The Tea Party at ground level - I live in a rural , Upstate New York town. Around here,

[hedgehog]

the Democrats tend to also get an endorsement from the Conservatives or the Republicans!
My husband is a registered Republican because he figures if he wants any say in town government, he better vote in the Republican primary.

Well ......the Tea Party here seems to be run by one family. They are having fights with a lot of other local people. If you've never lived in a rural area, you wouldn't believe how much everyone knows about everyone else's business. Who paid what for a building permit, who got the water line run out to their property, where the gravel in their driveway came from, how much health insurance town employees get, - these are all burning issues! There are always groups of people convinced that someone in the other group got something from the town that they shouldn't have!

A while back, we had a couple people in town government who wanted to re-zone the town into a suburb. They wanted to ban modular houses (trailers) and make people build sheds for all their machines. Of course, anyone who wanted to keep animals would be SOL. Well, the developers got voted out of office, and things have been running fairly smoothly.
The Tea Party bunch is trying to drive out the Republican establishment (such as it is) and replace it with real conservatives. Now they're trying to get someone elected Fire Commissioner. I got a call asking me to support my neighbor "X" who is a farmer and a real conservative. He's not a firefighter, so he'll be an outside voice. What I didn't tell my caller is that the last thing I want to do is mess with my local fire company! I'd love to see a couple of towns throw in with the nearby city - I think it's be cheaper for all of us and maybe even cut response times if the full time guys in the city covered us as well. But I am not going to assist a bunch of cheap skates into taking over the volunteer fire company!

[gratuitous]

1. There is a saying about critics

"He knows the cost of everything, and the value of nothing." I'd lump Libertarians and many of these "small government" nincompoops in with that category. They can tell you to the penny what every little thing costs, but they have no concept of the value the community derives from it (say, a school when they don't have kids of their own, or an expansion of the sewer system when their area is working just fine right now). Their mindset seems to be that the system just sort of happens, and that without government "interference," it would keep working or work even better. We all saw how well that worked when the regulatory watchdogs were shut out of monitoring CDOs.

[Wait Wut]

2. My advice...

...buy some new fire extinguishers and increase your homeowners insurance.

Holy cow and good luck!

[opihimoimoi]

3. This sounds like a disordered community...negative in tone. Thers is no reason to live there if ya

wanna be happy content....

GET OUT NOW...Find a Happy Zone....better than whot ya got now....live Happy and Positive...

[Bogart]

4. "...convinced that someone in the other group got something from the town that they shouldn't have!"

It's the same everywhere--power corrupts. As a result, those who are "connected" usually do get something that is not made available to others.

[Fumesucker]

5. That's the way it works here..