On the necessity of Tea Partys

Our own local Tea Party seems to be getting smaller and smaller, this is no time for letting up on the pressure of the conservatives on the "business as usual" politicians.

It’s no time for a ‘party’
by Frank Miele

If you are a fan of this weekly column, you probably don’t think Democrats are the solution to this country’s problems. But if you think Republicans are the solution, think again.

George W. Bush is a Republican. John McCain is a Republican. Strange as it may seem, even Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican! Now, stop talking about partisan solutions, and face the facts.

Republicans are not the solution — you are.

It’s up to the good people of this country to stand up and get something done — restore common sense, return to common values, and re-establish the Constitution as the common bond that all Americans share.

That means that everyday Americans can’t just be passive observers anymore. You can’t just entrust the future to one party or the other. And you can’t stand back and watch your country be run into the ground, and wonder who is going to take care of the problem. It’s up to you.

There are literally millions of Americans working to “fundamentally transform” America into a place where “social justice” is more important that individual liberty, into a place where “equal outcomes” have taken the place of “equal rights,” and ultimately into a place where — like in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” — “some... are more equal than others.”

Sure, I know there is a sentimental attachment some people have to party designations, and you can make a case that Democrats lean a certain way and Republicans lean another way, but the facts of the past 50 years speak pretty loudly.

Since 1961, we have had five Democratic presidents and five Republican presidents. Congress has been a bit more Democratic over that long period, but you would be hard pressed to see much difference in the outcomes between times of Democratic and Republican control. Problems have continued to grow, and solutions have continued to get more distant in the telescope, no matter who was in control. The current debt crisis is just one more example of that. George W. Bush was nearly as profligate a spender as Barack Obama, and apparently thought that being a compassionate conservative meant spending more money on social programs than Democrats did.

As for President Obama, what’s his explanation for bombing Libya? How can he possibly jibe his administration’s use of war powers today with his own statement in 2007 that, “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”?

Answer: He can’t. It’s just one more example of how political affiliation is more for convenience in getting elected than a statement of values or guarantee of where you stand.

Another place where both parties have an abysmal record for acting in accord with the wishes of the people is border control and immigration sanity. Don’t forget — it was President Bush who tried to push through amnesty for illegal immigrants, with the support of many Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

And it wasn’t the Republican Party that stopped that disaster from happening; it was the American people, rousing from their slumber long enough to slam a sledgehammer of email, faxes and phone calls into the Capitol. Congress got the message — barely. The amnesty bill was shut down and people started talking about enforcing border security instead of legalizing criminal behavior.

But as always happens, the powers that be were just waiting for America to go back to sleep — Democrats kept talking about “comprehensive immigration reform,” the code words for amnesty, and Republicans kept trying to figure out how they could vote for it and still get re-elected.

A funny thing happened on the way to the re-vote that many in Congress had hoped for, however; the Tea Party movement emerged, partly as a followup to the amnesty fight and partly as a bulwark against increased government spending that was proposed in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse.

What the Tea Party realized long before most people did was that 20 million illegal aliens inside our borders are a huge drain on government services and taxpayer dollars. If we are against government spending money on citizens, we are adamant in our opposition to spending money to protect people who have broken the law to take advantage of our hospitality.

But if you think that Republicans are going to take the common sense approach to the immigration crisis, just take a look at Utah to see how wrong you are.

In a state that is arguably the most Republican in the country, a bill was recently signed into law that allows illegal immigrants to become legal residents of Utah. That’s right. Pay a fine of $2,500 and be on the road to not just a driver’s license, but also in-state tuition, safety-net benefits, and possibly even the right to vote! Talk about a path to citizenship!

Democrats are no doubt giddy over such a development, but the problem is that it would take federal approval to work — and if the feds were to allow Utah to develop its own immigration policy, it would also have to acknowledge the right of Arizona to do the same thing.

Since Arizona wants to do the right thing and send illegals aliens back to their homes in Mexico and elsewhere, that’s never going to happen!

But in the meantime, we are left with the incredibly important lesson that party membership is no guarantee of common sense, nor a safeguard against hypocrisy or foolishness. If you trust a political party to do the right thing, you aren’t paying attention.

Don’t trust Democrats, don’t trust Republicans, don’t even trust the Tea Party. If you expect anything to get done, trust yourself. Speak up, speak louder, speak until you are heard. Don’t let someone else do it — because they aren’t always speaking for you, and by the time you figure that out, it’s often too late.

