It strikes me…
…that these “Tea Parties” are nothing more than GOP leftover rallies from a population still deeply absorbed in its own denialism over the loss of the Presidency to a Democrat.
And no, Republicans these days are not the same pedigree they were after the loss of Bush Sr. to the upstart Bill Clinton – and as Mark has noted, it’s the inclusion of the modern conservative movement into the Tea Party movement that has rendered it so dishonest. The last eight years have been deeply destructive to the Republican Party and to conservatism in general. The country has been Roved and Becked and Malkined into a nation of partisan hooligans. Charles Johnson had this clip of a tea party wherein a woman chants “Burn the books!” The problem with these rallies is, like the Palin rallies that preceded them, they are attempting to create a mob mentality, or as Chuck Norris said “a raging forest fire!”
People don’t burn books, mobs burn books.
And for his troubles (including his dissent from Glenn Beck’s various unhinged rants), Charles Johnson is now regarded as an apostate tool of the “radical left” in various quarters. To paraphrase Rod Dreher’s paraphrase of, uhh, me: “When you turn everything into an issue of us against them, you’ll eventually find that there’s not many of “us” left.”Report
Dreher paraphrased you? When was this?
But seriously, the whole Johnson thing is hysterical.Report
Back in December, discussing my official Best Post Ever on Talk Radio Dogmatism.Report
Let’s hope so. From what I’ve seen (and in spite of blogs like these), there’s been very little desire among the GOP base to “turn Tory.” There’s very few checks on central government power nowadays, but one of the very few left is the ability of the population to resist paying taxes. At least part of the American people have not accepted the Obama budgets as part of the status quo, which is just as well because the tax base can’t sustain them anyway.Report
Duh, Koz, have you forgotten the very powerful and mighty IRS? You may think that one of the few checks on central government left these days is to resist paying taxes, but it is very, very, very cold comfort when you’re sitting in a cardboard box because the Feds put a lien on your house. Which they are allowed to do.
or when they toss you in jail for tax evasion. Which they are allowed to do. Why not find a more constructive way of changing the government like, oh, i don’t know, like trying to find conservative candidates that aren’t complete whackaloons (I’m looking at you, Toomey!)?Report
Wrt the IRS, there’s an important symmetry of perceived powerlessness. From their pov, billions of missing tax revenue leak in a thousand different places, through loopholes, aggressive accountants, tropical tax havens and all the rest of it.
For a taxpayer in Paducah, the IRS looks like a gargantuan behemoth bureaucracy with lots of police powers, just like you mentioned. Which is why this Tea Party business is important imo. The tax protesters have every reason to expect and fear government retaliation (frankly I’m not sure if that’s paranoid or not at the moment) who are nonetheless willing to show up in public and state their opposition to uncontrolled spending or excessive taxation. Of course, most real tax evaders will quietly pull some recordkeeping tricks like Geithner did.
I don’t know what you have against Toomey in particular, but I agree with you in the main that the we’d be better off if the political class was stingier with the public piggy bank. But for where we are at the moment, the tax-protest Tea Parties are the bullets left in the clip, so I for one am glad they’re being fired.
Getting back to the spirit of the original post, I’m not going to quibble if Erik wants to call it denial. Whatever we call it, it’s still a very good thing that a significant part of the American body politic is unwilling to acquiesce to Obama’s Leviathan overreach.Report