via Vanderleun
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ht – linearthinker
Tea Partiers have Passion!
…sometimes trumps corruption.
Marco Rubio’s Senate campaign is surging. In the past ten days, Rubio, the former Florida House speaker challenging Gov. Charlie Crist in the GOP primary, has raised $860,000. He is also building a lead in the polls — Rasmussen’s latest survey gives Rubio a twelve-point edge over Crist. And he’s doing it all without the support of the national party.
“We’re living in an unprecedented time where a large number of people that have never participated in politics are paying attention,” Rubio tells National Review Online. “They realize that we’re going to make some decisions over the next few years that will determine the very identity of our country. Given the environment, I think it has become a lot easier to get people to pay attention and to take action. That’s the great challenge of 2010: Can we take this motivation that exists out there to stand up to the agenda that’s coming out of Washington and turn it into action? Right now that action is contributing to campaigns like mine. We’ve tried to harness that and feel good about what we’ve been able to accomplish so far.”
Rubio says the stakes this year are high and about more than one party beating another. “This election is about more than Republicans versus Democrats or liberals versus conservatives. It is a choice about the very essence of what this country is going to be like. Are we going to continue to be a place of limited government, free enterprise, and personal liberty? Or, are we going to become a country like so many around the world where the government dominates every sector of society?
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“So is Rubio a man of the tea party? “
I certainly identify with the movement and the energy that exists out there,” he says.
“From the 9/12 movement to people showing up to marches across the country, there is a burst of energy out around America. There are so many different manifestations.
The tea party is by far the most effective and highest profile example of that energy, but it’s just part of something much bigger — people engaging in the process because they disagree with the agenda in Washington and want an alternative.”