Frank Miele/Daily Inter Lake

Tea Parties are being watched according to the Canada Free Press

More evidence emerging that that Constitution supporters are considered “domestic threats
By Douglas Hagmann & Judi McLeod

A report published today by Kurt Nimmo states that a Department of Homeland Security fusion center in Florida conducted surveillance on Ron Paul supporters and other political groups. A law enforcement sensitive bulletin dated 4 June 2010, issued by the Central Florida Intelligence Exchange, identified one event hosted by Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty that was subjected to official intelligence monitoring by that arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Nimmo notes that the Central Florida Intelligence Exchange was established with the assistance of an $850,000 Department of Homeland Security grant, which is your tax dollars at work. The center is specifically tasked with looking for terrorist leads.

As we detailed in our report dated 19 April 2009 , over a year before the Ron Paul event and today’s article, we informed readers of the existence of a FBI directive issued in March, 2009 that tasked FBI field offices to collect specific times, dates and locations of TEA party and other similar patriotic events. A second directive was issued the following month directing domestic intelligence agencies to perform covert video surveillance and data collection of the participants of the TEA parties. The directive instructed that surveillance was to be performed from “discreet fixed or mobile positions” and was to be performed"independently and outside of the purview of local law enforcement.”

Read all the details here.

Links for Saturday before Christmas

Lame-duck sessions supposed to be a thing of the past, historians say

Meeks says minority contracts should only go to blacks.


Downsizing the Government from the Cato Institute. 


DREAM Act causes ugly breakup on left


Collapse of the omnibus spending bill: rise of the 'tea party Congress'?

Must Read articles for Sunday, Nov 7th

Why I quit... Desert Storm vet explains decision to leave Air Force after 22 years

This confirms my belief that the war was prolonged and people died because the Democrats used the war as a tool to hammer President Bush.

Work-shy will be 'pushed' into working for free by welfare revolution This is from Great Britain, we could learn something here from him.

AIFD PRESS RELEASE: American Muslim organization applauds Oklahoma anti-shariah law I wish we heard from more Muslims like this.

Assessing midterm losses, Democrats ask whether Obama's White House fully grasped voters' fears  another one that speaks for itself.

Chris Christie irks David Gregory by calling him an advocate  too much truth for David Gregory to handle.

The Biofuels Scam

Obama jumps on natural gas bandwagon  this could be good news for Texas, if true.

Frank Luntz: Forget red and blue, it's a Tea Party nation  What voters want.

Is the name of the game Control for the Republican Party?

In an article in American Thinker Joseph Asbuy makes the case and that is his final conclusion. Here is the article, what do you think?

The Establishment Strikes Back

At the climax of the 1977 film Star Wars, hero Luke Skywalker destroys the evil Empire's dreaded Death Star. The Rebellion's celebration, however, is short-lived. The movie series' next installment, The Empire Strikes Back, depicts the Empire's use of its still vastly superior weaponry and manpower to reassert its authority.

In the 2010-midterm elections, the tea party movement has played the role of the Rebellion. But the Empire is not played by the Democrats. It's true that the Democrat-controlled federal government was resoundingly defeated in the November 2nd general election, but that loss, unlike the destruction of the Death Star, was not a surprise. The real blindside was the tea party's dismantling of the Republican Establishment throughout the primary season.

He goes on to describe the wins by the tea party candidates against their Republican establishment and wraps it up with this:

The Establishment attitude is another form of central planning, in this case political planning instead of economic. The great economist Frederick von Hayek was once asked by so many academics rejected the free market in favor of central direction. Hayek responded: "I think it's...an intellectual attraction of a system you can deliberately control, which is fascinating to the intellectual." For Rove, Graham and others it's not just winning, but winning with their plan. The organized chaos of the tea party is to the Establishment what the unplanned free market is to the leftist professor. Both represent a lack of "fascinating" control.

And so the Establishment strikes back. Entrenched blue-blood Republicans hope to reap the electoral benefits of the tea party movement while simultaneously seeking to discredit it. In the aftermath of the 2010 midterms, it has become clear that the fight for America's future will pass directly through the heart of the Republican Establishment.

And there you have the best description of what happened and an alert to us to keep on fighting the establishment, not by forming a new party but revitalizing one that is already there.

Has the Republican Party morphed into a new party?

Bill Markin at American Thinker believes it has. Read this:

R.I.P., G.O.P.

