Regarding those Tea Parties...

It has been over a month since my last post and I really do apologize for my laziness and irresponsibility and hereby pledge to post much more often. Now bear with me as I brush off the rust in the first few posts. I will be back to myself very soon, I promise.

Much has happened since the last time I talked at length about anything. The Democrats managed to pass healthcare without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate, President Obama has agreed with the Russians to further draw down our nation's nuclear stockpile and Poland has experienced a horrible tragedy following the plane crash that killed off most of the country's best and brightest conservatives. I plan to address these as well as a few other issues in the coming weeks. Today however, I would like to address a growing concern of mine, this being the mis-representation and at times outright mocking that many liberals have engaged in in regards to the growing Tea Party movement.

Let me first and foremost make clear that I am in no way associated with any Tea Parties. Nor am I a Glen Beck watching or Sarah Palin listening drone. And once again, I am not a mouthpiece for the GOP. However I do point out when either side does wrong, and in my opinion, liberals have wronged the tea parties and have done so at their own risk. Let me further elaborate on this.

President Obama has referred to them as "folks waving tea bags around," liberals such as Jon Stewart point out their tri-cornered hats, not necessarily the issues they bring up, even my own friend and rival at the Spun Zone tags his posts on the subject with the relative pejorative of "tea-bagging" but I tell you the reader that the Tea Party movement is not to be taken lightly nor should it be mocked to the degree that it has been. This is a truly grassroots movement without a clear leader at the forefront. It is, simply put, United States citizens that are fed up with the over reach of the Democrats in the past year and a half. When this group, that is characterized by liberal media as a fringe element, touts 20% of the electorate among its members nearly half of which are independent and Democrat, President Obama should be on notice not jabbing one-liners towards them. President Obama less than two years since winning his election with a whopping 365 electoral votes has managed to re-invigorate the conservative movement which many had predicted was so utterly destroyed by the '06 and '08 election cycles that the Republican Party would become a regional party for an entire generation. A year after his inauguration, a Republican is occupying a seat in the Senate which had become essentially a possession of the Kennedy family for over a half century and he is in very real danger of losing a House that the Democrats had just conquered four years ago. Something, somewhere went horribly wrong on the way to hope and change. "Yes we can" has been replaced by "what are you doing?"

For one thing, as noted by your humble writer before, the Democrats misinterpreted the last two election cycles. America is a center right nation. The electorate voted the Republicans out of office more so than they voted the Democrats into it. Democrats won convincingly not because the people were calling for universal healthcare or cap-and-trade, but because we the people wanted to restore balance to the equation. Instead the Democrats came in guns blazing attempting to do accomplish everything on their agenda. They were so pompous when they managed to secure 60 votes in the Senate that they decided to forgo campaign pledges of true bipartisanship in both houses. I still cannot get over the fact that the Healthcare overhaul, possibly the most consequential legislation since the Great Society or perhaps even the Civil Rights Act was passed without a single Republican vote in either chamber. I am truly astounded by the Democrats. And then when Tea Parties sprout up gathering widespread support, President Obama in all his glory decides to mock them saying this last tax day that they should thank him for lower taxes. This either shows a disconnect between the president and his constituents or a blatant disregard for the honest issues expressed by said groups. Most members of the tea parties would point out that the very fact that no one is paying taxes while our deficits go up amid continued spending projects. This only serves to underline the problems of Washington and paint it as bubble that does not itself exist in reality. Either way the Democrats come off as the elitist, disconnected party which is bad for them.

It is exactly because of this kind of attitude in Washington that Tea Parties emerged. While Washington lives in a dreamy utopia, the rest of us look in shock as public debt is crawling over 50% of our GDP. We are shackling ourselves to a massive beast of a healthcare plan which has yet to be seen the exact costs that will be associated with it. And now we are considering cap and trade again as well as over regulation of finance, both of which will have immense negative effects on the recovery of the economy. All while unemployment remains at around 10%. And after all of this we are told that the Tea Parties are the ones that have no sense of reality. After the actions taken by the Democrats in the short time that they have been in power, I am led to say the very same things about them. The Tea Parties are angry and deservedly so. I am not saying that the Republicans were anymore right 5 years ago, but at least they made at least some attempt for bipartisanship and they never mocked the left at least never nearly to the same degree as liberals do now.

In the end, we should not be surprised if in November we see a new Speaker of the House emerge. It seems to me that the Democrats either really hate themselves or simply do not know how to maintain a majority. There is no other explanation for what they have been doing since Day One.