It's [the Tea Party] not the caricature as the press had it — as the disaffected, the poor, the losers — unsuccessful, racist, ignorant, uneducated whites. Which is exactly what you heard all of last year — when it wasn't ignored. It turns out they're middle class, slightly above the mean in education and in income.
But they represent a philosophy. And it’s libertarian. And it’s interesting. It’s got three ideas. It's against high taxes, it’s against the intrusiveness of government, and in an even larger sense it's kind of a constitutionalist idea.
There really is this notion of liberty, and that somehow the expansion of government — particularly since the liberals have taken over in the House, the Senate and the White House — has pushed taxes higher [and expanded] the reach, the power and the extent of government. And it's a kind of betrayal of the American social contract.
-Charles Krauthammer
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That's a great one. He also sad this on Fox News:
ReplyDeleteThe point is the movement began a year ago before there were any hikes in taxes, but it was a prescient movement: it understood — and it wasn't really that hard to see, although a lot of the press entirely overlooked it — that if you’re going expand the government hugely (as he has) you’re going to have to end up raising taxes. There's no other way.
That's why we’re all talking about a VAT. He’s assuming that these people are paranoid or agitated because they are expecting that taxes are going to rise. We just had the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who’s not exactly a member of the Tea Party, say exactly that. In order to sustain our economy, we’re going to have to raise taxes.
So it's a fact. And I think it is in his character to ridicule — this is a man on the day he won the Democratic nomination said that day would mark a day on which the earth began to heal and the oceans recede. So he does not have a low opinion of himself.
Obama has a lot to be modest about!
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