This morning, Jenny Beth Martin spoke at CPAC in the Potomac Ballroom. Martin is the co-founder and national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization with more than 3,400 locally affiliated groups nationwide. Martin was openly critical of the GOP’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, writing in a November 2012 email, “We wanted a fighter like Ronald Reagan who boldly championed America’s founding principles… What we got was a weak moderate candidate, hand-picked by the Beltway elites and country-club establishment.”
Jenny Beth Martin started this morning by asking the crowd to visualize the future, imagining our country as the most charitable on Earth, a future where the economy is growing at a steady pace, where growth leads to a balanced budget. She said this is vision of the Tea Party Patriots, where we have a constitutionally limited, fiscally responsible government where free markets thrive. Yet, the Tea Party Patriot vision is “mocked and marginalized by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.” The audience booed as she mentioned the names of “establishment Republicans” who also belittle the tea party organization, namely Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.
Martin compared the environment in DC to District 1 in the Hunger Games. She painted a grim picture where in the heartland, unemployment is in double digits, where eight million people will lose their insurance because of Obamacare, and where a family of four will pay $20,000/year for insurance. The full house in the Potomac room enthusiastically applauded when Martin referred to Obamacare as a “con, an unaffordable law that is callous and cruel.” She again referenced the popular Hunger Games novel, saying our countries equivalent to the Hunger Games tribune would be “patients who die under this law.”
After painting this fairly grim overview of our current political climate, Martin asked the crowd if they were happy with an “establishment that is content with attending cocktail parties toasting each other while we suffer” and asked, “is this the America we want?” The crowd responded with a resounding no. Martin became invigorated as she affirmed “our Constitution is worth fighting for because freedom is worth fighting for” and invigorated the audience as well as she received a standing ovation for that remark.
She reiterated that the Tea Party Patriots want principled fighters, and that we have so many reasons to be encouraged, naming “Senator Rand Paul, Louis Gohmert, and a few steadfast stalwart, principled fighters on Capital Hill.” She referred to Congressman Steve King and his fighting the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda, and then being threatened by Karl Rove to primary him, to which the audience again booed in disapproval.
Martin concluded by enthusiastically raising her voice and asking “will the torch of liberty, the Constitution in our country perish or endure?” She encouraged the crowd, “if we fight, we will endure!” She then rallied the crowd asking them if they “will clink glasses with the powerful elite or stand on principle and fight for freedom, fight for the Constitution, and fight for a better future,” to which the crowd rose to their feet in exuberant applause. Finally, Martin affirmed “liberty will endure” and implored the activists in the room to “take the torch and fight for liberty, fight for freedom and fight for a better future!”
