A rejoinder

Commentator AA stopped by to criticize my thought that the Tea Party is really not ready to do anything when and if they win control of Congress. In calling me “pathetic” ( a term I refuse to accept)-he has raised a good point. Why are they not really ready to rule?

It deserves an explanation and one longer than could be fit into a comment box. So here is why I stand by my thoughts. His comment is italics.

First of all, thank you for stopping by and offering your opinion. I do appreciate it. You’ll forgive me if I hold to my own viewpoint though.

I hate the Tea Party because they are Nazis

I never said that-what I said is, based on their tactics which are adopted both from the leftists of the 60’s and the SA of the 30’s-they have the potential to go down the same path. Some reasons: 1) They seek to vilify their opponents. 2) Their obsession with “infiltrators” at their rallies. Freedom to assemble publicly should cut both ways. (E.G. Witness their fascination with Saul Alinsky) and 3) Their willingness to be associated with opportunists and those who are the antithesis’s of what they proclaim to stand for. ( Cue Glenn Beck and Dick Armey).

This is not a new tactic. It has been practiced by the anarchists for years.  However, the muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It’s offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered. It trivializes such suffering inexcusably for the Tea Party folks to claim that they are suffering from similar oppression because they might have their taxes raised or be subject to demonic “federal regulation.”

The problems facing the country are huge and hard to solve

They are. And thus they require a better set of solutions than merely saying, “give the fucker a tax cut and tell him to pull himself up by his boot straps.”

The Tea Party can’t solve them because they are so hard.

What solutions have they really offered though? Very few that I can see beyond the idea of repealing health care reform, cutting taxes, and investigating the hell out of anyone who tried to do it another way? Regarding the first two-they offer no reasonable alternatives to accomplish universal or near universal health care coverage in this country, nor do they offer a reasonable way to balance the budget, much less cut the deficit-other than tax cuts that will actually make the deficit worse.  And I did point out that most of their proposed spending cuts are cosmetic in nature. How they propose to fix the Big Four? They have not given any answer on how to do that. Furthermore-if your goal is to retake Congress and start implementing some of these solutions-throwing talented people to the curb in the name of ideological purity seems an odd way to go about it. Its hard to take them seriously when they don’t endorse serious people. ( Cue Christine O’Donnell).

If the Tea Party wins they won’t succeed because the problems are hard and they are stupid.

Again, that’s not what I said-I simply pointed out that the same criticism they level on Obama will apply to them. If they win- they actually have to govern-with an electorate that for the most part (about 64%) does not support their solutions.  ( Check the polls-they may be anti-incumbent but when pressed on actual solutions-what few have been proposed by the Tea Party lose about 2-1). It is one thing to win an election, it is quite another to govern-especially when you don’t control the White House. They can sit on their duffs for two years-but guess who that helps? Not them. Ask Bill Clinton about that. Plus they have yet to heed the advice of their supposed mentor Ronald Reagan-who understood better than most, how to build a broad coalition of support. He wanted one big tent with lots of different viewpoints. The tea party wants a smaller one with absolute conformity.  In ignoring Reagan’s methods-there can be no other conclusion but that they are stupid.  Reagan won- and he picked qualified people.   So far the tea party track record on that score is not good. ( Cue Sarah Palin).

Since the brilliant liberals currently in power can’t solve them – no one can.

Again, no one ever said that. But Democrats are not going away-even if they are in the minority. It is not a crime to be a liberal in this country and like it or not, some of their solutions need to be looked at. As do some of the conservative ones. At least the Administration is  trying on three significant ones: health care, the wars, and financial reform.  Congress has seen a sudden influx of no-compromise conservatives before. In 1994, 73 Republicans stormed into the House, many of them preaching anti-government themes that sound similar to those of today’s Tea Partyers. The Republicans of that year even proclaimed their victory a revolution that promised to change how Washington worked. It didn’t pan out that way.  Same thing will happen here. The government always moves back to the center eventually.

Sarah Palin is stupid – (This is like saying Amen in the church or liberals).

She may not be stupid-but she is dangerous. Furthermore, she cannot hide behind the wall of Fox News forever. And every time she faces honest questioning on any issue, she  is shown to be highly lacking in the basic tenets required to hold high office in the United States.  Here is one recent example-she and Newt Gingrich have bought in to D’Souza’s Forbes article, even though from many sources-both liberal and conservative- it has been discredited as out and out racism and falsehood. Forbes has said it “stands by the story” and that “no facts are in contention,” but D’Souza’s article contains numerous falsehoods and distortions. And they are easily proved. Simply put,  that is not a smart play for her. But not surprising.

I don’t really call your analysis – analysis – merely a statement of the problem and taking the typical liberal line that anyone who disagrees with me is either stupid or a nazi.

No one who is smart could possibly have a legitimate opinion that differs from the Huffington Post/Daily Kos orthodoxy.

Umm….actually no. But assertions have to stand on their own merits. To date you and the Tea Party folks have offered little. What exactly are you “taking the country back from” anyway?  Bush’s foreign policy that Obama extended? A deficit problem that started long before 20 January 2010? The very few laws that have been passed in 18 months?

Plus-I’m not a liberal except when it comes to sex. I make up my own mind on a lot of things. But the current manipulation of the GOP by this group is more than a little troubling. The people driving this train don’t have anyone’s interests at heart but their own.

And that’s just the way it is. Calling me names ( twice) won’t change that.

In this sense, you might think of the Tea Party as the Right’s version of the 1960s New Left. It’s an unorganized and unorganizable community of people coming together to assert their individualism and subvert the established order. But where the New Left was young and looked forward to a new Aquarian age, the Tea Party is old and looks backward to a capitalist-constitutionalist paradise that, needless to say, never existed. The strongest note in its tannic brew is nostalgia. Tea Partiers are constantly talking about “restoring honor,” getting back to America’s roots, and “taking back” their country.

As  I constantly ask people when the subject comes up-taking it back from what?  Damned if I know. But that is what makes this group unique, the  Tea Party is ” fundamentally about venting anger at change it is doesn’t like, not about fixing what’s broken.”