Here’s what Tea Party of Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Scott Ashjian sent to “Face to Face” host Jon Ralston this afternoon in response to those Tea Party Express television ads calling Ashjian a “fake” and telling him to “get lost.”
The Tea Party Express is an organization largely funded and promoted by Our Country Deserves Better PAC which is nothing more than a front for the Republican Party. Republicans have demonstrated that they will stop at nothing to keep from having real conservative values being represented on the ballot.
Republicans have failed conservatives time and time again and are afraid that conservative voters across Nevada will reject a Party that promised limited government but has doubled the debt, protected special interests and bailed out the banks and big corporations. Nevada’s conservative voice Chuck Muth said as much this week when he said that the Tea Party is a backlash against those Republican leaders who never really came through with what they promised over ten years ago.
Both Muth and Sarah Palin said this week that third party candidates are helpful to the process of keeping the major parties and their candidates true to conservative values. I won’t back down. I won’t step aside. I intend to win the conservative majority in November.
And since Mr. Ashjian saw fit to drag me into this brouhaha, here’s the response to his response I sent to Mr. Ralston shortly thereafter….
My problem isn’t with third parties, per se. If Mr. Ashjian follows all of the rules for establishing a third party in Nevada, fine. However, it’s false advertising for him to rip off the “tea party” name, especially since he’s had absolutely no involvement in the tea party movement whatsoever. It’s not his party; and he can cry if he wants to.
“Tea party” has become a general use term nationally. No one, save perhaps Samuel Adams, owns the “rights” to that name. Certainly not Scott Ashjian. And certainly not the people who appear to have obtained ballot access for Mr. Ashjian under false pretenses by misrepresenting the intent of the petition they circulated on the campus of UNLV.
If Mr. Ashjian wishes to run as an independent candidate for office by gathering the required 250 signatures….fine. But to try to run under the “Tea Party” banner is simply dishonest. He ought to be glad there’s no truth in labeling laws which apply to politics. If Scott Ashjian had any honor or sense of shame he’d give up this charade and get back to not paying his taxes and losing his contractor’s license.
And that, I’m quite sure, will not be the end of that.
