Eric Cantor has dissed the American people, refusing on Fox News Sunday to agree to name even one Tea Party person to a top leadership position, and brushing off Michele Bachmann's bid. So how are Republicans going to carry out the will of the American people or articulate a coherent growth strategy? The answer: They're not. Like Teresa Collett, they give lip service to Tea Party goals but throw the movement, and its principles under the bus.

An article in Slate,(http://slate.me/94NMLU) suggests a quick return to business as usual, after a "feint" to the Tea Party. That's cheap pop politics. It's easy to paint everyone as a Monty Hall, but that is a cheap cliche. The reality: America's future as continuing to make back-room political deals with the public weal and the Constitution, its time has come and gone. Economic powerhouses are rising around us as we face financial weakness, and the destruction of our economic creativity and productivity. We simply CANNOT continue in the way he suggests or the way the Republicans and Democrats governed in the past. True that the Tea Partiers, being mere American citizens outraged by the outlandish excesses of the ObamaCrats, do not yet have a strong player at the table in the Tea Party caucus. I faced tremendous odds November 2, since $$ poured in to support the failed policies of my opponents Democrat Betty McCollum (whom I'm sure is for some reason adored by Slate) and Republican Teresa Collett (a lawyer and one of the cynical Republican establishment politicians). Further, I faced resistance to pursuing the Tea Party concepts in politics by opportunists who would rather race-bait Mexicans and support hot items like Jan Brewer's ill-conceived policies in Arizona.

But the truth is that the concepts in the Contract from America, if you would consider them, contain the seeds of a coherent growth strategy for America. Just for example, the liberal darling Betty McCollum, has obtained control over a project that couldn't get through for decades, the hare-brained idea of running a high-speed rail system from Chicago to St. Cloud Minnesota using a light-rail link that tears up St. Paul's main street, University Ave., all the way from St. Paul to Minneapolis, destroying jobs and businesses. Her tool? A $45 million stimulus earmark which the Republicans (including Boehner, a.k.a. Monty according to you) have promised Nancy Pelosi they will block. If you would take the federal government out of the picture and return control over transportation initiatives to the states, here Minnesota, Minnesota could create a sane alternative. But the policy Slate says will/should continue, giving corrupt Washington politicians control of decisions that must be housed in the states (McCollum is corrupt because she is running on this $45 million tax-payer contribution, leveraging it to claim a "billion-dollar jobs program," largest in history)--this policy is the real economy-killer.

We've got to get it together in the states and in Congress. The real reasons we are outsourcing jobs to Washington, D.C. and to Asia are addressed by my proposed "Take America Forward Act". http://bit.ly/922HxV It's an idea, Mr. Weisberg, but not much of one, that Congress has the wiggle-room to continue business-as-usual. We don't.

FURTHER COMMENTS REGARDING DEFICIT REDUCTION AND STIMULUS AT THE STATE LEVEL

I am the Tea Party candidate in Minnesota for Betty McCollum's current spot. I am not just talking about cutting taxes. I am saying, cut the scope, the domain of the federal government that we have seen since the "civil rights" argument in the 1960s and give those powers back to the states. Therefore, the federal government would no longer be collecting taxes for those functions, period. That would shrink the government. The states can do these things more cost-effectively and more effectively (they would actually work, for instance improving education for needs of state and so forth). So revenues would not grow, would not need to grow. But spending by federal government would decrease dramatically. AND, this government spending does in fact represent increased economic activity, i.e. a stimulus effect. Why not have that stimulus effect take place at the state level, where it is needed?

There are other things. Tom Horner, my party's candidate for governor, would like to increase technology spending in education, changing the relationship between students and teachers by interposing educational technology. So you're going to get greater productivity out of students. But I want to get the Department of Education out of Minnesota, let Minnesota do it. I would like DOE to survive only to do critical education programs on the internet in math and science that could be used in or out of the classroom, with the greatest scientists and educators publishing their teaching on-line. These things would provide growth at the state level. And you can go into virtually everything the government does except defense and see how the states can do it better, and with stimulative effect. But it must be done wisely.