Reading the bit about the upcoming Lancaster tea party this morning, and we get to this:
Teresa Casalino, a Manheim Township resident and a co-organizer of the rally, said the complaints aired at similar events cover many subjects but can be placed together under the umbrella term “personal freedom.”
“It’s against big government and big spending and our drifting away from the Constitution,” Casalino said.
The tea party movement has its origins among conservative bloggers, political commentators such as Glenn Beck and others concerned with constitutional issues. It was ramped into high gear by objections to the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
You know, I demand these people point out which specific “rights” have been abrogated.
To the extent that the rally will attract Ron Paul supporters - well, they have been concerned about the violation of rights long before Obama ever got into the White House. I don’t disagree with them entirely when their critique is that “big government and big spending” has been occurring for quite some time, under Democratic AND Republican administrations.
But my sense is that a great number of the people at these rallies never complained when the Bush administration asserted its authority to tap phones and intercept electronic communications at will. My sense is the people who are attracted to these events not by Ron Paul but by Glenn Beck have no idea which of their “rights” have been vioated. They’re just indignant. So it’s tea time.
The remarkable thing about today’s partisan Republicans is their capacity to forget instantly and entirely anything that went on for the past eight years. And so suddenly we are rushing toward socialism, even though by far the biggest jumps in state power and debt occurred under a president they worshiped and worked hard to re-elect. There were no tea-parties to protest the $32 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit. There was no Randian rumbling as Bush took over local schools. There was no defense of the Constitution as Bush and Cheney secretly suspended the fourth and first amendments. But put a moderate Democrat in office tackling a historic collapse in demand - and spending must be frozen!
Again - the Ron Paul fans have been saying this for a while, and thus have more consistency - and credibility.
The Glenn Beck fainters have neither.
