I've heard defenders of the "Tea Party" movement argue that a handful of racist or homophobic comments shouldn't tar the entire group. There are people with legitimate concerns that go to those rallies who are outraged at government spending, regardless of who is in power.
And I don't doubt that. I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there who thought Medicare Part D was just as wasteful as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The main issue is that those people are very easily drowned out by louder voices.
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an excellent piece on this topic last week:
I hear GOP folks and Tea Partiers bemoaning the fact that media and Democrats are using the extremes of their movement for ratings and to score points. This is like Drew Brees complaining that Dwight Freeney keeps trying to sack him. If that were Martin Luther King's response to media coverage, the South might still be segregated. I exaggerate, but my point is that the whining reflects a basic misunderstanding of the rules of protest. When you lead a protest you lead it, you own it, and your opponents, and the media, will hold you responsible for whatever happens in the course of that protest. This isn't left-wing bias, it's the nature of the threat.
The main issue I have with people complaining about people complaining about the Tea Party Protests (whew!) is that the "Tea Party" has no set beliefs. It has no platform. It has no founding document. It's a collection of people who range from small-government libertarians to borrow-and-spend Republicans. You have people at the protests demanding that the government be cut in half, and people demanding that there be no cuts to Medicare. You have policy folks and you have people screaming "Where's the birth certificate?!" People who loved Bush's unfunded programs, but hate Obama's deficit neutral proposals...and people who hate both.
The fact that these protests didn't exist (or, if they did, they were much, much smaller) when Bush and the Republicans in Congress were spending untold billions on Iraq, tax cuts, and Medicare Part D puts the entire Tea Party movement in a deep credibility hole from the start.
Heck, I'm not even arguing that the government necessarily should move to a balanced budget; I think it's a worthy target, and getting health care costs under control is a very important first step, but it shouldn't be the country's number one priority right now. But it is economically doable--politically difficult, but entirely possible.
Nor am I ragging on the Republicans for spending money on medicine for seniors. While I can think of a dozen better uses for most of the money Bush squandered, and there are some improvements that could have been made to the policy, I understand the importance of Bush addressing one of the top issues from the 2000 campaign. I just can't take people seriously when they flip-flop on their political beliefs depending on who is in power. These Fiscal Fauxhawks who loved Bush's tax cuts, war, and social spending but rag on Obama have no credibility. And unfortunately, these people are by-and-large the leaders of the Republican party and the faces of the Tea Party movement.
I'm sure there are some credible Tea Party folks--the kind who go on Larry King and stun him when they earnestly say that they want to eliminate Social Security--but they just don't get the most screen time.
TNC is right that the crazies tend to attract attention. I remember anti-war rallies where tens of thousands of people would show up, but the 20 year old anarchists would get the media attention. Or the folks with giant puppets. Nothing kills a message faster than a few outlandish people unintentionally subverting the message.
Perhaps the fact that the Tea Party folks are not emulating the more successful protests from history (Gandhi and MLK for starters) shows us that they, too, are not very serious about succeeding. But I doubt the "movement" could even agree on what "success" looks like.
No comments:
Post a Comment