The Grand Old Party, known to many as simply the "G.O.P.," passed away during the recent election season.

Despite having once been known for such luminaries as Lincoln and Reagan, in recent years the party had slipped into a near-comatose state of minorityhood and, under the leadership of a continuing parade of elder statesmen, had demonstrated an unfailing ability to reach across the aisle and compromise principles in the name of "getting things done."

It is survived by a group of aging professional politicians whose primary interest has been their own political careers and assuring the blessings of continual reelection upon themselves and their cronies.

Those close to The Party say it was asleep at the time of passing.

This is just the beginning, read it all here.

There is a lot of Just Not Getting It about the teaparties in the news today

Where shall I start? Well, the first one I read was in the Washington Post.  There are more, because I have been interrupted  a number of times I'm going with two.

Tea party's wide publicity belies its limited scope  Gauging the scope of the tea party movement in America - They spent a month trying to canvass all the tea parties but didn't find many-- I guess not. We sure didn't hear from them. Therefore, WE do not exist. How many others did they miss? They don't know.

Reason Magazine has this one about a whole convention just to analyse us.  My, how our importance seems to have grown! I hope they figure us out, they will really be frightened just in time for Halloween.

Radical Shriek
Lefty academics convene in Berkeley to try to make sense of the Tea Party movement.
By David Weigel
BERKELEY, Calif.—On the night before we are scheduled to address this conference, the Tea Party experts are treated to a meal at the Faculty Club. It sounds fancy, and it is, with the feel and décor of a Sundance ski lodge. Over craft beers, wine, and cheese, we discuss that favorite topic of liberal academics: What the hell happened to Barack Obama? Why does the right have all the energy that he and the left used to own?
[....]
We sit down and we're given the full details for the conference: "Fractures, Alliances, and Mobilizations: Emerging Analyses of the Tea Party Movement." It's the first event of its kind hosted by Berkeley's two-year-old Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. The San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders and I are two reporters invited to speak; everyone else is an academic, a think tanker, or a political researcher. One of the authors of the NAACP's report on "Tea Party Nationalism" is here, as is Nixonland author Rick Perlstein.
But the focus is going to be on the academics and the activists, on and off the stage. They want to know what the hell is going on. They are in Berkeley, where they are used to venerating left-wing activism and putting up sandbags against the once-a-decade conservative wave—Reagan (twice), Proposition 13 (about property taxes), Proposition 209 (about affirmative action), George W. Bush. The Tea Party, though? A bunch of people who reverse-engineer Saul Alinsky and yell "Keep the government out of Medicare" and have conservatives shouting down politicians and filling street corners.

Bless their hearts!  They have a lot to learn.

Dana Milbank misses the point while pointing it out

Just read his article in the Washington Post and a sentence just cried out to be commented on.

Who's a real conservative? It's all relative
by Dana Milbank
A couple of weeks ago, in a column about how conservatives are cannibalizing the likes of   Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bob Bennett of Utah, I had the nerve to describe Murkowski, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, as a "faithful conservative."

"Dear Mr. Milbank," began an e-mail from Myron Ebell, a climate-change skeptic at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "Your column today would be more convincing if its broad assertions had some connection to facts."
[....]
I took Ebell up on his challenge. What I found was astonishing -- although not in the way he had supposed. Comparing the ACU ratings of Murkowski and Bennett with those of other Republicans in the House and Senate going back to 1971 (the first year in the ACU online ratings archive), I discovered that if conservatives were to employ the purity standards they applied to Murkowski and Bennett, they would have rejected many, if not most, of the leading Republican lawmakers of the past 40 years.

"Dear Mr. Milbank," I wrote, "that is the point. That IS the reason for the tea parties."

Tea Parties -- a summation

Glenn Reynolds has an editorial in today's Washington Examiner.
Dan Karipides sums it up nicely at Wizbang.

As is often the case, Glenn makes a few points with simple clarity.

Democratic and Republican politicians alike fear it, and increasing numbers of Americans (including, in recent months, increasing numbers of African-Americans according to a PJTV Tea Party tracking poll) identify with the Tea Party movement and say they are more likely to vote for candidates it supports, and less likely to vote for candidates it opposes.

You'll note that the slur "teabagger" has fallen out of fashion. Attempts to marginalize the movement have died down as leadership on both sides have begun to realize just how much momentum it has.

