Tea Party Still Furious, Waiting Politely

Published January 19, 2012 | By dditton

Forgive me for being blunt. Those of us who feel particularly betrayed (not surprised, just betrayed) by the House’s series of unforced errors and undignified retreats in 2011, by the sneering disdain of the Republican establishment and our masters and betters in the consulting/analysis/campaign/media business are still Mad As Hell. We are not in a mood to go along to get along, and are not about to accept continued spiralling levels of spending and the attendant hand-wringing about difficult changes and so forth.

We are not dead, not sleeping, and not distracted. We have exhausted friendly non-violent means of opposing the worst excesses of our government, and have been shown that with rare exception, we have no friends in Washington whom we did not place there. Fine. Unfriendly non-violent means it is then, such as primary opposition to big-spending Republicans like sixteen-term Representative Hal “Prince of Pork” Rogers (current head of House Appropriations) and leadership challenges to the feckless and IMHO dishonest “negotiate with progressives to hold off conservatives” leaders like John Boehner.

We recall the flowery speeches made by McConnell and Boehner in late 2010, which show by contrast just how poorly served we have been by our own side.

We don’t smash windows and we don’t infest public spaces. We are conservatives, not anarchists. We know that part of supporting small government is supporting government itself. By resisting efforts to sharply curb spending in Washington, the gravy-train GOP is hazarding government as well as the citizenry.