The man who is likely to become the Republican nominee for president (Mitt Romney) to run against President Barack Obama started out as a moderate Republican as governor of Massachusetts.
As governor he supported abortion rights and took up the cause of providing universal health care for citizens of the Bay state. Neither of these are on the radar for Tea Partiers.
Realizing that is near impossible to get the Republican nomination for anything, Romney has been working overtime to at least be palatable to Tea Partiers. While he certainly is the the darling of Tea Partiers and Republican social conservatives, he is doing well enough to be in a virtual tie in the latest poll in Iowa which is the first in the nation primary. He leads 23% to 22% over Michele Bachmann.
It seems that it is his health care legacy which causes him the most problem. Tea Partiers detest what they call Obamacare more than anything else the president has done in office.
It appears to the SCPR that Ohio General Assembly Republicans (including Stark County's Scott Oelslager, Kirk Schuring and Christian Hagan) has latched onto the Tea Partiers' intense hatred of Obamacare as a way to counter the groundswell of public support that the repeal effort of Senate Bill 5 being pushed by the Ohio Democratic Party.
Senate Bill 5 (SB 5) is Republican Governor Kasich's effort to virtually eliminate meaningful collective bargaining rights for Ohio's public employees (policement, firemen, teachers and others.
At the moment appears to be heading for a political bloodbath.
Out-of-the-blue on June 15th the Republican caucuses of the House and Senate concocted a joint resolution (which requires a 60% majority) to add to the Ohio Constitution (if voters approve the measure) a provision to allow Ohioans to opt out of certain aspects of Obamacare.
The Republican idea is to get enough Tea Partiers to the polls on November 8th to deny the pro-repeal-SB5 a victory.
The Report does not believe that the Republican political tactic would have worked. It appears that the pro-repeal folks will have about one million signatures by the time they quite collecting signatures and turn them in to the Ohio secretary of state for validation. Only 385,245 are required.
The Republican - "let's have a constitutional amendment crowd" - fell short by 1 vote of getting the required 60% majority.
The Republicans tried hard to get that one needed Democrat to help them because the constitutional amendment route was a sure way to get the measure on the November ballot.
But they have not given up. They have the Tea Partiers out working to collect signatures to get the anti-Obamacare measure on the ballot, to wit:
The Tea Partiers say they have 389,000 which is more than the 385,245 needed. However, as is always the case, there are always many signers who are not registered voters or get disqualified for other reasons. So 389,000 will not get the job done. Tea Party officials say they will end up with about 500,000 by the final date for collecting signature (July 6th). The question is: will 500,000 be enough? Perhaps not. That is why the Republicans pushed hard to get the measure on the ballot as a constitutional amendment.
The Report thinks that Oelslager and Schuring would deny that they are Tea Partiers. Hagan, probably not.
For Oelslager and Schuring the congruence between their vote on SJR 1 and the Tea Partiers taking up the cause makes them at the very least willing to consort with the Tea Partiers to help Governor Kasich reach his goal of defeating the SB 5 repeal effort.
Oelslager's vote is inconsistent with his vote against passage of SB 5. Hmm? Makes one wonder how authentic how committed he is to seeing SB 5 repealed?
In any event the Republicans who make up the Ohio General Assembly are a far cry from those progressive types that started the Republican Party way back in 1854!
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