Both political parties are out of touch, and ordinary Americans are very unhappy about it, as they watch the Treasury being looted, the economy sink, and the political, journalistic, and financial ruling-class figures escaping the consequences of their ham-handed and self-serving actions.
But while ordinary Americans are mad as hell, this time they really don't have to take it any more. Institutions have failed them, but Internet tools like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, and personal tools -- like the cheap handheld video cameras that beat back bogus charges of Tea Party racism again and again -- mean that they don't have to rely on failing institutions.

He ends with a warning to the current GOP leadership.

But those establishment GOP figures who think that they'll cruise to victory and a return to the pocket-stuffing business-as-usual that marked the prior GOP majority need to think again. This election cycle is, in a very real sense, a last chance for the Republicans. If they blow it, we're likely to see third-party challenges in 2012, not only at the Presidential level but in numerous Congressional races as well.

For the national GOP, it's do-or-die time. So guys, you'd better perform -- unless you want me to be writing another "I told you so" column in 2013. And trust me, you don't.

Read it all at Wizbang or the original at the Washington Examiner.

Rush had some Great Callers today.

We listened to the show as we traveled back from the Hill Country.  He was on a roll and so were his callers.  His stars of the day were Gayle from Birmingham  an independent who voted for Obama, and Ernie from Harlem, a staunch Black conservative.  They outdid Rush.  Both of them were ready to ditch any RINO.  But Gayle was the most upset and most talkative. She knew she and other independents had been played for fools.  She kept saying, "He's laughing at us!" They both were adamant that the current Congress and administration has to go.  We loved it.  I wish everyone could have heard it.

Is Sarah Palin the Lone Ranger

This is the last part of an editorial in the Washington Post
Has Sarah Palin saved the GOP?
By Paul Goldman

Simply put, Palin started as Tonto but has become the Lone Ranger. Instead of fading out last summer, she remained strong and stood by her party. She has become a bridge between the old Republican guard and the growing right-wing dissatisfaction with not just Democrats but also Republican officeholders. Palin's ability to advocate for using the GOP, not a third party, to channel this angst has allowed Republican voter anger to boil, yet not boil over.

Should Republicans run up the score in November, Sarah Palin will deserve a lot of credit she will never get.

You know what they say, If Momma ain't Happy........

This is from the Wall Street Journal via Lucianne and for some reason I really like it. (my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek)

Moms to the Barricades

'The tea parties are an extension of our need to protect the future for our children'

By MICHAEL GRAHAM

If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. And if you've been to a tea party, you know Momma ain't happy at all.

Forget "angry white men." In the male-dominated world of conservative politics, the tea party stands out as a movement of energized and organized women. In particular, moms.

Moms like Sarah Palin, of course, who's been described as the "Momma Bear" of the tea party movement. But more important are the thousands of women at the state and local level who created this political phenomenon.

Moms like Christen Varley, the suburban mother of four who organized the successful tea party rally on Boston Common last month. Moms like Karen Miner Herd, who calls herself "one of the founding mothers" of the tea party movement in Virginia.

Read the rest, you will like it too.

Two Links; one question, one answer

While not phrasing this as a question, Noemie Emery in the Washington Examiner writes:

Media still clueless about Tea Parties.

To hear the media tell it, the Tea Party movement is one of the most mysterious forces ever to surface in national life. Since February 2009, when CNBC's Rick Santelli urged his listeners to dump unfunded derivatives into Lake Michigan to protest the developing culture of bailouts, they have been nothing but open about their fears of insolvency, their discomfort with increasing size of the government and their terror of deficits.

The media listen closely to all these objections, and decide they must mean something else. They say they fear debt, and the media insist that they must fear Hispanics (why they hate Marco Rubio), that they fear blacks (why they hate Thomas Sowell), that they fear strong women (why they want Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to be sent back to the kitchen in chains). Read the rest of her article here.So in further reading online today I find in Jewish World Review a post by Arnold Ahlert with a hopeful take on the Arizona law on the illegal immingrant's.  I take is as one of the answers to the question "What do the Tea Partiers Want?"  We want a nation of law. We honor the constitution.  Ahlert's post:

Arizona: Progressivism's Waterloo?

"For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person…" — the essential clause in Arizona's new immigration law

There are many reasons to be thankful that Arizona has passed a sensible law to combat illegal immigration, but one of the most important ones is this: the bankruptcy of the progressive worldview and the utter abdication of anything resembling journalistic integrity by their media enablers is strutting itself across the national stage.

And absolutely nothing is better than both entities revealing their true colors to the American public.

