While searching the Examiner's online archive for something I wrote in September 2009 about the Tea Party, I chanced upon a column on the same topic I penned concerning the same year's July 4th Tea Party protests across the country.

This paragraph appeared in that column:

“Here's my thesis: Tea Party Protestors are the advance guard of an emerging wholesale national rejection of the liberal Democratic vision that empowers Washington politicians and bureaucrats to go on taxing, spending and regulating the U.S. into a sad state of sickly socialized progressive decadence. The Europeanization of America is doomed.”

And a little further on in the same column came this:

“Obama and the Democrats have shaken the common-sense conservative majority that makes America a center-right nation to its roots. They are finding their voice as they shake off the Republican corruption-induced coma of the Bush era.

“And they will be heard by both parties.”

Boy were they ever! You can read the whole column here.

And the column that originally sparked my search can be found here.  In hindsight, it provided a simple road map for the Tea Party movement's successful strategy of focusing its energies on candidates and political campaign organization.