Tea in a Tizzy

I'll say up front that I've been skeptical about the Tea Party activists practically since their inception. I've been skeptical about how they were formed, skeptical about their politics, and skeptical about whether they even qualify as a political party. I've debated with a paramour what their fate will be; he's afraid they'll actually gain power, while I've long thought that eventually they will get co-opted.

On this last point, I may be a little less certain. However, after reading this article in the NYT, it's still hard for me to take them seriously as a political party.

A tax code limited to the number of words in the US Constitution? Seriously? Would you like to build a baseball stadium based on the total number of hot dogs sold in the first year of baseball history? The tax code is a tool for the government to encourage and reward behavior, and it applies to citizens and corporations alike. Do you really think you'll have enough room in such a limited document to, say, require corporations to re-invest money in the US instead of parking it off shore? 4500 words is about twenty double-spaced pages. That's not a tax code, that's a term paper. The best you might hope for is tax code haiku.

Divine intervention? At least they're trying to manage this part of it. Did you know that it's possible to be fiscally conservative and not believe in God? Did you know that many people who do believe in God do not believe in divine intervention, at least not in the sense that it is commonly intended?

You want to promote States' Rights? Really? So if a given state enacts strong gun control measures, you won't run up to the Federal level to repeal it? Politically, it makes sense to prefer States' Rights, because then you can make incremental progress. However, every States' Rights proponent I've ever known, liberal and conservative alike, drops that plank as soon as they stop getting what they want at the state level.

The Tea Party is full of symbolic ideas. They are going to collapse if they ever obtain any real power. They do bring up some very valid issues, but they barely have an affirmative platform (until I read this article, I didn't think they had an affirmative platform at all).

So go on Tea Party. Bitch about the government. Bitch about taxes, bitch about the economy. Maybe one day, when you grow up, you'll be able to do a better job, but until then, keep trying.

Article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/us/politics/13tea.html