Susan Swift, aka “Susan from Glendale,” first came to national attention last fall via the Rush Limbaugh show.  You can see and hear her conversation with Rush here.

In 2008 the GOP suffered a heart attack.  For years, a graying, obese GOP abused the  body politic and ignored the warning signs: fat-laden budgets, feeding at the earmark trough, sedentary legislative agenda, self-abusing scandals, and stubborn disregard of pleas to stop.  In a too-little-too-late act of desperation, the elderly GOP reached out to a young, vibrant woman.  Like electroshock therapy, Sarah Palin got the GOP’s heart restarted briefly, but she could not cure the political atrophy sufficient to overcome a leaner, energized Democrat challenger.  The near-fatal seizure in November was the culmination of years of GOP arrogance and dysfunction.

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Fifteen months ago, concerned Americans watched the GOP coronary on election night as a stunning wake-up call for the nation’s larger health.  They realized the dangers posed by the only political party left standing, the Democrat party and its devotion to collectivism, high taxes and coercive nanny-state government.

They have watched Democrats shred core American principles as they bludgeoned their way to control over private businesses and financial institutions, and enacted incomprehensibly huge pork barrel legislation.  Now they watch in horror as Democrats work to steal control of the nation’s healthcare system and to impose energy standards poisonous to private enterprise and based on overtly corrupt and fraudulent junk science.

Then these concerned Americans did something revolutionary.  They became Conservative Jedi.  They knew instinctively that a third party system in America would secure generational Democrat control and doom capitalism.  So they came together of themselves, led by no one in particular but united by their common love of freedom, country and core American principles.  They began to organize.  What would soon be called the Tea Party was simultaneously born in millions of homes — and in millions of hearts.


The Tea Party is a nationwide phenomenon, led by no single man or woman, despite many who aspire to be its leader in order to wield its potentially awesome power.  It’s fast, flexible and fluid, connected through 21st century technologies such as Facebook and Twitter and email, and capable of raising millions literally overnight for conservative candidates such as Scott Brown.

This swelling grassroots Tea Party passion now comes to the aid of an indolent GOP.   The New York Times recently reported that tea party patriots are moving to take over the GOP from within by running in local elections to be precinct leaders.  While that may be an accurate description generally, it is not a takeover per se.  Rather it is a transfusion of new lifeblood, a heart transplant if you will, for a moribund GOP on life support.

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These “Conservative Jedi” are not a fringe part of the Red State Rabble, as many in the MSM would have you believe.  They are, for the most part, registered Republicans who believe that the GOP has drifted so far away from its core values that it no longer truly represents them.  In their eyes, it is the GOP who rightfully bears the moniker RINO, “Republican in Name Only.”

In a recent tea party general meeting in Southern California, more than 200 of us stood together, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and then read aloud words written by a fallen hero in WWI, a pledge this writer has dubbed the “Patriot Pledge:”

America must win this war.  I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.

This pledge is almost one hundred years old.  It was written by Martin Treptow, an American soldier killed in battle during WWI, and found written in a diary retrieved from inside his jacket next to his heart.  Private Treptow is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  This is how he died:

As the battle drew to an end, a messenger was needed to deliver an important word to one of the platoons. Private Martin A. Treptow, barber turned warrior, grabbed the message and moved out under fire. As he reached the platoon leader, Treptow was shot down by a hail of bullets.

In honor of his memory. the “Patriot Pledge” voices the commitment that millions of Americans are making to this new political battle that is quite literally nothing less than a 21st-century American Revolution. They are rallying to join the political firefights that will be the mid-term elections and the presidential election of 2012.  These patriots are pledging themselves to revitalize the GOP with truly conservative Reaganite principles, ones that we know are  honored by most Americans

This writer is proud to be one of these registered Republicans, these tea party patriots, these Conservative Jedi.