For many of us, the Tea Party is just an endless source of hilarity. Paul, Angle, Miller, O’Donnell, c’mon stop it we’re pissing ourselves. How can any rational person comprehend this nutty parallel universe, a looking glass world of mad hatters and red queens that come across as overblown parody except for the millions of ordinary Americans who actually buy into it. But the Tea Party is a crafty con that’s taking in more than the suckers on the right. It’s taking the left for a serious ride as well, and with this distraction comes a growing loss of insight as to how the economy is shaping up as the relevant issue for Dems to face come November.
Back in June I attended a Tea Party Express rally. I went to hear a speech from Utah’s US Senate frontrunner, Mike Lee, who graced a rapt crowd with his smiley oleaginous promises to throttle in Grover’s bathtub the socialistic demons of public education and the EPA, SEC, FDA and every other federal agency he could think of. His message was echoed repeatedly from the impressive amount of stage scaffolding and rock and roll lighting trusses that David and Charles Koch so generously signed invoices for: Brave troops guarding oil wells excepted, anything that comes from the government currently threatens the opportunity for laissez faire capitalist demagogues, such as Mike Lee, and profiteers, such as his employer, polluter Energy Solutions, to snooker the costumed and mispelled sign-carrying faithful. But in my private snark was I that much smarter than the guy next to me dressed as Paul Revere?
While there was the usual kowtowing to Christian conservative wedge issues such as abortion and prayer in schools, the Tea Party message is essentially economic. And I found out that most Tea Partiers are, dare I say, quite ordinary and not all that reactionary when you meet them- The mantra goes like this: The Democrats are taking our money and spending it on people not like us! Paul Revere could be a social security check cashing medicaid recipient, but when has pointing out hypocrisy done anything other than alienate the hypocritical?
Then the festivities degenerated into this latter day minstrel show-
And they say the Tea Party is just a bunch of white people! Seriously, if you were to peek behind all the bunting you would find a fleet of shiny new diesel motorcoaches buswrapped with a facsimile of the US Constitution, bought and paid for by a pair of Kansas billionaires who couldn’t give a rat’s patoot about Jesus but sure have a serious dog in the energy regulation/cap and trade fight. And that’s what the Tea Party is really about- another bread and circuses tactic in a mammoth showdown between energy companies, which oppose cap and trade, and the financial services industry, which stands to profit from it. And to some degree, we as liberals are being played on our side by the banking industry just as the conservatives are being stooged by the Koch brothers.
I’ll admit, I’m no expert on cap and trade and energy credits- but even as an environmental activist, cap and trade has an undeniable whiff of financial skullduggery; what a great way for Goldman Sachs et al. to monetize all energy production and usage into a commision based revenue stream that potentially dwarfs the current stock market casino of today. In any case, like most complex economic issues, the media has made shoddy work of explaining it to the public. All we hear is Waterworld. All Tea Partiers hear is Tax. But it’s not just cap and trade that the citizenry can’t fathom, it’s every economic issue that resists televised dumbing down. As Dean Baker notes in todays Politico arena:
If reporters worked for their paycheck, they would be informing voters that the vast majority of federal money goes to pay the Social Security and Medicare benefits that the tea party folks insist that the government keeps its hands off, as well as the Defense Department, and of course interest on past spending in these areas. The items that the tea party types like to yell about generally don't amount to a hill of beans in the budget....So, if the Democrats can get the media to do its job and explain the budget and the economy to the public this fall, then it should help them enormously. However, experts think it is very unlikely that the media will do its job.
The Tea Partiers are doing what American mainstream voters have always tried to do- act in their assumed economic self interest. And when the average voter feels his or her ability to spend money is threatened, well, that’s all the evidence they need to believe that the whole world is coming to an end. We are first and foremost a consumerist society, so all spiritual posturing aside, as Americans we most of all worship at the Mallter.
We’re possibly headed for a grim electoral reckoning come first Tuesday, but we can't blame the Tea Partiers. Every time we poke fun of them, mocking their unedumacated ways, we buy into their corporate puppetmasters’ manufactured culture war. How are Dems to prevail if they plug into the Koch and Fox power grid that pits Hard-Working God-Fearing Patriots against the sneering EuroCollegeMulticulturalElites?
President Obama risks falling into this very trap if he heeds the advice to paint the Tea Partiers as extremists. He may be correct in an academic sense, but he’d be remiss in alienating millions of voters by broadbrushing them as fundamentalist wackos. Better to recognize them for who they truly are; angry and scared Americans facing a declining standard of living. Whether this decline is due to the real challenges of unemployment and inflation or the perceived bogeymen of immigration and environmental regulation is an argument best made after the economy itself has been addressed.
During this election cycle Dems bring up social or cultural issues at their peril- conservatives will use it as proof that Dems are clueless about what the voters really care about. It’s up to Democrats to focus on the economy above all else, and rise above the sideshows that distract from that. Because in all honesty, does it really matter what Xtine O’Donnell thinks about...anything?