Requiem for a Tea Bagger

By Charlie Barber
Staff Writer

...tea is one of the mainstays of civilization in [England], as well as in Eire [Ireland], Australia, and New Zealand,...the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes. -George Orwell

Tell Newt to Shut Up! -David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf

It’s tough to walk around all day with a chip on your shoulder. You are forced to walk and think in a constant state of imbalance.

An addition to this ungainly gait is the problem you have if someone calls your bluff and actually knocks it off while others are looking. 

You can always bend down, pick it up, and put it on again as if it were permanently attached, but the secret is out. You don’t fool anybody with your bluster except yourself, and you don’t scare anyone except those already easily scared.

What’s even more silly is people who run around using insults and racial slurs as part of their daily rhetoric, and then complain that they are not “respected” when they are addressed as “Tea Baggers” instead of “Tea Party Members.”

Excuse me.

Should it be: “Madame Tea Party Member?”  Or “Sir, Mr. Tea Party Member, Sir!”
Or maybe “Your Royal Tea Party Highness!”

I don’t think so.

“Tea Baggers” or “Tea Party Members.” Whatever. Their boiling rage and soggy reasoning make a strange brew that would not be taken seriously were it not for their ability to defeat candidates anointed by the Republican Party in the 2010 primaries.

Since it is the Republican Party which has been mostly responsible for illusions of racial superiority and the reality of economic inferiority that afflict so many Tea Party folks, that amounts to a sort of justice being meted out.  That such a justice may result in Democrats hanging on to majorities in both Houses of Congress is a reality facing the “Brain Trust” of Boehner and McConnell.

Rather than blame themselves for lying down with mangy coyotes like fear and loathing, however, Senate and House Republican leadership can always blame Newt Gingrich, if they like. They may not be far wrong.

Such is the fate of deluded folks running around with tea bags on their shoulders, the new chip of the 21st Century, that they are being done in by the same snake oil Newt peddled in his 1994 “Contract With America.”

The new tea bag chip of the 21st century is just the same old “something for nothing” swindle of how local, state and national services can somehow be provided without taxes. Old chips include racism and religious bigotry, and we’ve seen a lot of those lately as well.

The man who recently knocked the tea bag chip off Tea Party shoulders is the same man who knocked the religious bigotry chip off of the shoulders of professional Muslim haters, and who knocked the racist chip off of the shoulders of American history by becoming President, Barack Obama.

The President’s weapon was not a constitutional perquisite of his office.  It also was not anything that you might find on a regular basis in Washington, D.C. or on most news shows that seek to inflame rather than explain.

His weapon was common sense. 

In explaining the long-term devastation of Reaganomics’ politics of greed and the short term disaster of the George Bush administration, he hit them with the facts:

“We had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, two wars that weren’t paid for. We’ve got a population that’s getting older. We’re all demanding services, but our taxes have actually substantially gone down.” 

With such a formidable foe as President Obama, who, to make matters worse, is happily married, a doting father, and a genuine sports fan, I have become concerned for the fate of my fellow historian Gingrich, whose methods do not resemble mine, but who nevertheless claims the title. Given Newt’s uses of the historical record, it seemed to me that following the facts where they lead and putting them into context, the traditional approach I prefer, was not suitable.

Instead I turned to a fictional source, my old friend “Fisherman Pete.”

High Plains Reader: For all the attention he seems to be getting, isn’t Newt Gingrich making the same mistakes as a Tea Party guru that he made as Republican Speaker of the House?

Fisherman Pete: Newt Gingrich was the greatest gift to Bill Clinton that ever came along to a President who won in 1992 with only about a third of the vote. Americans like to bitch a lot about government and its cost, but they really don’t want to shut it down like Newt tried to do. Too many of them need those Social Security checks and unemployment benefits. They also like those federal government contracts for local highway, sewer, water, bridge and tunnel infrastructure. Democrats in 2010 like to call such stuff “stimulus,” which it is. Republicans prefer to call it “pork” unless it is in their bailiwick, where they make sure that their name is on it or the Democrats’ names are left off of it.

HPR: Americans got wise to Newt in short order in 1995 and 1996 when they saw that his “Contract with America,” was more like a “Contract ON America,” and he was soon washed up as a Republican leader. If the Tea Party candidates bring about a failure of the Republican Party to take either House of Congress back in 2010, does that mean that Newt is washed up as a Tea Bagger as well?
FP: Of course. If Newt and company can’t find enough convenient scapegoats, and a critical mass of the American people begin to realize more and more how irresponsible he, Rush Limbaugh, and FOX News really are, there will be a terrible reckoning for Republicans and hate peddlers associated with that Party, a kind of “Fire Next Time.”

HPR: “The Second Coming?”

FP: No, a second term for Obama.

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