Tea Party Tip No. 1: Don’t Get Comfortable

Ken McIntyre /

Should the Tea Party movement throw the likeliest bums out of Congress, conservatives still will need to be vigilant, RedState founder Erick Erickson told a Heritage audience Thursday afternoon. Otherwise, he said, surviving legislators – as well as the new guys – will fall back into spend-happy ways.

Following the Tea Party’s example, conservatives also need to keep getting better at dramatizing how Big Government hurts everyday people, Erickson said in a talk promoting his new book, Red State Uprising: How to Take Back America.

“The Left are masters of emotion,” Erickson said. It’s one reason he’s “not optimistic” that Republicans and Democratic allies will repeal Obamacare in its entirety.

“We’ll have to fight,” he said. “While there is no such thing as a permanent majority in this country anymore, there certainly is permanent policy.” (more…)