There has been a feeling, completely justified in my view, that the Republicans in both the House and Senate have been trying to sabotage the economy as a way to make it more likely that they will win majorities in those Houses and to win the White House.
It has been slowly building on the Left side of the blogosphere and is now starting to break out into the mainstream media a bit.
The evidence is mounting. The Republicans have voted, en mass, against the Presidents jobs bill, even though independent analysis of the plan says it will create nearly 2 million jobs and the CBO scoring says that it will reduce the budget deficit.
They have sent letters to Federal Reserve Chairman Berneke insisting that he not intervene to help the economy. They have failed to present any plan for jobs that is not a retread of the Republican “cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes” plan. If that were going to work a decade the Bush tax rates would have us at full employment, not staggering along under the weight of 9.1% unemployment and a huge number more who are off the rolls or underemployed.
That is before we even get to the multiple shut down threats, the debt-ceiling debacle and the GOP forced downgrade of our national credit rating by Standard and Poor’s.
Yet for all of that this has flown pretty much under the radar of the traditional media. Why is that? Well Republicans have not rebutted these claims. This is mostly, as Steve Bene has been pointing out lately, because even having the argument is bad news for them.
As anyone on the Left side of things can see if this meme starts to come out then it can grow and be talked about. The level of discontent in the country only works for the Republicans if they are not seen as the ones causing the problems.
But that might be breaking loose now. You see one of the Tea Party bloggers has gone out and made the case for economic ruin explicit.
Her name is Melisa Brookstone, a Teahadist from Colorado who wrote yesterday a little manifesto asking business not to hire to make things worse by not hiring anyone until the ‘war against this nation and business” is ended.
The pledge starts out with:
Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.
Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.
And ends with this pledge:
I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.
Basically Ms. Brookstone is trying to go all Galt on the economy and wants others to do the same. Clearly she is a wicky-in-the-wacky-woo, but she is part of the Tea Party movement and it opens up an opportunity.
You see we should try to make the Republicans in the House and Senate who so love the Tea Party own or disown this idea. There is no good answer to the question; “Senator do you support Ms. Brookstone’s contention that business should not hire until the Obama administration and its policies are removed?”
If they answer yes, then they are on the record for supporting an moratorium on hiring, for political purposes. If they answer no, then they are getting sideways with their Tea Party base that is completely unafraid to primary any politician that dose not Kow-Tow to their insane world view.
Best of all, it puts one more brick in the wall of the idea (true and becoming more and more apparent daily) that Republicans have put party over nation and will do anything, even keep the suffering of the American people high unnecessarily, if it they think it will help them electorally in 2012.
Ms. Brookstone wants to be a player; she has a pretty big website and is seemingly connected with the Tea Party Nation, so it is time to make that connection expensive for Republicans. To do that we need to get some reporters to ask the question.
So here is my suggestion; let’s contact a few reporters and asks them to ask the question of the front runners. Here is the contact info for several reporters who might actually do the deed.
Ezra Klein - ezra.klein@gmail.com
Greg Sargent - sargentg@washpost.com
David Gregory (I don’t have a lot of faith that he’ll ask but it is worth trying)
The idea is to get them to ask Tea Party favorites like Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sen. Jim DeMint if they support or oppose this idea, and why. That’s all we need, just to get the cat set firmly amongst the pigeons.
Another tactic is to start asking this question ourselves in the comments section of any article about any prominent Tea Party Republican. If they want to avoid talking about this, then let’s make it as hard as possible for them to do so, eh?
The floor is yours.