More Bagging on Tea Partiers

Insanity is defined by some as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Terminal insanity is doing more of the same because the problem before was you didn’t take a pure enough form of the drug. Tea-party Republicans are like alcoholics, deciding that the pinot noir version of conservatism was insufficient, and we need to go to straight bourbon, or in the case of Sen. Inhofe, only vodka without a chaser.

Self-destruction is often the result of self-deception. How true this is of today’s xenophobic, conspiracy mongering, Beck worshipping, followers of nonsense peddled from the Marketing Firm of Piddle, Pooh and Woo (aka Fox News). The age of enlightenment had a brief and tenuous re-birth, only to awaken the demons and demagogues who may have faced a temporary set-back, but have not changed their goals and aspirations.

This being said, I acknowledge that the tea partiers come in different stripes and many in the corporate elite are worried. There is a populist element to this uprising that should worry them. For years, your corporate Republicans have worked hard to sell middle-class Caucasians of voting against their own economic interests in favor of corporate interests by diverting their attention with social issues and by fostering cultural wars. Their success has now created a monster that may devour them as well. TARP, was as Republican as a flag lapel pin, and many Liptonites don’t subscribe to that brand of Republicanism. Where will all this sort out in the backrooms of Republican-ville, I can’t tell at this point.

During September of 2004, I had the pleasure of meeting with Sen. Bob Bennett and listened to him tell our group that his election was assured, and that it was going to be a Republican year. He rather smugly indicated that social issues were going to doom the Democrats this year. I thought it rather arrogant at the time that he considered his re-election a matter of fact with two months to go in the campaign. Even so, Bennett was an effective Republican senator who represented corporate interests as well as any good conservative could. He was pragmatic enough to work with others to make sure Utah got its share of funding projects for things like roads and public transit. Replacing him will be an ideologue who has more passion than wisdom, whose devotion to irrational dogma is not out of political opportunism, but out of deep-held belief. This new brand of Republican believed Reagan’s rhetoric, never seeing that the rhetoric was purely a political strategy rather than a recipe for good governance. And he will represent one vote in fifty in our Republic. And there are enough like-minded individuals who could join his ranks, that those of us devoted to enlightenment ideals should be very concerned.