Wonk Wars: Is The Tea Party Good For America?
Welcome to Wonk Wars, a weekly feature from It's A Free Country as part of the Brian Lehrer Show's 30 Issues in 30 Days. Early each week, we'll post one of those issues in the Wonk Wars sections of the website and invite two or more policy experts to start the discussion online, along with your input. Then, each Thursdays, the conversation continues on-air at the Brian Lehrer Show.
This Week's True/False: The Tea Party Is Good For America
Opening statement from Markos Moulitsas, founder and editor of the left-leaning blog Daily Kos and author of the new book American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
Opening statement from Lenny McAllister, conservative political commentator and host of Launching Chicago on WVON radio.
The Tea Party movement has encouraged conservatives that have been asleep at the proverbial "electorate wheel" for years now to finally become involved in the political process. What they have found - as evidenced by the primary campaign season this year - is this: that they have serious apprehensions with both major political parties. When these activists talk about "take back America", they refer to a scaling back of government spending, but also address the need to make American politics - from town halls and state governments to Capitol Hill - accountable to the American people in a representative relationship that befits our republican form of government. Each political party in Washington promises to save America. However, with its energy to engage more everyday Americans with the political process, it may end up being the Tea Party that actually accomplishes this task.
Opening statement from Jonathan Tasini, president of the Economic Future Group, a national strategy consulting group. He was a recent candidate in New York's 15th Democratic congressional primary.
Agitation and the awakening of voters is essential to democracy. The Tea Party is tapping into a lot of anger, fear and frustration in the country—emotions that I believe, speaking as a Democrat, the Democratic Party has failed to harness into a positive agenda. I am not speaking of the people who are drawn to the deplorable racist and anti-government themes of the Tea Party. I speak of the many people who believe that the American Dream is no longer reachable and that a decent job is no longer a foregone conclusion. I believe that, indeed, the American Dream is now beyond the reach of millions of Americans—but that isn’t the fault of immigrants, the government or same sex couples, to mention just a few of the favored “culprits” bandied about by some Tea Party leaders.
It is very much the end game of 30 years of robbery by a corporate economy. And, in the void left by a Democratic Party that will not confront the domination by powerful corporate interests of our economy and politics—and, in too many instance, encourages those interests (read: corporate “free trade”, campaign contributions and the Robert Rubinization of the Democratic Party)--people feel abandoned. Left abandoned by a political system that will not boldly confront the true culprits of our economic crisis, I see Henry Ford’s old maxim rearing its ugly head: that he could get half the working class to kill the other half. People who don’t have pensions, rather than demand that decent pensions be a right guaranteed at every job in the private and public sector, are attacking those people who do have decent pensions, particularly public sector workers. I believe the Tea Party is dangerous in what it stands for. But, I understand why some of its supporters are drawn to its ranks.
What do you think? We'll have more voices and reactions in Wonk Wars soon, but...we're all wonks, so chime in!
