Armey: Tea Party Cannot 'Stand Down' From Debate After Shootings

Former House Majority Leader and tea party patriarch Dick Armey tells Newsmax his activists were responsible for thwarting Democrats’ attempts to ram a spending bill through the lame duck session of Congress.

The Texas Republican also declares that the House Republican majority should vote to repeal Obamacare and “something magical could happen in the Senate,” asserts that “virtually anybody” who gains the Republican nomination will defeat President Obama in 2012 — and predicts that none of the current GOP front-runners will be the party’s nominee.

Armey was first elected in 1984 and served as majority leader from 1995 until he left the House in 2003. He was a chief author of the Contract with America in the 1990s, and today is chairman of FreedomWorks, a 700,000-member organization advocating smaller government.

On Sunday, Armey, like many political leaders, decried the shootings in Arizona that seriously wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others.

"The fact of the matter is, we still have extremely important critical issues of public policy that must be sorted out," Armey said on ABC's "This Week."

"Now, hopefully this will be done in a more civil way. But this incident is no basis by which anybody who sees their duty to America to stand down from that duty, but to redouble it, perhaps with a greater degree of caution, and hopefully with a greater degree of civility.

"We've always wanted that," he said. "But still, nevertheless, we must do our duty and defend our liberties in this great country."