For much of the past 2,000 years, political elements across the world have used a group that looked and prayed differently, lumped them together to dehumanize them with the purpose of deflecting public anger their way and away from the failure of their political leaders. Blaming the Jews was a successful strategy centuries before Hitler and remains so today especially in the Arab lands; the Jews are still blamed for all this country’s or that’s problems (sometimes the word Zionist or phrase Israel lobby is substituted).
In the United States, the mass media, the Democratic Party, liberals, and even some Republicans use a version of this age-old strategy, except instead of demonizing the Jews, they target the Tea Party. They are “tea-baggers” (an obscene sexual reference) — an extremist group who controls the GOP, or racists, hobbits and women haters.
The recent posturing around this latest budgetary crisis has accelerated the pace. In recent weeks it has been much easier for people on both sides of the aisle to blame the tea party for the crisis than tax their minds to come up with a solution.
Here are just some examples:
- Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader (D-NV) “Who is the tea party? Well, understand, when I was in school, I studied government, among other things, and prior to World War I and after World War I we had the anarchists. Now they were violent — you know, some say that’s what started World War I, the anarchy moment — but they were violent. They did damage to property and they did physical damage to people. The modern anarchists don’t do that — that’s the tea party. But they have the same philosophy as the early anarchists: They do not believe in government. Anytime anything bad happens to government, that’s a victory to them. And that’s what’s happened. We have absolute gridlock created by a group of people who represent few Americans. But it makes it extremely difficult to get things done.”
- President Obama: “The only thing preventing people from going back to work and basic research starting back up and farmers and small business owners getting their loans, the only thing that is preventing all that from happening right now, today, in the next five minutes is that Speaker John Boehner won’t even let the bill get a yes or no vote because he doesn’t want to anger the extremists [Tea Party] in his party.”
- Debbie Wasserman Shultz, DNC Chair (D-Fl): “John Boehner has allowed the Tea Party to take over his conference. The Republicans have fully embraced extremism and they have brought in two years almost no jobs legislation to this floor and not worked with the president on any legislation to help make sure that we can move the economy forward because their number one goal is political and that’s to defeat Barack Obama.”
- Peter King R-NY on Wednesday accused tea party-backed conservatives of trying to “hijack the party” and said he believes growing numbers of House Republicans are getting “tired of this policy.”
The media have followed through with the same kinds of comments, branding tea partiers as radicals, racists, extremists etc. All of this demonizing is done for political purposes and has nothing to do with the actual “Tea Party Movement.” (It is called a movement because there is no real “party”; rather, there are hundreds of independent tea parties across the country.)
Thanks to the Tea Party being used as the scapegoat, most public polling shows that Americans are uncomfortable about the tea party — even though traditional tea party linked stances match public opinion. Just look at the Issues.
- The Tea Party is Pro-Government! That’s right: They support the government set up by our founders in the Constitution with all its various checks and balances. The charge of being anarchists is ridiculous.
- The Tea Party Argues that Government Is Too Big and Powerful: That may seem renegade except that, contrary to what the mainstream media and Democrats say, a Gallup survey last week reported that 60% of Americans believe government is too powerful.
The same is true of arguments in favor of cutting government spending and keeping taxes level or lowering them and striking down Obamacare. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 62% of Likely U.S. Voters are worried most that Congress and the president will raise taxes too much rather than that they won’t raise taxes enough. As for Obamacare, according to the most recent RCP Averages American’s, dislike the health care law by a margin of 51% to 40%.
Polls about other issues associated with the Tea Party movement such as supporting the Second Amendment, and not granting amnesty to illegal aliens until there is true protection of the U.S. borders, point to the truth that the Tea Party movement is actually in the American mainstream.
Even though this grassroots movement supports issues within the American mainstream, politicians on both sides of the aisle, and media figures continue to hide their own failures by casting falsehoods on this nebulous, faceless group of Americans.
Or to paraphrase Shakespeare:
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Tea Partier Hath not a Tea Partier eyes? Hath not a Tea Partier hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as Progressives of both parties do? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute during the next election and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. For we Americans are a strong people, and we will not let you destroy this great nation!
