Tea Party Nation: What’s going on with this Non-Partisan movement?

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a story on Saturday about Michelle Bachmann’s backing out of the Tea Party Nation’s “National Convention” in Nashville, TN. http://pd.startribune.com/sp?eId=92&gcId=813058097&rNum=5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.startribune.com%2Fpolitics%2Fnational%2F83693427.html%3Felr%3DKArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU&siteIdType=2

There has been a lot of talk of the Tea Party movement being “hijacked” by the Republican Party. To those who would suggest that, I ask couldn’t it just as well be that their stated values more closely represent ours? The problem with the Republican’s seems to be that they will espouse our values to get them elected, but once in office they will forget what got them there. There are also those who say we should throw off both of the major parties because they are the problem and that a “third party” is the way to save our representative form of government. I am not going to pretend to have all the answers, but I will say this:

Whichever way you chose to go, it is up to the voting public to research the candidates, and support the one that best represents their views. When they are in office; hold them accountable. Elected office was never intended to be a career in its self.  We the people were to chose from among ourselves, qualified individuals to serve for a time in the office to which they were elected, after which they were to return to their district and their chosen profession. These career politicians have become nothing more than the new “aristocracy”

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

- “The Gettysburg Address” Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863