Tea Party Desperation Is Making
The Tea-Party Ideologes Do Dangerous and Crazy Things.
by William Schmidt, Ph.D.
The
Tea Party terrorists are proposing a blatant violation of the
14th
Amendment, which states that the validity of the public debt
of
the United States, authorized by law is sacrosanct and
shall
not be questioned. The 1868 Republican Party
platform even
stated
that national honor requires the payment of the public indebtedness
in
the utmost good faith to all creditors at home and abroad. They
further
stated than any repudiation of the debt would be a national crime.
In
1935, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, ruling in the case of Perry v.
the
United States, revisited the amendment and affirmed the fundamental principle
that
Congress may not alter or destroy debts already incurred.
Surely,
the refusing to raise the debt limit is a repudiation national debt.
Lincoln
used Emergency Powers on far weaker Constitutional
grounds
to avert crises. Obama, the so-called Constitutional scholar,
has
said he would not use the 14th Amendment to raise the Debt Limit
and
pay bills already authorized by Congress. But he may change his mind
when
he sees how bad things quickly get when the US Government
defaults.
(Source.)
There
is no telling how obdurate the 66-strong
Tea-Party faction will be
in
the House of Representatives and the Senate. They are desperate and
dangerous.
Their anger and frustration go way beyond ObamaCare.
If
they really feel that ObamaCare will fail and that was truly their big concern,
I
would think they would publicize their exact concerns about it now. And if they
come
true next year, as they believe, tell the voters how right they were and
use
this in the next election to show how smart and far-sighted they were
when
ObamaCare fails.
That
they do not this makes me think that they have another objective.
Based
on what many of their ancestors did in 1860, I believe it is to break up
the
Government and destroy it, so that entire regions can secede, or change the
Constitution
into a loose Confederation. Make no mistake about it, these
T-Party
Congress-people are very alienated. Many are outspoken secessionists.
Like
me, they are angry that the Big Bankers got bailed out in 2008-2009,
while
Main Street got one insignificantly small Treasury check supposedly to jump-start
spending.
But the Tea-Party Demagogues lie and tell their supporters
that
it was Democratic Presidents who made the Federal deficit so large now.
Without
ample chance to hear the real truth about this in rural America,
where
right-wing talk Radio has such a monopoly of the views they hear
driving
around or reading the local newspaper, they naturally gave
their
votes to Republican Presidents like George Bush and Cheney
who
then wasted trillions on a war built on lies, all the while knowing that
once
this money was spent, they could and would blame Democrats for
being
the big-spenders.
The
Rural vs Urban clash is as much cultural as economic. The Tea-Party
House
Republican faction heavily represents rural areas. Look at where they
come from. The people on the
farms and the little towns in America see things
going
down-hill. Commodity prices are falling just like in the 1920s
but
the prices they pay for finished goods are rising. They want a change.
Their
kids are leaving town for the cities. Their small towns are dying.
Listen
to Alan
Jackson's song "Little Man". and Arlo
Guthrie /City of New Orleans.
Rural Christian religious views clash sharply with Urban values of
agnosticism and
tolerance.
Guns are needed in rural areas but are quite dangerous in the cities.
Downtown
City People everyday see hundreds of homeless people. Rural
people
do not. City People are more apt to appreciate the need for a safety net
especially
when Jobs are scarce, pay is so low and rents are so high.
They
realize that they may lose their job, too; that they may someday
be
in the same position as the unshaven homeless man on the bench with a sign asking
for
a hand-out.
.
So,
the Tea-Party People are angry and their views are very different than
City
People on many isses. But worse than that, Tea-Party people are desperate.
And
worse, still, they see how Demographics are working against them.
In
another ten or twenty years, they will be less than 15% of the US
population.
No amount of Gerrymandering can
save the day politically
then.
It is only a matter of time, before urban voters even in the South
reduce
these Tea-Party's voters' numbers to a point where they are powerless.
The
big backers of the Tea Party like the Koch Brothers clearly see this
bleak
future, too. They believe, now is the best time to try to stop the
Urban
and therefore Blue tide.
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