Rove: GOP Ignores Tea Parties at Own Peril Party needs to harness anti-tax feeling as issue moves to the forefront By Rob Quinn Posted Apr 16, 2009 6:27 AM CDT Copied Hundreds of people from southern New Mexico line Main Street in Las Cruces, NM, to protest taxes Wednesday, April 15, 2009. (AP Photo/Las Cruces Sun-News ) Karl Rove thinks the "tea party" anti-tax movement is "frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill," but he knows an opportunity for his beleaguered GOP when he sees one. The movement represents an outpouring of real and growing concerns that the party can't afford to ignore, the Republican strategist writes in the Wall Street Journal. President Obama's tax hike on cigarettes was the first in 15 years, Rove notes, and the protesters clearly fear more to come. The Republican party may get a boost in upcoming state elections from the anti-tax feeling, Rove writes, but to properly harness it, the party needs to start explaining—as Reagan did—how the GOP approach will "link lower taxes to money in voters' pockets, and economic growth and jobs." Read These Next We knew Letterman would pipe up about Colbert eventually. Now we know why Ghislaine Maxwell may have opened up to the DOJ. A parent's nightmare, in a white cardboard box. The sheriff says he's never seen a worse case of child sex abuse. Report an error