PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

There is nothing “conservative” about the so called Tea Party  groups. Nothing. Their program is radical, even scary radical.

We had a long summer of news about the Tea Party and a massive amount of speculation about what role they will play after the mid-term elections in just over two weeks. The NY Times was out with a story yesterday (10.14.10) that says their polls and number crunching indicate the following: first, that candidates supported by the various groups have won Republican nominations in enough Republican leaning districts that they are bound to win a good many seats in the US House and Senate and, second, that they will likely have a major influence on American policy and government going forward.

Despite all the news coverage, how many people actually have any clue about the purpose of the Tea Party groups? There is no official platform, just a collection of loose and sometimes wild ideas. Radical it is, conservative it isn’t. Here is what the Times story said, for starters:

...significantly cut spending and taxes, to repeal health care legislation and financial regulations passed this year, and to phase out Social Security and Medicare in favor of personal savings accounts.

Are these people totally freaking nuts? Repeal of health care would be popular, because most people don’t know what is in the legislation anyway. Repeal financial regulations? Yeah, let’s set Wall Street “free again” so it can get us in another fine mess? That will surely set many hearts aflutter. End social security and medicare? One of the largest cohorts in American history, those born in the generation after WW II, is moving toward retirement age (some have already called it quits), so you’ve got, what?, maybe forty to eighty million Americans to be against that move? This is smart politics? But wait! There is more in the Times article:

While there is no official Tea Party platform, candidates share a determination to repeal the health care legislation passed in March. They vow not only to permanently extend the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush and to eliminate the estate tax, but also to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax or a national sales tax. Several candidates advocate abolishing the Internal Revenue Service entirely.

This is a radical agenda that would likely scare the pants, and all other clothing, off most American voters. It seems the Republicans have given birth to a monster inside their own house and now they are going to have to deal with the results. Why oh why would we extend massive tax cuts for the rich when the nation is so deeply in debt and getting deeper every   day? So some rich guy down the road will possibly give us a job cleaning his bathrooms for eight dollars an hour? Why has this agenda not be covered in the major media outlets?

The Tea Party people, in their infinite wisdom, have viewed the American Constitution and have decided that it prohibits almost everything that the Federal government does. Solution: shut it all down. Again, here is a quote from the Times story:

 Paul Gosar, a dentist who defeated several other candidates, including the 2008 nominee, to win the primary in a Republican-leaning district in Arizona, told an interviewer that “adhering to the words of the founding fathers means putting the government role in the health care, the Department of Education, and yes, entitlements, all on the table for a constitutional examination.”

 In a questionnaire for a Tea Party group, Steve Stivers, running for Congress in Ohio, said that only four departments ” Defense, Justice, State and Treasury” perform “constitutional roles,meaning “you could eliminate the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy and others to return to a constitutionally pure government.”

Despite the danger for more grid lock and creating a massive mess out of the national government, I kind of like one aspect of the Tea Party groups: at least they are picking something and stating it honestly, at least if one can believe that what they are saying now is, in fact, their real program. The rest of our national politics can be divided into two segments: the mush-fest of half truth and generalization that the establishment candidates of both parties employ in their language and the scream-fest of the right and far right. Neither one of those is particularly attractive. “Straight talk, even straight talk that leads directly to hell, has a big appeal for many voters because they can’t understand, they can’t cut through, the mealy mouth words of the incumbent office holders.

If I had to guess, I would say we are in for a long season of great difficulty in America. The voters are about to send to Washington a group of people who don’t believe there should be a Washington, DC, who don’t believe, in effect, we should have a national government. On the other hand, this whole thing could implode and finally destroy what is left of the Republican party. Then what?

Doug Terry, 10.15.10

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