Tea Party envy

FROM THE RIGHT: Tea’d off


Written by Patriot Staff
April 30, 2010
Exactly what is it about the Tea Party protests that drives the political Left in this country batty?
There has to be a basic, maybe even clinical, explanation for the hysterics liberals go into when confronted with assemblies of Tea Partiers railing about government overspending and high (and going higher) taxation. Something has to account for the baseless charges that the tea partiers are racist, ignorant, homophobic, misogynistic, foaming-at-the-mouth thugs bent on turning the country into a version of 1850s Mississippi.
Is it mental disease? Maybe an as-yet undetermined ailment could account for the specter of President Bill Clinton not so subtly equating today’s Tea Partiers with yesterday’s Timothy McVeighs. Or for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s labeling of Tea Partiers “un-American,” or Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that the protests are merely “Astroturf,” an insider’s term for fake grass-roots opposition ginned up by professional political operatives.
Perhaps it’s a strange obsession with avant-garde sexual practices that leads the anti-Tea Partiers to label the protesters “tea baggers.” Or maybe it’s a desire to throw as many clichéd insults as possible against the protesters, as in actress Janine Garafalo’s rant that they are ..”a bunch of teabagging rednecks … hating a black man in the White House.”
Or maybe it’s a self image of entitled superiority that leads to the outrage, such as President Obama’s pronouncement of feeling “amused” by the protesters, who in his view “should be saying ‘thank you’” for his largesse of a 12-dollar-per week income tax cut … a cut rendered meaningless by higher spending and re-jiggered IRS tax tables.
Is it protest envy? All the Tea Partiers have done is avail themselves of the same rights as every American: the right to free and open expression of ideas that may or may not jibe with those of the current administration. The Left certainly exploited its free speech rights during the Bush Administration, filling the streets and airwaves with vile, foul-mouthed denunciations of all things Bush while lecturing us that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Maybe they meant dissent is patriotic except when it’s aimed at Barack Obama and other liberals.
Here’s why they disparage the Tea Parties. They won’t admit it, but they look at rally attendees and see ordinary, typical Americans. The homeowner whose property taxes have skyrocketed. The doctor who is considering leaving the profession because of the crushing mandates about to come down via ObamaCare. The family on the brink of losing its home because of inability to pay the mortgage. The mortgage company employee about to lose his job because failed mortgages are pushing his company into insolvency. The entrepreneur who is putting plans for a small business on hold because of the economy’s tenuous state. The parents who are nearing panic about paying for their kids’ college education.
The Tea Party haters recognize all that when they look out over the vibrant rallies, but they see something else that terrifies them. They see citizens stirred to action by a sense that the America they knew is rapidly disappearing... and they can’t wait to vote in November.
That’s what the Tea Party haters really hate.