It is impossible to measure the hypocrisy. The same media which has strained itself looking for any shred of negativity they could hang around the necks of the Tea Party movement, is apparently deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to the unruliness, overt racism and uncontrolled anger of the pro-illegal demonstrators who have branded ordinary Arizonans Nazis and racists for daring to defend themselves against an onslaught of illegal interlopers.

Now, of course he is talking about a specific and I am speaking in generalities but it answers and demonstrates the question of what the tea partiers want.  We want an unbiased news account of what is happening.  We want the constitution to be followed in every way.  We want the government to be held accountable.  We want less intrusion, not more.   Read all of both posts. Ahlert's and Emery's.

We Really Need a Thick Skin to take all these Insults

via Lucianne a column from Michael Graham:

Big lie from Brandeis

The folks at Brandeis assure me it’s all just a big misunderstanding. When they compare the Tea Party movement to neo-Nazis, they mean it in a nice way.

And so, if all goes as scheduled, Brandeis will host a symposium tomorrow on “The New Right-Wing Radicalism.” It starts with a discussion of rising neo-Nazism in Europe (2:30 p.m. - “Mein Kampf: A Book Of The Past In The Present”) and ends with an analysis of the Tea Parties in America (4:30 p.m. - “From Tea Parties to Armed Militia”).

To make sure everyone got the message, the promotional posters featured swastikas. And to make sure we knew who these “right-wing radicals” were, those swastikas were on the Brandeis Web page right above a link to the “Tea Party Express in Boston Commons (sic).”

That’s the Tea Party event I personally helped promote.

This is a two pager so read it all.

Why the Democrats call them "White" tea parties

Dennis Prager explains it in Human Events:

Why Left Talks about "White" Tea Parties

Opponents of the popular expression of conservative opposition to big government, the tea party, regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration.

But there are two other facts that are far more troubling:

The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers.

It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender and class rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong.

Read it all.

Taking back our country is a bi-partisan theme

We all remember how robustly the liberals protested the Bush administration for just about everything. Apparently the liberals don't.  Or perhaps it is just that when they do it they are legitimately concerned. When we do it we are mobs, rabble rousers and now even seditionists. The Spectator had a good article on this phenomenon.

Note to NYT: Wanting to "Take Back America" is Not Just a Conservative Phenomenon

By Philip Klein

There are a lot of angles to criticize in Kate Zernike's piece in the New York Times about tea parties. But there's one point in the article that particularly jumped out at me:

What accounts for this gap between how they are faring and how they feel the country is faring? History offers some lessons. The poll reveals a deep conviction among Tea Party supporters that the country is being run by people who do not share their values, for the benefit of people who are not like them. That is a recurring theme of the previous half-century — conservatives in liberal eras declaring the imperative to “Take America Back.”

“The story they’re telling is that somehow the authentic, real America is being polluted,” said Rick Perlstein, the author of books about the Goldwater and Nixon years.

Liberal regimes tend to bring out these resentments, Mr. Perlstein said, because conservatives have equated liberalism in the popular mind with the expansion of government power, something that has always stirred distrust among Americans.

But while Zernike tries, with Perlstein's help, to portray the "Take Back America" idea as some sinister right-wing phenomenon, the reality is that this sentiment is pretty typical of any ideological group that finds itself out of power.

It somehow escaped mention, for instance, that during the Bush years, the liberal activist group Campaign for America's Future started holding an annual conference titled "Take Back America."

Even more ironic is that one of the regular speakers at the conferences was none other than Rick Perlstein.

CBS News Thinks it has us figured out

Tea Party Supporters: Who They Are and What They Believe

by Brian Montopoli

They're white. They're older. And they're angry.

CBS News and the New York Times surveyed 1,580 adults, including 881 self-identified Tea Party supporters, to get a snapshot of the Tea Party movement. There is a lot of information to unpack; let's begin with the demographics.

Eighteen percent of Americans identify as Tea Party supporters. The vast majority of them -- 89 percent -- are white. Just one percent is black.

They tend to skew older: Three in four are 45 years old or older, including 29 percent who are 65 plus. They are also more likely to be men (59 percent) than women (41 percent).

More than one in three (36 percent) hails from the South, far more than any other region. Twenty-five percent come from the West, 22 percent from the Midwest, and 18 percent from the northeast.

