If You Can’t Sell the Fake, Sell the Fizzle.

A recent poll conducted by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio indicated that 41 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party Movement. This support is manifest in the influential role played by Tea Party activists in the defeat of Governor Jon Corzine in New Jersey, the landslide election of Governor Bob McDonnell in Virginia, and most recently and visibly, Scott Brown’s historic victory in the special election in Massachusetts to fill the seat left vacant by the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy. To varying degrees, all of these men owe their success to the skill, spirit, and stamina of the men and women of the Tea Party Movement.

On a cold night in December 1773, some three years after passage of the Tea Act by the British Parliament, colonists were fed up with the British crown’s haughty disregard of their rights as Englishmen, and they dumped 342 chests of the iconic British beverage into Boston Harbor, becoming icons themselves. The protesters (estimates range from as few as 30 to as many as 130) refused finally to be placated by repeated promises of change and reform and, rather than wait for legislative response, they exercised the Lockean right of “self-defense” and boldly resisted the alienation of their God-given liberty.

As the House of Representatives rushes to pass the version of a healthcare bill passed in December by the Senate, particular emphasis is being paid by Americans to key provisions in the measure. One of the most controversial elements, and one of most importance to many voters, is whether the bill under consideration will permit federal dollars to fund abortions.

Nothing gives this writer purer pleasure than to report on the multitude of states’ rights initiatives being passed by state legislatures across our great Republic. As happy as such news makes me, it must in equal measure drive the journalists at the establishment’s “newspaper of record” — the New York Times — crazy.

Not satisfied with placing banks, insurance companies, and the car industry under the control of the federal government, President Obama has turned his sights on the American West.

As Debra Medina sat with her husband in their hometown campaign office in Wharton, Texas, watching the numbers come in, she knew that she was not going to be the next governor of the Lone Star state. In fact, the statewide support demonstrated for Mrs. Medina (18 percent) was not enough to force a run-off with incumbent Rick Perry.

Tomorrow Republicans in the Lone Star State will go to the polls to select their party’s representative in the gubernatorial contest to be decided on November 2. All three of the principal candidates — incumbent Governor Rick Perry, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Debra Medina — have staked their claim to the conservative base of the GOP.

In an effort to drag health care reform back onto the legislative stage, on February 22 President Barack Obama released a blueprint of his version of a comprehensive overhaul of the American health care system. The announcement was designed to set the scene for the pantomime show set for Thursday when C-SPAN will televise a confab between Obama and Republicans in Congress.

Debra Medina is a student of history and during a 20-minute interview with her, she mentioned the Federalist Papers more times than in some college history courses I’ve taken.