Tea Partiers expecting to gut government --
it won't happen
So let me get this straight: The Tea Party expects to win big this November, which in their eyes will constitute the nation being "taken back" by its rightful owners through the electoral process, as opposed to the election of 2008, in which the Democrats won big and was a fraud perpetrated by impostors.
That's their thinking?
And the difference between the two elections, between the spurious one of 2008, which represented the nation being hijacked, and the genuine one of 2010, assuming it goes their way is ... the assumption that it goes their way. That's the difference? If they win, it's the legitimate expression of a free people. If they lose, well, a nation deceived yet again...
Just so we're clear on that.
I suppose it's similar to when judges rule in favor of conservative causes, those ruling are applauded, while liberal rulings are dismissed as activist judges pushing their social agendas.
Hypocritical? Sure. But that's what they believe. They also believe that Democrats are cringing in fear at the coming elections. Should Republicans and their Tea Party allies win in the fall -- and part of me hopes they do, just for entertainment's sake -- the Democrats are supposed to take their cue and start howling how the election somehow doesn't represent the national will.
Not me. God bless America, the people decide at the ballot box, and if they elect a gang of glittery-eyed zealots whose primary distinction is lack of participation in the government they intend to shutter, well, power to 'em. Let's see how well that works.
They believe their victory will signal a return to some previous state of society and government. Eden perhaps.
"We're going to take this state and this country back," Illinois Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Brady told Glenn Beck's revanchist pep rally in Hoffman Estates over the weekend. "We'll take back the government."
We know from whom, but take it back where? Going back is not the most dynamic form of political thought, though there is, in every country at every time, a group of political Luddites who feel threatened by whatever is happening, and wants to return to some Shangri La of their imaginings.
Whenever I talk to someone who believes this, I try to pin him down. What year should we return to? When was the government operating at that lean, mean efficiency you have in mind? Was it 1805? 1911? Be specific.
And which federal programs get scrapped? The Department of Education, of course, because schools are still locally funded and locally run, for the most part, and federal involvement can be shrugged off as meddling.
But the Department of Education is not really the epicenter of our nation's woes, is it? Surely, that has to be just the beginning of their revolution. What else? Should we next scrap Medicaid first or roll back Social Security benefits? Halve the military? What?
Democrats are supposed to be panicking at this point, gazing with rapt horror at Nov. 2, hurtling toward us like the canyon floor coming up at Wile E Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon.
Forgive me for being calm. And not because Tea Parties won't win. Some will win -- heck, Scott Lee Cohen won. You put enough money into TV commercials, and Americans will elect a sock monkey.
I'm calm because the country the Tea Partiers want -- federal government reduced to minting coins and securing the borders and not much else -- isn't going to happen. When we look around to the industrial nations of the world, we don't see that. We see countries that have national health care and environmental standards. Their taxes far outstrip ours, and yet their rich people still get dressed in the morning.
Sure, these are scary times, and any charlatan who claims that he or she will lead us back to the Promised Land will get a following of knuckleheads. But let them try to go back -- there's no back to return to. There's only forward, and going forward is hard enough, as our president has learned.
What does the future look like that's so spooking these people? It sure isn't white. The U.S. Census tells us that while 75 percent of the nation now are non-Hispanic whites, that number falls to 46 percent in the next 40 years, while the number of Hispanics double, from 15 percent to 30 percent.
So of course they want to seal the borders, ship home all the illegals, and strangle the government that allowed all this to happen. But it's happening no matter who's elected.
Some proclaim that their victories this fall -- if they have victories -- will constitute a new Lexington and Concord. They'll hack away the government because the people the government helps shouldn't be here anyway, forgetting that they might be a paycheck away from being one of those people.
Maybe Americans will snap awake, take a hard look at what these candidates are advocating, and November won't be the sea change they're predicting. Or heck, maybe enough voters are scared enough to want to try to head back into history, and they'll all get into office, grab the leash of this great country, and give it a pull.
Barack Obama did that, and discovered it isn't as easy as it looks. He discovered -- as any puppy owner knows -- holding the leash and getting the beast to go in the direction you want are two very different things.
No comments:
Post a Comment