Amazing:
POLITICO
The tea party's terrorist tactics
By: William Yeomans
July 29, 2011 08:22 AM EDT
It has become commonplace to call the tea party faction in the House “hostage takers.” But they have now become full-blown terrorists.
They have joined the villains of American history who have been sufficiently craven to inflict massive harm on innocent victims to achieve their political goals. A strong America has always stood firm in the face of terrorism. That tradition is in jeopardy, as Congress and President Barack careen toward an uncertain outcome in the tea party- manufactured debt crisis.
We expect this kind of blunt, gut-punching honest language from Katrina vanden Heuvel. It's not even surprising to hear it from Fareed Zakaria.
William Yeomans is a professor at American University's Washington College of Law. He has a distinguished career serving the public interest, including as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
So, what's surprising about Prof. Yeomans' piece on the tea party as terrorists isn't that he wrote it, but that it appears in POLITICO, not exactly a bastion of critical thought, let alone anything resembling progressive opinion.
Perhaps it's a measure of the reality of the disaster that's about to befall us that even POLITICO feels the need to sound the alarm by giving voice to this kind of no-nonsense and absolutely spot-on piece of political writing.
Please read the entire piece. It's not long, and is absolutely worth a couple of minutes of your time. Below, some additional quotes.
As we stumble closer to Aug. 2, it has become clear that many in the tea party are willing to inflict massive harm on the American people to obtain their political objective of a severely shrunken federal government. Their persistence in rejecting compromise, even as the economic effects of the phony crisis they have created mount, has taken their radicalism beyond tough negotiating, beyond even hostage-taking.
I very much like the fact that Yeomans refuses to bestow any semblance of dignity on these people by capitalizing "tea party". But is calling them terrorists over the top?
Terrorism is a tough term, but, unfortunately, it describes tea party tactics precisely... Rather than reject the unthinkable, the tea party harnessed this potential harm as its weapon of mass destruction... Their dream is an alternate version of the United States — before the New Deal, the Great Society and civil rights laws alleviated massive inequality and injustice — and extended American opportunity.
The tea party faction could not achieve these goals through straight up democratic means because of their unpopularity. So it resorted to its threat of mass destruction. They were able to do so because they formed a disciplined bloc that gave them leverage over the House leadership and because of the threat that members who did not go along would face primary challenges from the right.
Hard-core tea party members were empowered by their oft-repeated disdain for reelection. They were liberated to pursue their radical course because they were freed from the traditional constraint on members of Congress, imposed by the need to face the voters.
And here's the part where the Democratic buy-off on the "shock doctrine" framing is so damaging, and enabling of tea party terrorism (emphasis is mine):
Their goals were also served by the Republican Party’s success in selling the notion that the country faces an urgent debt crisis.
Here's the bottom line, literally and figuratively:
The president should insist on a clean debt ceiling bill, Congress should get it to him — as it has dozens of times in the past — and the president should sign it promptly. So the nation can get on with addressing the truly significant problems that it faces.
Is it too late to get President Obama to call for this? It has seemed so until now. But we are truly facing a national emergency, every bit as devastating -- if not more so -- than September 11. President Obama has an opportunity for his transformational moment, not just to save his presidency, but to save this nation. We absolutely cannot afford to give in to terrorism -- and it's time to call it exactly that. Time is fast running out.
Contact the White House
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Update: Reading my last paragraph, "call for" is too restrained. Obama must demand that Congress pass a clean bill. Simply, forcefully. Now. No more discussion, no more compromises, no "grand deal" before Tuesday. And he has to make it clear that he is prepared to use his constitutional powers to declare a national emergency and prevent default if Congress refuses to act. Such a stance would give him ample political cover, make any attempt to impeach him backfire, and hopefully help to present a more persuasive legal case should this go before the Supreme Court. Is there really any other viable option that averts disaster at this point?
I appreciate the Rec List.