The Tea Party Express buses rolled out of Nevada after packing thousands into venues in Searchlight and Henderson and were greeted by a much smaller, but equally enthusiastic group of Arizona tea partiers.
A fired up Joe the Plumber and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, the Arizona Republican challenging Sen. John McCain for his Senate seat, were the featured speakers Sunday at the Arizona Capital grounds in Phoenix. Along with the Tea Party Express road show of take-back-control of government commentary and entertainment, TPE Director Amy Kramer rebutted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s dismissal of the Tea Party movement.
“Senator Reid, did you not see what happened in Massachusetts?” she asked, referring to Scott Brown’s Republican victory there to replace Edward Kennedy.
Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher railed against Democrats and progressives who try to seize the “high moral ground” against torturing terrorists while condoning abortion and granting the right-to-remain silent to the underpants bomber.
“I am not politically castrated,” he said. “Line ‘em up. I’ll torture them myself.”
Addressing the disparate range of organized Tea Party groups and their differing opinions, Joe likened the Tea Party to churches, saying that if you don’t like the pastor, you are free to find a new church to join. He urged anyone interested in a return to constitutional government to check out the different groups and find a grassroots movement they can support.
Hayworth said the next series of elections are not about revolution, but about restoration of a government that governs best by governing least and a return to the tenets of the Constitution. He said that the Tea Party started as a Taxed Enough Already protest, but has evolved to include those Tricked Enough Already by Obama’s failures, promised transparency, accountability and an unaffordable healthcare program. Border area residents have joined the movement because they have been Terrorized Enough Already.
Illustrative of Hayworth’s difficult task of ousting McCain was that the crowd of 1,000 to 1,200 people applauded and cheered his statement that the Obama Administration is “doing nothing” and his promise to appeal the healthcare reform legislation if elected. But only about half the crowd clapped when Hayworth asked for their votes and support.
Following Joe the Plumber’s edgy pep talk, Hayworth informed the crowd that the smuggling and illegal immigrant chaos along the border had claimed another American’s life. Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz called his brother Friday saying he had found a person in the desert who appeared to need medical help. Krentz was not heard from again. A search party found the rancher shot dead and his dog wounded.
The Cochise County Sherriff’s Department is releasing few details, but reports are that Krentz was murdered by one person who investigators tracked for 20 miles—where the suspect crossed back over the border into Mexico. Word of the killing cast a somber hush over the Phoenix crowd who had moments before cheered raucously when the Joe the Plumber said the real solution to the border problem was to build a fence and start shooting.
The cost to ranchers in the sparsely populated border area from destruction of property, robbery and stock losses caused by smugglers and illegal immigrants is estimated to have cost the Krentz family ranchers $8-million over the years. Those close to the border believe the situation is out of control and feared American’s deaths would occur. The problems and threats of violence are not limited to the border areas alone.
On my own 10-acre property, 150 miles North of the border, illegal immigrants left two acres strewn with truckloads of garbage, human waste, used diapers, abandoned clothes and water jugs. I was physically threatened during a confrontation with the uninvited campers on my property and lost about $5,000 in tools and equipment stolen from a small tool shed that was broken into twice.
The local sheriff’s deputy, who declined to come out to the property because he would have had to walk a quarter-mile from the road, advised me to call the Border Patrol. Not once did anyone from any agency come to the property when I called. Not even when I reported the presence of a group of 15 to 20 undocumented immigrants waiting out the heat of the day on my land waiting for vehicles to transport them on to Phoenix that night.
President Obama, Sen. John McCain and others backing any form of amnesty in the new push for immigration reform will be hard pressed to claim that government has protected its citizens and the integrity of an international border.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), released a statement acknowledging the danger to Americans, but former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) ratcheted up calls for real border control by demanding that Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano send in the National Guard.
As the Mexican cartels’ drug war rages, Napolitano, the former Arizona governor who once ordered the National Guard to the border to “assist” the Border Patrol, declared the wide-open border secure. The Obama Administration stopped fence construction and a Bush Administration’s expansion of the Border Patrol ranks, and another American is dead.
“Send me to the Senate,” Hayworth said, “No amnesty.”
More information on the Tea Party Express tour to Washington and stops along the way go to http://www.teapartyexpress.org/
