Intimidation Nation

What is it about Tea Party Republicans?

These are the same people who turned town hall meetings into near-riots throughout 2009. They are the ones who were big on carrying guns to political rallies. They fantasized about armed rebellion.

There seems to be a pattern here of politics through intimidation. It was repeated in the  budget talks last week. Shouting “Cut it or shut it!” they negotiated Federal spending as an ultimatum, trying to alter our national priorities on matters such as medical care for the poor, clean air, Health Care Reform, NPR, financial reform — and threatening to shut down the Federal government if they didn’t get their way.

At the last minute, with the clock ticking, Republican legislators found themselves hostage to the most extreme elements of their own party. They had little choice except to hold Democrats hostage or lose control of the Republican party. Going forward from this point, if Republicans back down from the narrow extremist Tea Party policy demands, they’re

Somebody get me a tissue

going to earn the ire of the very people who have been trying to intimidate the Democrats. The Teapers have already shown they’re willing to primary Republicans all the way out of politics, even willing to turn seats over to Democrats to punish those of their own who don’t conform. And in the vein much like wagging the dog, Speaker Boehner is holding the tail of a rabid mongrel and has no choice but to unleash it upon the Democrats.

But what is the end game? How much longer can elected Republicans knuckle under to the Tea Party politics of intimidation that is not only doing untold damage to their party, but even to the very nature of American political discourse?

Let’s look beyond the immediate manufactured crisis over meeting America’s spending responsibilities. Paul Ryan has outlined a floorplan for dismantling nearly a century of progress toward creating prosperity, for the sake of placating far-right talking points. He has promised soon to provide a plan to dismantle Social Security in ways similar to how he proposes to undo Medicare and Medicaid. The goal seems to be to return to the Good Old Days of Herbert Hoover, with 90% + of our seniors in poverty, eating dog food and living on the street while they slowly die from untreated medical conditions.

Ryan’s blueprint doesn’t even get rid of the deficit. He provides tax kickbacks to people in the upper brackets, cutting their taxes by almost the same amount by which he slashes domestic spending. So as the middle class is demolished and impoverished, the wealthy elites continue to profit.

The Tea Party seems to crave a vision of the past, an illusion of their aging demographic that no longer exists and can no longer be possible. Their failure to comprehend the changes going on around them is going to drag us further into a morass that will become harder to extricate ourselves from. Is this what we really want? Is this truly the world we want to be bullied into accepting?

Related Articles

• Tea Party Turns on House Speaker Boehner (theroot.com)
• “Speaker Boehner Says ‘No Daylight’ Between Him And Tea Party” and related posts (wnyc.org)
• The Ryan Game (538Refugees.com)