They are better educated than most Americans: 37 percent are college graduates, compared to 25 percent of Americans overall. They also have a higher-than-average household income, with 56 percent making more than $50,000 per year.

More than half (54 percent) identify as Republicans, and another 41 percent say they are independents. Just five percent call themselves Democrats, compared to 31 percent of adults nationwide.

Nearly three in four describe themselves as conservative, and 39 percent call themselves very conservative. Sixty percent say they always or usually vote Republican. Forty percent say the United States needs a third party, while 52 percent say it does not.

They are more likely than American adults overall to attend religious services weekly (38 percent do so) and to call themselves evangelical (39 percent). Sixty-one percent are Protestant, and another 22 percent are Catholic.

More than half -- 58 percent -- keep a gun in the household.

They also have a chart, go here to see it.

Tea Partiers are Us

I have read Bill Whittle for a few years now.  When he joined Pajamas Media I was disappointed that most of his works were done with PJTV and my broadband speed is a little too slow for watching any whole programs.  He still does some of his Eject!Eject! Eject! posts at that blog so occasionally I get to read some of his good work.  I would suggest you read this one, it goes along pretty much with all our thinking, and then read some of his archived work.  It.is.good.  Here is the latest, sent to me by Rockport Conservative writer Dolley Doright. 

REASONABLE MEN

There is a concerted effort afoot on the part of big-state socialists to paint the Tea Party as a bunch of dangerous, hate-filled radicals with a bunch of crazy new ideas that go far beyond the pale of the traditional American political mainstream.

Let’s ask some reasonable men – because the Founding Fathers were surely the largest collection of reasonable men ever gathered in one place at one time in history – what they thought about the issues raised by the Tea Party movement.

For instance, what did they think of a powerful central government?

At this point go to the Pajamas Media site and read it all.

We Need to Watch Our Backs

Also from American Thinker blog.

Tea Parties targeted for infiltration

by Greg Halvorson

In the coming days, millions of Americans, fed-up with political hubris, sink-hole spending and the imposition of "values" coerced into law, will exercise their right to peaceably assemble. In Washington D.C., the Mall will be packed, as will municipal plazas, capitol steps and civic band-stands from Alaska to Maine. This, the Tea Party, is stirring the Left to fits of neurosis rarely seen beyond clinical settings.

"Crash the Tea Party" is the latest example. Part spy fantasy, part senior prank, its manifesto will doubtlessly undermine the conservative movement and permanently anoint a Democratic Elite.

Read the rest and be forewarned.

Here is an editorial writer who gets it

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Kevin O'Brien: Who's afraid of a little Tea Party? Everyone, fortunately

Democratic officeholders should be afraid.

Republican officeholders, too.

For many a year now, officeholders of both major parties have worked hard to earn the distrust of ordinary Americans. It appears that they finally have succeeded.

If only ordinary Americans hadn't been so inattentive. If only ordinary Americans hadn't been so trusting. If only ordinary Americans hadn't been so damnably nice, the country would be in a better position to manage its finances today.

But when have Americans not tried to look for the good in every situation? When have we not been slow to recognize the need to deal with forces, foreign or domestic, aligning against our best interests?

Better late than never, a lot of ordinary Americans are waking up to the sobering reality that there really is no one they can trust. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not government. Not corporations. And certainly not corporations in league with government.

Hallelujah.

The people who are angry today are more in tune with this nation's founders than ordinary Americans have been in decades.

The United States has an intricate system of checks and balances, and a government structure based on a separation of powers, and a Bill of Rights that safeguards the rights of states and the rights of the people precisely because the greatest collection of political talent and philosophical insight ever assembled on this continent -- and maybe anywhere on this planet -- looked at the concept of government and said, "We need to make a really small cage for this thing, then be careful not to overfeed it."

We seem to have lost the care-and- feeding instructions about a century ago. We let government out of its little cage and it has been consuming everything it can lay its paws on ever since. In the last 45 years, it has been on a real binge, and in the last year and a half, it has taken bigger bites than a lot of people thought possible.

Ordinary Americans who care about freedom are finally getting a clue and -- horrors! -- they're hollering at members of Congress. That's right: Nice, trusting, formerly inattentive Americans are getting in the faces of the political class and calling them names.

Big (Joe Biden expletive deleted) deal. If members of the political class are too tender to endure a little well-earned rudeness from the people whose hard-earned money they like to "spread around," then they ought to get out of politics. Maybe their successors will find the voice of the people less irritating.

There's more, go read it all.