Radical Anti-tax ‘Tea party’ Movement Causing Terror Scares in DC
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An instrumental part of the radical smear effort being waged by well-funded conservative fringe groups against Pres. Obama is what is being called the ‘tea party’ movement. Members of the movement have been sending envelopes full of loose tea or tea bags, labeled “tax protest” to members of Congress, raising security concerns and provoking hazmat investigations, evacuations and other measures oriented toward addressing bio-chemical terror threats.
The movement is based on the Republican party’s mythologizing of an Obama conspiracy to raise taxes across the board and cripple the American economy. It is an electoral ploy, which has led thousands across the country to stage angry protests, based on allegations not at all supported by the Obama tax plan. The manner in which the movement aims to channel the rage of its followers in an effort to bring down the Democratic president has some wondering if the actual intent of the mailings is to inspire fear, or to extort policy decisions based on that fear.
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Prominent figures like Nobel-laureate economist Paul Krugman, highly qualified to comment on the validity of tax policy proposals or the validity of attacks made against them, have written of the shame and disgrace this movement brings to American politics and the Republican party specifically. There is evidence that FOX News television has actively been promoting the movement, seeking to stoke the anger of those who might join it by delivering highly interpretive headlines and casting Obama as a “socialist”, a “tax-and-spend-liberal” with no mind for fiscal responsibility, and a liar.
The Huffington Post writes “The tea parties, [Krugman] points out, are funded by typical Republican billionaires and promoted by Fox News. The crazy attacks that spring up at them resemble the ones levied at Clinton.” There seems to be an active, concerted, national effort, under the banner of the Republican party, to sow fear and vitriol, using false rumors and fudged numbers, against the Obama administration.
It’s worth noting that in times of Republican government, the Republican party often talked of the absolute obligation of the opposition to fall in line and follow the will of their president. Some more moderate voices were able to at least admit the possibility of a “loyal opposition”, required to support the “commander-in-chief” but permitted to oppose specific policy choices.
Where is the loyal opposition now? What major Republican figure of national stature has actively stood up to defend the administration and the people’s government against this campaign of lies and hostility, which has once against stoked, to the grave shame of the Republican party, threats of violence? What major national Republican figure has denounced party members’ call for a Taliban-style “insurgency” against Obama?
Are we no longer able to understand that the will to do harm, or willful opposition to reality, are not political opinions or valid bases for crafting policy solutions? That we can’t justify one party’s lust for total dominance and the eradication of the ideas their competitors believe in, while forbidding that other party from doing the same?
The tea party movement is committing acts that border on (technically speaking) terrorist acts, and the leadership of the anti-tax movement need to consider not only the level of truth in their rhetoric, but whether or not they are destroying their own movement by aligning themselves with angry ideologues whose real aim is not better tax policy but the deposing of a democratically elected American government.
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