Give Me a Break--Please

I suppose it was inevitable—tea party members now want to change their image of wild-eyed lunacy into something more like a respectable third party with appeal for thoughtful moderates. I listened to an active tea partier the other day, freshly returned from a rally where I can only assume the leaders told them to evangelize and try to make such a case. He tried, I questioned, he got huffy.


All I can say is that it ain’t gonna happen because wild-eyed lunacy is all the Tea Party ever had. Once the politics of NO is gone, there is no basis for the party’s platform. They have no approach to ruling the country except for not liking the way things are going and slinging slogans.

Now, I am not discounting the rational among them—and there are some, perhaps even many. But they weren’t the ones who got the tea party candidates elected. The ones who walked the streets, attended the rallies, donated the money, and had a wonderful puff of resentment beneath their wings were the angry, and I doubt their sincerity beyond their own self-interest. Given a choice between the personal sacrifice they preach for others and making some of their own, I haven't seen any evidence that any would give up a shred of their personal entitlements. Reduce Social Security checks in order to balance the budget that they say is a primary focus? Not on your life. Not on their backs. They earned their rewards--let the cuts fall somewhere else.

Do I exaggerate?

This year there is no increase in social security benefits because there is no inflation. COLA allowances are tied to inflation. No inflation, no increase. To listen to them as I have to, you would think the government was cheating them of a birth right. “My expenses are going up,” bleated one, “it’s disgraceful that there’s no increase this year.” Considering that most people use up what they contributed to Social Security within ten years or so, the disgrace is seniors who burden the economy and demand that the nation meet their medical needs, all the while denying care to the young because it might reduce their current benefits.

What sense does this make? Tea Partiers, mostly older, mostly male, mostly white, denying care and support to the next generation on whose shoulders the future economic development of this nation rests? This seems to me the world turned upside down: seniors more important than the nation’s future.

Sorry tea partiers. On every level, I just don’t buy you as this nation’s future. I’ve always thought of governing by looking to that future. I can’t get into the idea of governing by looking to the past. Even if you are comfortable there (all right in your corner, Jack), the rest of us thoughtful moderates aren’t. Your creature comforts matter less to me than the corporations who run this country and, increasingly the world; they are doing so without oversight while you guys wave the flag, trot out a Christ who would disapprove of the lot of you, and still cling to the folorn hope that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii.

The tea party moderate? Give me a break. Please.