The tea party is revolting — but when are they not?
HuffPo does actually pay some writers, including Jon Ward — who reports there will be no Tax Day Tea Parties this year. Oh, and the budget deal we’re all talking about this week? The tea party is furious about it. Quoting the chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Liberty Caucus: “we elected Republicans because we were tired of the behind-closed-door antics of the beltway boys and four months in we are right back where we started.”
That’s the problem in a nutty nutshell, nuttier than a pecan pistachio peanut-butter sandwich: the GOP perfected the art of closed-door antics about the time bread was invented. They haven’t been serious about deficit reduction since 1978. Only someone willfully blind or insane could vote for Republicans under the illusion that they would ever change Washington for the better or cheaper. The fact that tea parties have done exactly this, and that the results never satisfy them, proves once again that this “movement” is exactly what I always said it is.
Boehner’s best efforts aren’t enough for Mark Meckler, either. You’ll remember him as the pyramid schemer behind Tea Party Patriots. Ward quotes him on the budget compromise:
“The deal was cut in a back room, announced without specifics, members supported it without specifics and without reading the bill (shocking, right?), and now it turns out not to be even as it was vaguely presented. Sickening,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.
“And amidst all this, Speaker Boehner proclaims that there is ‘no daylight’ between he and the Tea Party. If he actually believes that, he must have his eyes closed,” Meckler told HuffPost.
Meckler accurately describes the world of so-called “multilevel marketing” in that first paragraph, doesn’t he? All those members buying brochures and samples with the promise of wealth and success, sending their hard-earned cash up the pyramid while never really making any progress at financial independence by selling “natural” diet pills…and at the top, Mark Meckler counting his millions while he pulls the Overton Window to the right, ever to the right.
Other tea party organizations are not good enough for Meckler, whose organization is the “real” grassroots — see how that works? And as long as you keep your eyes closed, you’ll never notice that he’s in it for himself, that his agenda doesn’t serve you like it serves Mark Meckler. The revolution has been monetized!
Ward closes with Bob MacGuffie, a conservative tea party activist in Connecticut, calling the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget “the main event:”
“This is the fight worth having,” MacGuffie said. “We want to engage in a ferocious battle over the debt ceiling and 2012 budget–bring it on–we’ll give the Republicans a spine by holding our bayonets firmly at their backs.”
And march them right over a cliff? Yes! The tea party spokesnuts in Ward’s piece are just fine with threatening the good faith and credit of the United States. They don’t care if Uncle Sam’s checks bounce. Best of all, the GOP appears ready to flirt with that disaster; the Beltway will not like the unserious buffoonery, which won’t be serious enough for the tea party, which will give them no credit when they fold again.
Pass the popcorn.
