Posted on 05/07/2010 9:42:42 AM PDT by Lucky9teen
Farewell to the Tea Party. It was fun while it lasted. It certainly got a lot of undue media attention. But it died a premature, yet welcome, death.
Ironically, what killed the Tea Party was not opposition from either the Republican or Democratic Party. The Tea Party committed suicide, rendered irrelevant by a succession of current events.
The central premise of Tea Party loyalists, after all, was that they were anti-government. You know the drill: All government is bad. Taxes are bad. Government bureaucrats are bad. Then, unfortunately for them, just as they were gaining traction, tea baggers ran into the reality of tornadoes, disastrous floods, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and a terrorist attack in Times Square. In each of those cases, whom did people turn to for help? The government. And the future of the Tea Party was suddenly kaput: as dead as John Edwards’ political career.
Take the Times Square bomber. He was identified, tracked down, and apprehended exactly 53 hours and 17 minutes from the time he parked his lethal van at 45th and 7th Avenue. How? Through excellent police work by the New York City Police Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Proud tea partiers, note: All of those police officers work for the government. All of them are paid by our tax dollars. They did an incredible job. Thanks to them, one more terrorist is behind bars. Let those who “hate” government explain why they hate law enforcement officials who are keeping us all safe.
Take the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, according to law, BP is responsible for conducting and paying for the cleanup. But who were the first ones on the scene? The Coast Guard. Who’s overseeing the work of BP and other contractors to make sure they are doing everything possible to stop the leak, minimize onshore damage, and reimburse watermen for lost wages? The Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of the Interior.
Again, they are all federal employees, paid by our tax dollars — and they were the agencies all five Republican governors of the Gulf States turned to for help on April 22, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and burned.
Take the recent series of storms and tornadoes that recently hit the South, causing so much death and destruction. When tornadoes swept across Mississippi and Alabama, and when severe flooding struck Nashville, the pattern was the same. Local officials, unable to cope alone, called for help. FEMA officials arrived on the scene. Soon thereafter, President Obama declared the most severely impacted areas of those states as federal disaster areas, making residents eligible for grants for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses.
Governors in those states did not reject the federal government’s help. They actually requested it, and thanked Obama for it. “On behalf of all Alabamians, I thank President Obama for his response to this terrible storm that has affected so many people,” said Governor Bob Riley. “The president’s actions will help those communities recover more quickly.”
One final example. In no state have government-hating Tea Partiers been louder or more active than in Virginia. Conservative Republican Governor Bob McDonnell was elected last year partly on an anti-big government platform. Yet no state profits more from federal largesse.
As reported by The Washington Post, ten cents of every federal procurement dollar spent anywhere on earth is spent in Virginia. More than 15,000 Virginia companies hold federal contracts. … Total federal spending in the state has more than doubled, to $118 billion, since 2000. By 2008, it accounted for a stunning 30 percent of Virginia’s entire economy. And so far, McDonnell has not refused one penny of it. Don’t expect him to any time in the future, either.
All of which makes a mockery of the entire Tea Party movement. When trouble comes, those who complain the loudest about big government are the first ones with their hands out for federal help. Until tea partiers are willing to tear up their Social Security cards and Medicare cards, and reject all help from the FBI, Coast Guard, EPA, FEMA, or any other federal agency, they’re nothing but a bunch of phonies.
Former Air America host, now still on the handful of liberal talk stations still on the air.
I thought the article would about multiple tea-party candidates diluting their primary votes and enabling the establishment to prevail, as in IN this week.
Sounds like a drunken sot at the bar on Wednesday picking up bar trolls...
It’s okay to dream, but one has to respect reality and know that some just aren’t going to happen!
Hahahahahahaha! Whatta dope!
The central premise of Tea Party loyalists, actually, was that they were pro-Constitution and recognized the clear limitation of federal authority - enumerated powers only. The socialists have tried ignoring patriotic Americans, making fun of us, calling us racists or gay slurs, and now mischaracterizing our goals. I wonder what they’ll try next; my guess is it won’t have any connection to the truth.
No, he's Pat Buchanan's libtard friend. Seriously.
Bill Press is Pat Buchanan’s long time, libtard friend.
The thought makes what's left of my brain hurt.
Won’t he be surprised? Save this and send it back in November. Idiot.
That's the anarchists, you idiot, not the Tea Partiers.
How does this moron find work writing about politics? He doesn't even grasp fundamental premises.
Thank Heavens for Bill Press. The movement is Dead? Darn I didn’t know that, and I was going to go to my Local Tea Party Meeting tonight ... hmmm, which is very alive and well. How could that be? We stared with about 10 people, and the group size increased EVERY meeting ... we had to find a larger venue and tonight we are at the “new and bigger” venue. Darn if the Tea Party has died, there’s sure a lot of folks that didn’t get the memo. (See ya at the meeting place at 6!)
Bill Press, take note: The government removed him from the terrorist watch list, granted him citizenship, and didnt catch him until AFTER he carried out his mission.
I kind of agree, look at the Indiana primary that was just held, coats and burton won, wow, some rebellion, throw them all out, yawn .... 2010 is going to be another normal election with the masses voting for washington insiders of both parties as usual.
To my fellow Tea-Party compatriots, remember in November so this moron can see how dead the Tea-Party movement is.
A little hard to forget, I say. They keep reminding us EVERY DAY why they need to be sent packing.
November can’t come soon enough!!
Mark Twain said “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
We The People say: The rumors of the TEA Party demise are greatly exaggerated by the liberals who wish we’d die and go away. But we won’t.
We The People are still here. And we’re ()bama’s worst nightmare.
Only a stupid libtard could confuse legitimate government purposes and functions of government such as preserving rights which the military and police do, with statist, socialist oppressive actions such as owning car companies and forcing citizens to buy insurance that they don’t want to buy.
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