The “tea party” protests sparked by CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s call for a taxpayer tea party in Chicago are coming to Newburyport courtesy of the newly formed Newburyport Republican City Committee. These “protests” are being promoted by the conservative public relations firm Freedom Works (run by former Majority Leader Dick Armey), by American Solutions For Winning the Future (Newt Gingrich’s group) and by Glenn Beck of Fox News. Apparently, the local event is being organized to protest “out of control” federal spending and state tax hikes and will be held while Congressman Tierney holds a community meeting on the Stimulus Bill with constituents at Newburyport’s Public Library.
It is clear why the Republicans have appropriated the imagery of the Boston Tea Party: they wish to wrap their protests in a patriotic veneer. This is old news for our Republican friends and we must admit they have been very successful at doing so. But, like most of their past efforts, a little knowledge goes a long way to exposing their efforts for what they are.
What’s wrong with the tea party imagery?
The real Boston protesters in 1773 were protesting “Taxation Without Representation.” Note the emphasis. It is an enormous stretch to claim that the Congress and President elected last year are not representative of the American public. Democrats, especially President Obama, did not hide his agenda during the election. Quite the contrary. Voters had a real choice between a continuation of the “government is the problem” agenda Republicans have promoted for the past thirty years and the progressive, activist agenda of Democrats. They knowingly and overwhelmingly voted for an activist government that would step in and do what was necessary to fix the mess created by Republicans. To claim any correspondence to the justified protests of the original Tea Party participants is simply bizarre. As a matter of fact, to draw such a correspondence is decidedly unpatriotic in that it implies that the effort to bring representative democracy had failed. It did not.
In my next post I’ll address the substance of the Republican protests.
1 comment:
Great analysis of the Right Wing's latest effort to offer us revisionist history wrapped in the flag. Of course, there's further irony to be found in the fact that the same Republican politicians and nutwit media demagogues who supported George W. Bush's deficit spending and championed the notion that government should not be in the business of regulating business are now howling at President Obama's attempts to provide aid to Americans who need it and regulate the industries whose unchecked, rapacious greed contributed enormously to the current turmoil. Anyone who does not know someone who has lost a job, lost benefits, or had their hours cut back lives a very special and privileged life, indeed.
I'm no fan of deficit spending--contrary to conservative myth, nobody is-- but I'm more worried about the impact our financial present will have on the future if the government doesn't act to stem the suffering and halt the downturn. Believing in the rationality of the free market is what got us into this mess. Government is our best hope for restoring equilibrium.
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