There’s been all sorts of activity regarding the Republican party outreach to the Tea Parties.  Some examples:

1. John McCain is involved with a Republican “10 Promises” election year agenda for the Republicans.  The Republicans have no credibility to claims of wanting smaller government after eight years of Bush and McCain is one of the most polarizing RINOs in their party.  What could possibly go wrong?
2. Michael Steele met with representatives from multiple tea party groups to talk yesterday.  It would seem they’ve only agreed to meet again, though he did answer questions for a few hours.  It may be the first time since he was put in the RNC chair that I’ve seen him make an effort to do his job, which is to get Republicans elected.
3. And Sarah Palin urged the tea party folks to pick a side.

Taken together, they’re a huge outreach attempt to the tea party types.  As far as picking a side?  That would be a big NO.

Yes, the stated principles of Republicans are very much in line with the tea parties.  They were very much in line with the tea parties before the tea parties existed in 2000.  And guess what?  The Republicans took those stated principles and ignored them to be the Other Democrats.

Now they’ve been shellacked, and they’re reaching out to a group of people made up in part by former members of their base.   Yet there’s no reason for any of us to come back.  We have power all on our own now.  We can back and fund our types of candidates without going through a party committee or the need for a centralized leader.  Why then cede it to a party when both of them are bending over backwards to be what we don’t want?

The Republicans are reaching out now and occasionally acting like they agree with us because they need us, but don’t own us.  This fact is what’s pulling them back into line ever so slowly, and not the hope that we’ll “be absorbed” by them.  They’ll continue to cooperate for so long as we’re in a position to cause more Scozzafava incidents and ream RINOs at will.

So no, we don’t need to pick and join a party.  We don’t need to stop bashing RINO trash in the primaries because the Republican establishment wants them elected.  We don’t need to become a part of their machine again, because they’ll just go back to taking us for granted and doing whatever they wanted like they did before, and that won’t do.

So as far as I’m concerned, we’re doing just fine as-is.  If anything, we need to become more of what we are, which is an independent source of election power for our types of candidates.  This, and this alone, will make the Republicans more of what we want them to be despite their desire to be otherwise.  That means the only reason we should “pick a side” is to pick the side we can change, and not the side to which we’ll submit.