Tea Party Doublethink
I may throw up if I hear one more pundit refer to the Tea Party Republicans’ supposed demand for “small government.”Like the broader business-shaped right wing Republican agenda it reflects, advances, and re-brands, “the Tea Party” is not actually opposed to “big government.” Yes, the new right-wing “super-Republicans” (as Bloomberg News recently and accurately described Tea Party activists supporters [1])attack welfare for the poor, Social Security, the Department of Education, Civil Rights enforcement, labor law reform, health reform, and government regulation of industry and finance[2]. But they say nothing against the gargantuan Pentagon system (which bills taxpayers at least $1 trillion a year to account for nearly half of the planet’s military spending), the nation’s globally unmatched and racist prison-industrial complex, the border patrol and the broader war on immigrants. The Ron Paul libertarians who oppose militarism and the drug war prison state have been marginalized in the Tea Party. They were buried long ago under the wave of more traditionally nationalist authoritarians like Sara Palin, Dick Army, and Glenn Beck[3].…read more