One might ask, why does the Tea Party get so much more attention from the media now, than the anti-war movement got in 2003?  The answer is simple: money.  The Tea Party is very well-funded by sponsors with deep pockets.  The media loves money.  The media is not interested in a movement without money, even if it is a movement that includes millions of voters and activists.  Money buys airtime: it’s really that simple. To their shame, the mainstream media refuses to ask any tough questions, so it falls to small blogs like Self-Directed Society.  And the question of the day is this:

Do the Tea Party loudmouths have a double standard, or are they simply hypocrites?

Wherever they are coming from, it is finally time to put a lid on all the hot air spewing forth from the Tea Party wingnuts.  Their arguments are self-contradictory; their principles evaporate in the face of their self-interest.  Their little costume party is too loud for our residential neighborhood of democracy, and they don’t listen when we politely ask them to take it back inside.  It is time to file a noise complaint.

Note:  Because no Tea Party candidate has been elected to high public office yet, the party itself does not have any credible voting record.  Therefore, in order to make some of the following assessments, I was compelled to consider that these people are conservative, and until recently they were presumably mostly voting for Republicans.  Given that some of the prominent Tea Party candidates standing for election in just a few weeks include the “anti-masturbation” Christine O’Donnell and the “second amendment remedies” Sharron Angle, I feel very well justified in drawing these conclusions.

Contradiction: Bush deficit vs. Obama deficit

Firstly, they love to harp on the deficit.  Yes, I agree the deficit is too big; but please, whose fault is that?  When Democrat William Jefferson Clinton left office, the United States federal government enjoyed a budget surplus. Then Republican George Walker Bush showed up, spent all the money, drove the economy into the ground, and borrowed billions with no intention of ever having to pay it back.  (One might argue that his secret agenda was ultimately to bankrupt Social Security by forcing the government to dip into money that had been set aside for social welfare programs; but I don’t have time to get into that here.)  So tell me, who was the better money manager?  Looks to me like it was the Democrat.  Yet where were all these so-called deficit hawks when Bush was in office?  Where was the Tea Party then?  Were they telling Bush to balance the budget?  No, these same individuals were applauding the unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy and the unfunded war for corporate profit.  The fact that Bush borrowed money to pay for everything the government did during his entire presidency did not seem to bother these people at the time.  Why?  Because he was one of theirs, and could do no wrong.  Apparently, in their minds the deficit is OK as long as it’s a Republican deficit; but once the Democrats take over, suddenly the deficit is evil and the government should cease all spending immediately.

The only conclusion available is that their objections are not based on principles, but on partisanship.  They aren’t angry about the deficit; they’re angry about democracy.  This double standard is evidenced by their noisy outcry against the Obama stimulus package, a resounding contrast to their earlier deafening silence in the face of Bush-era policies of bailing out Bear Stearns and AIG and setting up the $700 billion TARP fund.

What’s that you say?  The Tea Party wasn’t founded yet when George W. Bush was still in office?  Well, why the hell not?  Wasn’t Bush doing the very things that they claim to be so mad about?  If that’s the case, then why didn’t they put on their wigs and their tricorner hats at that time?  Oh, I get it: they didn’t protest against Bush because they don’t get mad at Republicans.  The very fact that they waited for a Democrat to take office before they voiced their objections undermines any other arguments that they might make.

Incidentally, I addressed the deficit in the book, section 5.3.1 “The National Debt,” which states in part:

Paying off the massive, record-breaking national debt incurred by the recklessly irresponsible spending habits of the hypocritical self-proclaimed “fiscal conservatives” will be a drain on the economy for years to come.

Contradiction: deficit reduction vs. tax cuts for the rich

Consider, if you will, a popular conservative policy point: tax cuts.  Presently, Republicans and their Tea Party contingent want to extend Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy.  Never mind that the country could not afford the tax cuts in the first place, and cannot afford them going forward.  Never mind that allowing the tax cuts to sunset would allow the government to begin paying down the deficit.  It turns out that paying down the deficit is not as important to them as tax cuts for the wealthy.  President Obama is backing a proposal that would extend the tax cuts for all but the wealthiest 2% of Americans; but that’s not good enough for the Republicans, because those wealthy 2% include their biggest campaign contributors.  (Actually, as I discuss in section 8.1.1.2 of the book, Congress is disproportionately composed of extremely wealthy individuals: the legislators themselves are members of that 2% bracket, and therefore our nation’s highest legislative body is heavily skewed in favor of the interests of the aristocracy.)

