. The Wizard also started reading through the Anti-Federalist papers, where the Founding generation experimented with various forms of government before settling on the U.S. Constitution. Some of the questions the Founders had to confront had to do with justice, and whether it was better for judges to be elected or appointed? There is a tension in American political life, whereby it was declared that Americans have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but on the other hand there is a concept that the power lies with the people and that government rules with the consent of the governed. An answer the Founders came up with was to divide power, keep many matters of liberty off limits (through the Bill of Rights) and to temper and refine decisions through several different means, such has having two legislative bodies and judicial review.
The Wizard suspects that a big problem for American political theory in today's America is that many are thinking that they were (or are) not consenting to what's been shoved down their throats over the past several years (the TARP, the ARRA, ever expanding federal power, liberal victories that last forever while conservative ones that come with an expiration date, etc), and that they are preferring Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The tension between the two ideas has once again reared its ugly head, and what remains to be seen is whether all this can be resolved peacefully. The Wizard foresaw years ago that the tensions of our times might come to pass.
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at September 19, 2010 06:40 PM