The 2,400 delegates attending the last night of the Tea Party Patriot American Policy Summit cheered on speakers who promised to keep pushing until constitutional government was restored in America.
Rep. Louie Gohmert's (R-Texas) passionate and humorous speech got the crowd to its feet on Saturday in the Phoenix Convention Center when he insisted that the American people "deserved better" than what they had had in Washington, DC, for the last 30 years.
Too often in America, Gohmert said, "we are governed no better than we deserve," because voters have failed to investigate candidates for office and vote carefully.
He called on the tea party movement to hold members of Congress accountable. "Can we keep [the Republic] for another 200 years or will we lose it?" he asked. "I know that's why you're here."
The summit was hosted by the Tea Party Patriots, an organization that is home to 3,000 local tea party groups representing millions of Americans. Tea Party Patriots has embarked on an ambitious 40-year plan to rebuild the constitutional foundations of the Republic.
The raucous crowd also heard from former Republican congressman Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, whose years on the House Appropriations Committee enabled him to dissect the "weasel words" and "language tricks" that helps Congress hide the financial truth from voters.
He called on the tea partiers to begin engaging in laying out a "kitchen table agenda" for family members, friends, and neighbors, explaining how the games being played in Washington were draining America's pocketbooks.
Bill Whittle, Joe Hicks, and Andrew Klavan of Pajamas TV addressed matters of media and entertainment and how they have led to a massive shift in cultural values. "For people on the left, their political views are their religion," said Hicks, a self-described former radical leftist. "So people who leave the 'faith' are considered sell-outs."
Caleb Yee, a Hacienda Heights, California, teenager who started the nation's first student tea party group in his high school, received a standing ovation for his fiery speech. "We want young people to be the driving force to revolutionize our nation," he said to thunderous applause.
The keynote speaker for the evening was author and Fox News analyst Dick Morris. He continually hammered the Obama administration and exhorted the tea party movement to continue demanding change. "In Greece they're demonstrating in the streets for government to do more," he said. "Here [in the U.S.] we're demonstrating for government to do less."
