Tea Party protest in Rapid City

Tuesday, April 14, 2009; Jerry Steinley’s article Spending brings out the tea protest was published in the Rapid City Journal:
http//www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2009/04/14/news/opinions/jerry_steinley/doc49de39520221d774387146.txt .

Since then numerous online comments have been posted on the Rapid City Journal’s website and several rebuttal letters have also been published in the print version of the Rapid City Journal. I wrote the following article before reading the online posts and I can see that a number of the people writing in support of the Tea Party should not be included in my one party slant perception of participants. In defense of what I wrote below, my opinion came from the print newspaper rebuttals and from visiting a website that listed the issues of the protest. That list was decidedly one sided and party biased. For better or worse, my letter to the editor appears below:

The accusations and pronouncements of the Tea Party group would be much more believable if their charges of malfeasance included members of more than one political party and more than one presidential administration. Mr. Steinley’s recent editorial very clearly identified the upcoming demonstration for what it is, divisive party exploitation of public anger rather than rational nonpartisan voter indignation.

Mr. Steinley’s editorial also implied that not all of our conservative neighbors accept the one sided accusations. The organizers are apparently not interested in using this opportunity to gather more broad based support for their protest. Broad based, multi-political party, support that could actually and positively affect the future of our nation and help to reduce partisan obstructionism and divisiveness.

We should be outraged by what has happened, demand accountability, demand transparency, and get personally involved. Many of the Tea Party group members think they are doing just that, but they should drop the one political party slant on some of the issues they have raised. They could draw many more participants to their rally.

Americans can be very skeptical at times. Unfortunately, when it comes to politics, some of us seem to have forgotten where we left our skepticism laying.