Posted on 21 Oct 2010 at 9:56pm By GavinoMainstream media commentators and Washington political insiders are loath to accept that America’s mid-term elections will represent much more than another swing in the electoral pendulum. It is a natural occurrence, they say, with Democrats looking forward to the pendulum moving back in their direction as the cycle progresses and Republicans riding a wave of public dissatisfaction to take back control of Congress.
The end of the road for Big Government in America...?
The alternate view is that the mid-term elections will prove to be a watershed moment, measuring the growing strength of the Tea Party’s popular revolt against bloated government. With his new health care entitlement program and massive welfare spending, Barack Obama has blown open the ideological debate on the role of government. After decades of expanding federal government by stealth, thanks to Obama, liberalism has been unmasked and is on the defensive.
To assuage voters, Democrats are now desperately – and dishonestly – campaigning as supporters of tax relief. Few are hailing ObamaCare or the failed $787 billion “stimulus”. But the deception won’t work because the productive side of the U.S. economy has signaled that it is no longer prepared to subsidize the non-productive side at ever increasing levels.
Significantly, the Tea Party is a movement operating outside of the traditional party boundaries. Many commentators fail to appreciate that the measure of success for its supporters will not be the size of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, but the act of turning off the spigot on new government spending. A Republican victory is merely a means to reverse the spending trend. Republican appropriators can expect a rough ride if they return to their pork barrel political ways.
Ironically, the anticipated Republican victory may not overly concern the president. His spending programs are already in the bag and with a massive budget deficit he is now ready for stage two of his spend and tax agenda. On January 1, taxes will rise for all Americans as the Bush tax rate cuts expire. Not accidentally, this will coincide with the publication of recommendations by the president’s deficit commissionto introduce a national sales tax.
President Obama is set to position himself as fiscally responsible and politically magnanimous in pushing for new taxes to reduce the deficit, while casting conservatives as irresponsible and rigidly ideological for resisting them. One view is that the president will ride this approach to a second term of office by dividing his opponents.
But with the deficit so large, and set to expand exponentially in 2014 once ObamaCare fully kicks in, the Tea Party will have plenty of energy and momentum to sustain itself well beyond next month’s election. The growth of the new media has diminished control of news by the left. And events like Glenn Beck’s recent Washington, DC rally demonstrate that there is intense public support for more responsible governance.
November 2 is the beginning. It’s tea time!
I hope that there will be some capable conservative leadership showing up with the incoming crowd. As a whole, the Republicans that have been in D.C. for a while have morphed into something politically akin to moderate a Democrat. It is going to take much time, thought, and hard work to fix this monumental break in the levee. The McCain – ites have none of these attributes, and, thus far, have proven to be inconsequential in stopping Obama’s “march to the sea”.
The task at hand will be on the shoulders of the new comers.
[As a side bar thought - - - put the "best enjoyed while listening to . . . " at the start of the blog! Shouldn't that be obvious??]