Contradiction: Reduce government spending vs. maintain military spending

Conservatives love to talk as though they intend to reduce government spending.  But then when it’s time to write budgets, well, they don’t.  Seriously, the plain-spoken fact is that conservatives do not reduce government spending.  What they do instead is shift spending away from social services and programs that benefit the public, and put that money into the military-industrial complex.  Since the greatest beneficiaries of such actions are the people who own the military contracting companies, arguably this policy boils down an anti-Robin Hood agenda of stealing from the poor to give to the rich.  Be that as it may, the point is that military spending is the single largest line item on the federal budget (not to mention the supplementals) and without a concrete commitment to reduce military spending, all this blabber about reducing government spending is just so much hot air.

Contradiction:  “Small government” vs. “War on terror” Big-Brother legislation

One frequently hears the conservative mantra that “the government should stay out of our lives.”  However, when one examines what they mean by this, it turns out they are really saying, “the government should not regulate businesses or tax rich people.”  In fact, conservatives are very fond of using government as a tool to interfere in the lives of ordinary people.  Just a few examples:

• Conservatives use government as a weapon to interfere in a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices.
• Conservatives overwhelmingly oppose health care legislation that would end discriminatory insurance industry practices against sick individuals.
• Conservatives object to gay anything: marriage, civil unions, serving in the military, and so on.
• Conservatives consistently try to use public schools to force their religious and political doctrines upon the public at large through their “school prayer” agenda and their insistence on the use of intentionally biased school textbooks.
• Conservatives support restrictive cannabis prohibition policies that incarcerate upstanding citizens in for-profit prisons.
• Conservatives support legislation such as the so-called USA Patriot Act, which expands the government’s powers of search, seizure, and surveillance, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.

To focus on that last item: if the screaming Tea Party and the broader Republican party actually opposed “big government,” then in order to maintain a consistent ideology they would have to also oppose the USA Patriot Act.  The Patriot Act is by definition a monstrous expansion of the powers of the federal government to spy on its own citizens.  If “big government” is a government that interferes in the lives of individuals, then there could hardly be a clearer example of “big government” than a government that:

• conducts wiretaps without a warrant,
• conducts “trap and trace” on billions of e-mail messages without a warrant or even a predetermined purpose, and
• conducts searches of an individual’s private living space without a warrant.

These are just a few of the provisions authorized by the Patriot Act; yet the self-styled so-called patriots in the Tea Party never bring up this objection in their protests.  The USA Patriot Act is a truly disturbing instrument for the government to reach directly into the lives of its citizens; a frightening step towards a totalitarian police state.  Anyone who believes in freedom and privacy should strongly voice their opposition to the Patriot Act.  But the Tea Party frankly does not give a damn about this type of government intrusion.  They are just angry that insurance companies might have to sell expensive health coverage policies to people with pre-existing conditions.  They are angry that the government might try to regulate businesses in a way that would be good for consumers.

Do not be fooled by their silly costumes: these people are not in favor of Constitutional protections for individual rights.  What they want is a government run by the rich for the benefit of the rich.  That is their one true agenda.  All the rest is just so much hot air.

Conclusion

The Tea Party is hypocritical at best, and more likely, completely disingenuous. The contradiction between the Tea Party’s stated agenda and their actual policies is insurmountable. Based on what they have chosen to protest against and when they have chosen to do the protesting, the Tea Party has demonstrated that their true purpose is to water down the Constitution, to repeal consumer protections, and to abolish public policies that benefit the actual public, in favor of a militaristic neo-feudalism.  Or perhaps the Tea Party’s main objection is really to the fact that there is a black Democrat in the White House.  All their other arguments fall apart in the wash.

Yet somehow this party’s spokespeople like to pretend that it is the party of small government??? The party of fiscal responsibility? How do a surveillance state and record deficits square with small government?

Give it up, Republicans. Admit that your agenda is the relentless push for a totalitarian state. Admit that all this “tea party” grandstanding is just so much posturing. The only “freedom” you represent is the freedom of large corporations to take advantage of the people. Your objective is to prevent individual people from having the freedom to make such basic self-determinations as whether or not to have a baby. Your party does not stand for freedom, and your ideology has nothing to do with small government.