What is it with the liberal-left in this country? Day-after-day, night-after-night they flood the airways and talk shows slamming the Tea Party, calling them crazies, racists bigots, Nazis, terrorists and poor uneducated GOP dupes who should be dismissed out-of-hand. The Tea Party, they say, is dying and slowly becoming insignificant. Ice News says baloney.
In reality, all the attacks are generated by one emotion: Fear. The Republican establishment is frightened of them too. Why? All one has to do is look back to November 2010. The people spoke in the Midterm elections and the makeup of the House of Representatives changed. Would we be watching the debt battle and listening to talk of cutting trillions of dollars from the budget if the Tea Party didn’t exist?
What do you think?
That’s why the Beltway “professionals” are frightened to death. They fear not for their lives, but for their futures.
The Tea Party movement was launched in response to the unprecedented expansion of government by President Barack Obama and congressional liberals, a massive increase in spending that will create economy-crushing fiscal burdens for future generations of taxpayers.
In a relatively brief period, the Tea Party has demonstrated it is a formidable political force. The pressure the movement brought to bear at the grassroots level put liberals on the defensive for much of the health care debate, and nearly succeeded in torpedoing the entire scheme in spite of Democrats’ overwhelming congressional majorities. And Tea Party activists proved decisive in a string of electoral defeats for liberals in the Midterm elections.
Former Newsweek editor Howard Fineman on July 25 berated Tea Partiers for engineering a “slow motion succession” in relation to the budget impasse in Congress.
Appearing with Hardball host Chris Matthews, Fineman summarized the conservative position this way: “This is an ending of the social compact. This is two, three generations worth of agreement about Social Security, about Medicare, about the role of the federal government. The Tea Party people are saying, we want to secede from that society.”
The evidence for this Republican succession? The GOP’s refusal to agree
to Democratic deals to increase the debt ceiling. “What’s going on here, as I see it, is a kind of slow motion secession,” Fineman declared.
The former Newsweek editor then spoke for the Tea Party, explaining what they really want: “And the way to do it is to draw the line on spending and taxes, to starve the federal government so that (it) loses power, so that we aren’t part of the social compact anymore.”
Matthews responded to this argument by injecting race into the debate. He blurted, “You know what this sounds like? When I spent two years in Southern Africa. It sounds like what the whites talked about doing.”
Continuing this analogy, Matthews suggested the Tea Party would eventually go “into some sort of little circle, like Custard’s last stand against the United States.”
This proved too much even for Fineman, now the political editor of the Huffington Post. He pushed back, “Well, I wouldn’t put a racial tone on it.”
A transcript of the exchange on the continuing budget impasse on the Monday, July 25 Hardball:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think it’s part of this, this flat-Earth society that doesn’t believe in science, doesn’t believe in human history, that doesn’t believe in global change, global climate change. Nothing.
HOWARD FINEMAN: What’s going on here, as I see it, is a kind of slow motion secession. This is- this is an ending of the social compact. This is two gen- three generations worth of agreement about Social Security, about Medicare, about the role of the federal government. The Tea Party people are saying, we want to secede from that society. And the way to do it is to draw the line on spending and taxes, to starve the federal government so that loses power, so that we aren’t part of the social compact anymore. And that’s the real argument that’s going on. And the Congress as an institution, is incapable of deal with that kind of fundamental argument, given the entitlement age and welfare state age, why you have the super committees and super duper committees and the smaller and smaller ring of people attempting to attempting to decide something. Do you hear what I’m saying?
MATTHEWS: You know what this sounds like? You know what this sounds like? When I spent two years in Southern Africa. It sounds like what the whites (in Africa) talked about doing.
FINEMAN: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: Eventually going into some sort of little circle, like Custard’s last stand against the United States.
FINEMAN: Well, I wouldn’t put a racial tone on it. But I would say the Congress is not deal with the fundamental question here. They refuse to do it. And they’re not deal wig it now, because both- because both bills, both plans, both the Boehner plan and the Reid plan don’t deal with either entitlements or taxes.
MATTHEWS: Who’s the guy that’s emerging at the top Republican name year hearing these days? Rick Perry. Who actually does talk about succession, withdrawing from the federal government.
From its inception, network reporters have been dismissive of the Tea Party. After all, it did not fit in with theirNew York/Washington,D.C.left wing world. Below are two early examples of the media’s misunderstanding of events more than a year in the future.
“There’s been some grassroots conservatives who have organized so-called Tea Parties around the country,” NBC’s Chuck Todd noted on the April 15, 2009 Today, but “the idea hasn’t really caught on.” On ABC’s World News, reporter Dan Harris warned viewers that “critics on the Left say this is not a real grassroots phenomenon at all, that it’s actually largely orchestrated by people fronting for corporate interests.”
“In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it cost nothing to be a patriot.” - Mark Twain
To join and support the Tea Party Movement, go to www.theteaparty.net
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