Tea party leader urges: Vote for Schauer, vote for gridlock

As disgruntled tea party activists advocate the idea of not voting for Gov. Rick Snyder – or, God help them, supporting his Democratic opponent, Mark Schauer – one leader of the anti-establishment crowd within the Michigan Republican Party has made it clear that her agenda is to create gridlock in the state Legislature.

Isabelle Terry of Rockford, a member of the Republican state committee, told the MIRS news service that if former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm had been in office over the past four years, the tea party types would have been better off.

Republicans in the state House and Senate would have stuck to the party's platform and fought Medicaid expansion and the new Common Core education standards, she said.

As the November election approaches, Terry sees a vote for Schauer, rather than the “liberal” Snyder, as a vote for gridlock, according to MIRS.

“I think gridlock is the way to go,” she said.

Those remarks must have stunned the establishment Republicans who are already furious over the movement toward shunning Snyder on Election Day. The anti-Snyder movement within the GOP ranks gained steam after last weekend’s state party convention where the tea party candidate for lieutenant governor lost by a wide margin to the incumbent, Snyder running mate Brian Calley.

Terry said she is among countless conservatives who have concluded, pre- and post-convention, that   Schauer won’t be any worse than Snyder.

Joan Fabiano of Grassroots Michigan, a leading tea party group, is among those who were turned off by some of the hardball politics practiced at the GOP conventions, the first step in the nominating process for statewide candidates.

In a message to her organization, Fabiano, who has widely proclaimed that she won’t vote for the governor in November, called on her membership to cast aside other Republican candidates.

She said the establishment GOP’s efforts to marginalize the tea party were “ an attempt to drive a stake in the heart of the limited government movement. The status quo MIGOP is attempting to rid itself of us ‘trouble makers.’ The same trouble makers who helped GOP candidates to historical wins in 2010. The troublemakers who were at first embraced when it was thought we would be convenient yes men and women propping up anyone with an "R" by his or her name despite any policy they might push. The trouble makers whose only crime is on assistance to an adherence to the Constitution.

“Well it hasn't worked.

“… What it has done is create more who will NOT be the worker bees nor vote for those "Rs" who push and promote liberal policies.”