Tea Party Rips "Boehner-McConnell RINOs" for Debt Ceiling Cave-In

TEA PARTY NATIONAL CONVENTION TO RECRUIT HOUSE GOP PRIMARY CHALLENGERS

Candidate Scorecards: "Zero or 100%, nothing in between."

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As House Republicans prepared a Tuesday vote for $2.4 trillion in new national debt, Tea Party leaders ripped Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for betraying the movement that put Republicans in charge of the lower chamber last year.

"Boehner and McConnell are the predatory credit card issuers of the Entitlement State, they're about to renew Obama's cancelled MasterCard, and they want to saddle America's grandchildren with all of the bills,"   said Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, the country's oldest, largest and most active Tea Party umbrella group.  

Phillips said the Tea Party National Convention he's chairing this fall "will focus on recruiting conservative primary challengers to House GOP RINOs and frosh complicit in any giveaway of more borrowing authority to President Obama.  The Tea Party's 2012 scorecard for this Congress will have just one issue:  Did the Member vote for the McConnell-Boehner cave-in or for any cheap giveaway of more national debt?"  In Tea Party parlance, "RINO" means "Republican-In-Name-Only."

Allen Unruh, founder of Tea Party South Dakota and director of the Tea Party Founding Fathers, added that "RINOs voting wrong will win a big, fat zero on their Tea Party credit rating.  Their FICO scores will crash along with their careers as we push Tea Party-backed opponents in the primary, the general election or both.  Meanwhile, Members who don't vote wrong will win a 100% score plus the fervent loyalty of our people in their district.  It's zero or 100%, nothing in between."  

Phillips announced that the 2011 Tea Party National Convention, originally scheduled for Kansas City with his support, has been reset for a new state based on strategic considerations and the desires of a new group of funders.  Phillips said, "We and our capital sources felt that Kansas was the wrong place for our movement to gather this fall because it's not an early primary state, not a swing state, and not blue-state territory where Tea Partiers might recapture turf from the left.  Instead, the new, currently-secret location we'll be announcing for our late fall event will empower our movement to slingshot into 2012 for the same kind of impact we had in 2010."

Phillips said, "House Republicans can't let Obama keep borrowing 40 cents on each dollar of federal spending.  The ratings agencies have clearly said Congress must cut back on the federal credit card."  He said Tuesday's planned House vote to condition a debt hike on sending a constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment to the states was good, but that "voting for the 'Cut, Cap and Balance' plan won't save you from the Tea Party's wrath if you ultimately vote for a cheap giveaway of more debt to Obama, as McConnell and Boehner are planning.  

"A failed CCB bill gets you no cover.  The ONLY way any Republican may get forgiveness from us is if he obtains a high price tag like $500 billion in 2012 first-year cuts, defunding of Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, sweeping reform of all health care entitlements such as Medicare, and actual Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment," Phillips said.    

Phillips founded the country's first Tea Party umbrella group in early 2009 and hosted Sarah Palin at the original Tea Party National Convention at Nashville in February, 2010.  According to web metrics from Alexa, Tea Party Nation's website leads all other Tea Party websites for traffic.  Phillips said he is inviting William Temple, chair of the Kansas-planned event, to serve as a spokesman for the 2011 Tea Party National Convention now to be held elsewhere.  "Upon final approval of this strategic new location by our funders and convention board," said Phillips, "we'll be unveiling an amazing, technology-based strategy for hunting RINOs and defeating Democrats in 2012, starting with this fall's Tea Party National Convention."

CONTACT: Ann Wakefield, +1-615-429-5100

SOURCE Tea Party