A recent email circulated to subscribers of TownHall, Human Events, and GOP-USA invited right wingers to "display our tea bags" in Washington DC, where they will "unload" their teabags in front of media cameras. Outraged citizens are asked to sponsor a $1 tea bag in protest of Obama's plan to reinvigorate the economy by borrowing against future prosperity.
The fact that Reagan and two Bushes signed off on over 75% of our national debt before Obama ever took office doesn't seem to matter, because this rampant deficit spending only seems to matter some of the time. Let's explore this...
I want a cheap souvenir that shows everyone I wasn't suckered by...Obama
Show your hate for the President of The United States! T-shirts, mugs, caps, yard signs and bumper stickers emblazoned with sayings like "Obama bin Lying" and "FEAR Your Government" are all on sale, offered through an unsolicited email blast from Patriot's Depot and Josh Bolin, president of reagan.org, a self-proclaimed "grassroots" organization whose first stated priority is "strong national defense". But this calls into question the whole concept of protesting runaway government spending, as defense contracts were the greatest expenditures approved by Republican administrations since 1980, causing your unborn children to owe more than ten trillion dollars before Obama was ever even nominated! If that crushing debt matters, why only scapegoat the relief pitcher?
When the deficit was just a baby
Did these concerned "patriot families" even realize Bush and Cheney had no plan to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and allowed indefinite, blank-check war appropriations multiplying the federal debt? Did the teabaggers not understand the bill would come due no matter who won the election? And wasn't it the same when President Carter's administration hopelessly and painfully tried to absorb the costs of the Vietnam War but ended up growing the deficit -- to almost 1 trillion dollars!
Bush/Cheney failed to balance a single annual budget with control of the ultimate hat-trick/triple-crown/power play of government - control of all tricameral branches, therefore the teabag movement shows it is much less about fiscal responsibility than finding fault exclusively with democrats. This fits the theory they're being duped.
"Revolutions" started by planted misinformation stunts
This ruse has its roots in Bernaysian crowd control, but it was the Nixon administration which transformed American politics after being caught hiring burglars and spying on US citizens. Nixon's youthful protegé Karl Rove ironically helped violate the law our great nation crafted to prevent the executive branch from ever again eavesdropping on our people without writ.
The White House shouldn't blackmail
The FISA law expressly prohibited the White House from domestic surveillance, protecting all U.S. citizens from another rogue executive data-mining for political advantage or covering his tracks. They didn't want the President's office to be assembling a "red file" on everyone, filled with legal, personal or financial dirt on YOU, Joe Sixpack. But we know now the NSA and FBI spied on tens of thousands of Americans without authorization even as Bush said he would use warrants (when he was campaigning for your vote).
The essential ingredient in Rove's tactics is creation of a boogeyman narrative that makes suckers fearful and angry. Ironically, Obama has a website where any citizen can weigh in and post suggestions and questions with the results tabulated for all to see - why take to the streets? Emotion! Strangely, the neocon strategists have not yet offered a financial rescue blueprint other then loading up on ammo and canned provisions, so it's anyone's guess what the teabaggers will say will bring us out of this recession.
Infrastructure not crumbling in your area?
Don't teabaggers understand bridges have to be maintained so drivers don't fall into the sea? Where is the plan coming from to raise all the capital for modernizing your hometown to be fiscally sustainable? Does it elude these outraged patriots that $1 in preventative care saves $16 in emergency care? And that principle remains not just for people's health, but roads, power lines, com lines, waterways, sewage treatment facilities and even foreign policy.
Mistakes were made, but the bill wasn't paid
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