Tea Parties drawing leftish ire; people are starting to notice
The Tea Party phenomenon is a wonderful thing to behold. Truly grassroots and basically non-partisan, it’s drawing people into the political process who have never engaged before. The message is quite simple and it’s aimed at government, not a particular party: government is spending too much, getting too big, and it’s being perceived as the problem as opposed to a solution.
Now, the fact that such an attitude runs directly counter to the new administration’s stated goals is getting under the skin of certain members of the Obama cult and the Leftish persuasion. Mary Kate Cary, writing at U.S. News & World Report, takes note of the anger over on the left, drawing attention to an article by Bryon York at the Washington Examiner wherein he references Janeane Garofalo’s accusation of racism towards the Tea Partiers. Ms. Cary asks:
Was she watching the same tea parties the rest of us were?
Similarly, longtime Democratic adviser Robert Shrum wrote in The Week about the tea parties, in a diatribe that seems to border on hysteria. Calling the tea parties “insubstantial,” “incoherent,” “hate-filled,” and “paranoia on parade,” Shrum compares those protesting Obama’s tax-and-spend policies to those who supported McCarthyism, anti-Catholicism, and even those who distributed leaflets on the day of Kennedy’s assassination accusing him of being a communist. He also throws in references to anti-Muslim rhetoric, swastikas, and rising gun sales as well. Clearly he doesn’t think these protests were “insubstantial,” or he wouldn’t feel so threatened by them.
Agreed. It strikes me as odd that people who less than a year ago were enamored with the idea that protest and “speaking truth to power” was the height of patriotism now rush to label anyone protesting their chosen candidate’s policies as “racist” and “hate-filled.” It’s not hate to say that an administration intent on ballooning our national debt to levels literally undreampt-of 5 years ago is doing a bad thing. It’s not racist to say the President is taking us down the wrong road because he wants to spend like money is going out of style.
