By GLENDA CAUDLE
Special Features Editor
The TEA Party is coming to town.
An organizational meeting for Obion County TEA Party is planned for Monday at 6 p.m. at the Obion County Public Library. Those attending will have time to socialize until the “official” start of the hour-long session at 6:30.
“It is clear that the Founding Fathers envisioned a very limited government,” says John Miles, a Union City attorney and one of those interested in the establishment of a TEA Party presence here. “Our government is now massive and inefficient. I believe that if we can unshackle the individual from the burdens and dependencies which for years have been layered one on top of another, we will begin to see again the promise for this nation that the drafters of our Constitution envisioned. That is what the TEA Party is all about.”
David Nance, president of Gibson County Patriots, will be on hand Monday to answer questions and discuss the future of the TEA Party locally.
A U.S. Army veteran, he is retired and is a TEA Party advocate and organizer. His first effort was with the Gibson County Patriots in late 2009.
In January, Nance says, eight county TEA Party groups met and formed the Tennessee Eighth District TEA Party Coalition. He is serving a two-year elected term as chairman of that coalition.
The purpose of the union is to “increase our effectiveness by concentrating our efforts when we are unanimous in a purpose,” Nance says.
Houston and Perry counties have also recently organized TEA Party groups and expressed an interest in joining the TN8 Coalition. Carroll County, like Obion County, is looking at organizing.
Nance says the goal is an ambitious one, but he and other patriots who support American exceptionalism, the Constitution, constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility and the principles on which America was founded hope to see a TEA Party organization established in every county in the Volunteer State’s Eighth Congressional District before August 2012 primary elections.
“Our overall goal is the same as the TEA Party nation-wide and that is to see our federal government return to operating within the limits of our Constitution and to stop spending our children’s future,” he says.
Miles notes that in November 2008, President Obama pledged to go through the federal budget page by page and line by line and eliminate programs the country did not need. He adds that the president said only a few days before his inauguration that we were only a few days away from “fundamentally transforming America.”
“To understand his intent, we have to look at his actions,” Miles says. “Since President Obama was elected, he has signed into law an $800,000,000,000 ‘stimulus ‘package’ and a massive new healthcare entitlement, adding trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for future generations to pay. I understand that by 2012, our national debt will be larger than the entire U.S. economy. I heard on the news today that one in six Americans now lives in poverty.
“Charley Reese, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, stated recently, ‘Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.’ Politicians campaign on how they will take the fight to Washington, but they must get a good ‘woodshedding’ once they get there, because somehow they are transformed. We just get more of the same.”
TEA Party members say there is hope for the future, however, and they invite people from all political backgrounds and no political backgrounds to join them in seeking to return to America’s roots as a response to the problem of runaway government intrusion and unbridled spending.
Anyone interested in the TEA Party movement is encouraged to attend the meeting, Miles says.
Mrs. Caudle may be contacted at glendacaudle @ucmessenger.com.

Published in The Messenger 9.16.11