Fighting Against the Tea Party

According to a New York Times poll, Tea Party supporters tend to be
Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. I'm guessing you're
not surprised.

They also told the Times they were in favor of smaller government, "even
if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut."

But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want
to cut Medicare or Social Security—the biggest domestic programs,
suggesting instead a focus on "waste."

This is always the problem, of course. It's a good bet they don't want
to cut defense spending either, and interest payments on the national
debt can't be cut. But once you take out those things, you have less
than a quarter of the federal budget left. Even if 20 percent of that
were waste—and that's an improbably high number—cutting it out would
only reduce spending by 5 percent.

Welcome to the incoherence of the Tea Party movement. They don't really
know what they want, they just know that someone, some liberal, is doing
something they don't like. But in a way, incoherence is the whole point.
The movement may have started at a grass roots level, but it's
increasingly funded by some very well-heeled right-wing groups who
figure that incoherence is a virtue. They don't really care about
government waste, after all. They mostly care about making cynical use
of shock troops who can help them put a stop to any progressive
legislation that threatens corporate special interests. They need anger
to channel, not activists with pesky ideas that might interfere with
their agenda.


* Mother Jones, of course... :)

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