Turning Against the Tea Party
Wishful thinking perhaps, but the tide of madness that has washed over Washington may be ebbing.
A new CNN poll shows even more Americans want tax increases for the wealthy (63 percent) than major cuts in domestic spending (57 percent), leaving Republicans with the highest unfavorable ratings since the Clinton impeachment 13 years ago and Democrats gaining slightly in approval.
Such fallout from the debt-ceiling debacle suggests that voters have finally seen the Tea Party’s true agenda, not of reforming government but destroying it, and started to recoil from the sight.
Whether or not such sentiment is translated to the halls of Congress depends on two GOP leaders, John Boehner and Mitchell McConnell, who have painted themselves into a Tea Party corner and need a rationale for working themselves out of it.
In a column, Thomas Friedman weaves a fantasy about a White House meeting to do just that.
In it, Boehner announces that “our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’…and that everything will be on the table from our side–including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies…
“To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group–liberal or conservative…
MORE.
15 Responses to “Turning Against the Tea Party”
While Friedman was day dreaming, he completely missed mighty mouse in Iowa shouting, “Here I come to save the day!”…but that’s not a mouse, it’s not a bird, it’s not plane, it’s Sarah Palin on a bus in her stone knives and bear skins Neanderthal Campaign to save the grizzly bears….or something….live in caves and pick wild berries…foreclose on people don’t need houses to live in anyway….taxes are killing the environment….kill grandma Obamacare whatever….the Russians are coming and I can see’em….or some message stumbling out her incoherent lips…..
Friedman should stay awake so he don’t miss stuff like this….
Yes, the latest fad in politics maybe fading but the anger and fear that gave rise to the Tea Party has not been addressed. Members of the Tea Party are tired of Government getting bigger without any clear improvement in the US. I do not agree with many of the policies advocated by the Tea Party but the anger and fear that fuels them is justified.
Sadly, because their core issues have not been addressed, our country will remain divided and become increasingly polarized.
Centerist-Problem is they sent people that only half want to address the problem. Spending is a problem because the GOP party is not the party of spending control or smaller gov but instead the party of maximizing profits for favored industries. Since many of those industries funded their campaigns they have no interest in addressing any issue that may cost one of those industries money. This results in a laser like focus on entitlements ONLY and a handful of small dollar items all while they defend corporate giveaways, tax loopholes and big pharma, oil and on and on.
TP voters sent those that were owned by the current problems creators to fix our fiscal house because they said what ever they wanted to hear.
Who are “the rich”? The borderline for the top 10% in income is around $80,000.
When people say that the Bush tax cuts when mostly to rich, they mean per-person. The majority of the money went to people making less than $250,000, which is closer to the top 1% border.
I still say that the real meaning for the term “the rich” is “the employed”.
Prof-Which is a common GOP talking point but far from reality. The “rich” are actually a statistically tiny group that rake in millions to billions every year, a tiny but significant group of the top 1%. The way to fix the problem is with new tax tiers since the difference between those that make 250k per year and 250m per year is massive and lefties fully understand this distinction.
How the GOP resolved this in the Reagan and Bush I eras was to lower the top tax tier into the actual middle class. So actually it is the GOP that views the “rich” as the middle class. Those working should pay the top rate according to that system. This is why the middle class has shrunk throughout the Reagan era and has little to show for their work, they are taxed at a rate intended for those that make much more. Also taxing income rarely if ever touches the actual “rich” since the big money in that world is made either rarely or was inherited but that is another discussion entirely.
Defining rich is easy, the rich buy planes, the rich buy mansions, the rich buy controlling stake in large companies. This is not a term that is difficult to define unless you are desperately trying to obscure that definition to protect those in that group which conservative media in all its forms has spent decades doing a rather good job of.
The difference in how well one sleeps at night based on an income of 25K vs 50K is HUGE, and we aren’t anywhere near Prof’s 10% borderline yet. Wealth can be measured in stress levels if nothing else. Too many people in this society have simply become spoiled imo.
It is the fate of all empires to tread this path. In 1910, England was master of the world and by 1950 was a shell. Look where they are today.
No change of Congress or in the White House can stop the empire cycle.
We are at the economic zugzwang moment.
@MSF
Then you admit that the Dems talking point that the majority of the Bush tax cuts went to “the rich” is bogus, right?
Prof-Its a definitional problem. The percentage went to everyone. The vast amount of money went to the top since they 1 make more and 2 therefore pay more in taxes regardless of the percentage number involved. By percentage it would be a lie by dollar amount it is 100% correct.
Prof-It is also difficult to argue that the Bush cuts “benefit” the whole since with more wealth in the system generally inflation and prices on things like land still go up and often faster than wages for the whole can catch up. It is all in how you say it but it is often said in a very ambiguous way.
Wait, are you saying that when people make more money because their taxes are lowered, that inflation eats up the difference?
Prof-If they spend it yes, if it sits in a bank account no. Oddly related over the last three years major corps have been buying up major amounts of farm land in Africa on the cheap while the populace in those nations have been starving. Prices there are going up while prices here have been helped by that transferred revenue.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/159663/20110608/africa-food-farms-land-grab-us-europe-hedge-funds.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/food-water-africa-land-grab
Upside is that money isnt distorting the US market, downside is that its like we now view the Irish Potato famine as a good thing and a good way to run a business. For almost a decade I have heard economists wring their hands over the fact that the uberwealthy are sitting on enough wealth to spiral inflation out of control if they wished or if they spent it all in a lump(meaning individually not even as a group). I do not think that kind of power is safe in relatively few private hands, history tells me things go badly.
Side note in another thread you said that communism didnt fix the wealth gap which is untrue. Communism does (by erasing it and often the wealthy altogether) but when it shifts to totalitarianism (which they have all been and is the opposite of Marxism which is stateless) all “wealth” flows again to those in power which are now different people. A quibble I admit but one I wanted to note. *Wealth in quotes there because what is considered wealth may change.
Communism has so far only been effective in destroying the “landed gentry” in any nation not in stopping a new one from rising which totalitarianism actually fuels. Libertarianisms major flaw in my view is that it fails to attempt to reset the clock in a similar way which dooms it to again fueling and empowering a “landed gentry.” I mean just ponder a libertarian society with a 1950′s wealth distribution model for instance, that would create some major stability.
If the money is sucked up by taxes, the government will spend the money, so the total spent is effectively the same, although the area of the country and affected industries would be different.
Friedman’s column was a laugh.
I’ve seen similar jokes, like Lazare’s anti-Senate book (calling it “undemocratic,” in the ridiculous way Lawrence O’Donnell did on MSNBC last night). In his “fantasy” (actually, scenario), a number of Houaw politicians declare the Senate abolished because it is undemocratic. It’s so ridiculous I even successfully predicted on what basis they would make the decision — a frequent major resort of failures, the Preamble (i.e., total BS for justification).
http://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Republic-Constitution-Paralyzing-Democracy/dp/product-description/0156004941
This column by Friedman offered similarly silly scenario — the similarity immediately materialized.
(So far we haven’t heard “progressives” yet advocating a “coup”)
(NOTE: Verso = extremist left, radical and even beyond, like Pluto, even more than South End or Common Courage extremist leftist publishers, or other similar publishers)
http://ww3.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue30/lazare30.htm