The New Media Journal | Colorado GOP Writes Its Own Invitation to the Tea Party

The New Media Journal | Colorado GOP Writes Its Own Invitation to the Tea Party: "To retake Colorado, the Republican Party wants voters like Michael Schneider. A proud member of the diffuse 'tea-party movement' that gained steam during this summer's town-hall meetings on health care, Dr. Schneider is on the hunt for candidates who promise to buck the political establishment, defy the party elite and hew tightly to conservative principles.

Colorado Republicans last week made a bold move to woo him and other restive tea-party activists by setting forth a conservative agenda -- dubbed the 'Platform for Prosperity' -- and encouraging all candidates for state office to adopt it. The platform stresses limited government, fiscal restraint, opposition to further stimulus spending and a determination, it says, to push back against 'a federal government that is too big, too intrusive and all-too-eager to seize power from the states.' The move paid immediate dividends by unifying the party in the critical gubernatorial race.

But the consensus candidate, a veteran legislator and congressmen, isn't the kind of rebel Dr. Schneider was hoping for.

'We don't want the same-old, same-old,' he said, though he conceded he might vote for the candidate.

Republicans nationally are walking the same delicate tightrope. Some GOP leaders have proposed a 10-point checklist of conservative values that the national party would use in evaluating potential candidates for Congress. That would help ensure that the candidates were ideologically acceptable to the tea-party movement. On the other hand, given today's anti-establishment mood, a stamp of approval from the party elite may not help.

To the consternation of Republican leaders, tea-party activists are jumping into primaries for US Senate and other races, promoting their own candidates to challenge Republican front-runners in Kentucky, Florida, Illinois, California and elsewhere.

A similar dynamic is beginning to emerge in Colorado's US Senate primary, where several Republicans trying to ride the tea-party wave are taking aim at Jane Norton, a former lieutenant governor who has support from the GOP's national leadership."