Reading The Tea Leaves

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Anti-tax tea parties took place throughout the United States on April 15th, the day the IRS collects its many pounds of flesh. However, it’s hard to gage whether the protests represent the beginning of a grassroots mass movement or is nothing more than a flash of anger that will dissipate as baseball season heats up with the approaching summer. At first, the mainstream media dismissed the announcements of anti-tax rallies by the tea party organizers. When the protest crowds appeared to be larger than the average pro-abortion gathering, the media attempted to dismiss rally participants as nuts or as Republican shills

President Barrack Obama used tax day to deliver remarks expressing what taxes mean to him: “For too long, we’ve seen taxes used as a wedge to scare people into supporting policies that actually increase the burden on working people instead of helping them live their dreams. That has to change, and that’s the work that we’ve begun.”

For Obama, separating working men and women from their money helps them to live their dreams. With $3.6 trillion in the “stimulus” pipeline, Obama wields the power to make those dreams come true, provided you can deliver votes to the dream weaver Obama. This, of course, is the result of electing a community organizer to lead the country. It’s so much easier to organize when, like Al Capone, extorted money is so plentiful.

Shortly after taking office, Obama was taken aback by a question put to him by a New York Times reporter. “On a flight from Ohio to Washington on Friday,” the Times reported, “Mr. Obama was asked whether his domestic policies suggested that he was a socialist, as some conservatives have implied. “The answer would be no,” he said, laughing…”

90 minutes after the interview concluded, Obama called the reporter back. “It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question,” Mr. Obama told the reporter from the Oval Office. “It wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement, the prescription drug plan, without a source of funding.” Of course, Obama was speaking of the massive spending motivated by President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” President Obama sought political cover for his brand of socialism by pointing out the obvious: the new Democratic administration would increase the size and power of government by building on a foundation prepared by its so-called “opposition party.”

The reason I have my doubts about the staying power of the tea party movement is that so many Republican politicians spoke at the various rallies. Rep. Paul Ryan appeared at a Wisconsin rally, while Rep. John Shadegg spoke in Phoenix – and so it went across the county. The problem is that most of the republican politicians who gave their support at the many tea parties, voted in support of President Bush’s bailout legislation. With Obama in the White House, Republican politicians vote like conservatives now that their opposition is nothing more than meaningless symbolism. Where was their fiscal conservatism when they controlled both houses of congress for twelve years?

To stay viable, the tea party must run as fast as possible from the party of George W. Bush and Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. With Republican participation, it’s only a matter of time before the tax revolt’s passion is diminished or destroyed by George W. Bush’s brand of conservative “compassion.” Democratic policies and Republican bipartisanship lead our nation to its current economic and moral predicament.

A tax revolt culminated in the creation of this nation. Let’s hope it can also create a third party. Only then can our country claim to have a viable two-party system. This, more than anything else, is why tea parties scare the Democrats and their shills in the mainstream media, and why Republicans politicians had better start reading the tea leaves.