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John Gizzi, LPR 2011 Annual Retreat, and the Tea Party Movement

by | 12:23 am, March 1, 2011 | Comments Off

In case you wondered why PPC wasn’t responding to your emails this weekend, it’s because many of us were enjoying the Leadership Program of the Rockies’ annual retreat in Colorado Springs. This was my sixth retreat, and as good as the previous ones were, this one was even better.

John Gizzi of Human Events was one of the speakers on Friday afternoon, and had some interesting things to say about LPR and Colorado’s Tea Party movement — Tea Party Brewing Strong in Colorado:

In Colorado, HUMAN EVENTS found during the weekend that the alliance between tea partiers and the Republican Party is a marriage that seems lasting.

More than 700 participants swarmed the Broadmoor Hotel here for the Leadership Program of the Rockies, an annual training session for Republican candidates and campaigners.  At several times throughout the three-day conference, organizers pointed out not only that this is the largest-ever LPR, but that at least one-third of the particpants were newcomers to the GOP who became politically active through the Tea Party movement.

Which is not to say that Tea Partiers have taken over LPR, but that many attendees this year have become involved in politics by being part of the Tea Party movement in some way. This should hardly be surprising, given that the core agenda of the Tea Party movement is small and limited Constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, and free market economics, ideas which play well with LPR’s “Big Five” principles.

Despite being formally nonpartisan and peppered with Libertarians, LPR is considered by many to be a tentacle of the Colorado Republican establishment. If that is true, it’s an interesting sign that Tea Parties are being greeted more openly by the GOP, and that Tea Partiers appear to be willing to work with and within the GOP to effect change. As Gizzi shows, it’s neither the GOP co-opting the Tea Party nor some immature grassroots movement capturing the GOP (as some critics would describe these closer ties), but the two groups learning to cooperate constructively.

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Category: Colorado, Colorado Politics, Events, republicans, Small Government, tea party
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