The "Tea Party," Part 1

Useful Idiots

You're probably familiar with the term "useful idiots" but for the uninitiated, it's a term - usually ascribed to Lenin - for people who consider themselves allies of political movement but are secretly held in contempt by that movement. And so it is with the Tea Party.

Ask a Teabagger sometime why he considers the Obama presidency - which is all of 2 years old - to be "tyranny." You're likely to hear one (or a combination) of the following.

A) "The country's broke! I want a balanced budget. Spending is out of control."

B) "There are too many government programs." 

C) "He's going to take our guns!" 

D) "He (Obama) is a Muslim!"

E) "He's not an American, wasn't born here, and so his presidency is unconstitutional!" 

You know, we all want a balanced budget. But tell me this: where were these "Tea Partiers" from 2001-2008? Not in the street - that much is for sure. Bush started 2 wars that show no sign of ending anytime soon. To fund these wars (wars of choice I might add), he had to ask Congress for "emergency appropriations" when it became clear that these glorious military campaigns the US had supposedly won at lightning speed had not been won at all. These spending bills were typically in the  100 billion dollar range. As if this weren't enough, Bush did not even allocate any money for these wars in the budgets he submitted to Congress. How much did Congress give him? Every. Penny. He ever. Asked for.

So much for congressional oversight.

And where was the Tea Party? Here: I'll tell you where they were:

[cue sound of crickets]

Hear that? That's what there was: silence. There was no Tea Party. Which leads an intelligent person to ask: Why the sudden genuine, heartfelt, non-partisan opposition to government spending? The answer is that the Tea Party "movement" has nothing to do with opposition to government spending. It has to do with the idea of getting the Republicans back in power. That's generally not the way the Teabaggers see it - but I guarantee you it's the way the Republican leadership - which had fucked up on an unprecedented scale - sees it.

Above all else - above the welfare of the citizens of this country - the Republican leadership wants to see Obama fail. They've made no secret of it. As Mitch McConnell told the National Journal last year: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." So they tell the useful idiots that "spending is out of control." The useful idiots go out on the street. Maybe vote, ushering fanatics into power who proceed to defund everything. The current economic situation gets even worse. Obama gets blamed. And there you go: 2 years after leading the country to war economic ruin, they're back in power. Meanwhile the same idiot who is out on the street carrying a misspelled sign just voted into office people who are going to aggravate his economic misery, slashing those programs on which he actually depends: defunding the schools his kids attend, moving to privatize or otherwise abolish the Social Security he's going to need on when he's retires, cutting VA benefits that provide assistance for the soldiers he claims to support, slashing the (modest) stimulus funding that had provided so many jobs in his state. And so on.

Useful idiots . . .

[to be continued]