Tea for the Taxman

Here's my prediction: The teabagger movement has peaked. Or Tea Party, if that's what you prefer.

There will be some noise in November, but it's going to fade as the Obama tax cuts for the Middle Class -- the lowest rates in 60 years -- kick in as refunds, the notion of repealing healthcare reform comes to seem more and more self-destructive, their more moronic "stars" like the hideously untalented and now just plain hideous Victoria Jackson deglamorize the movement, as Fox News becomes more obvious in how they are using and abusing them -- like pulling Hannity from a Cincinnati rally today because the execs in NYC realized the local baggers were going to be charging admission for his appearance!

Most importantly, the teafolk are actually getting confronted by counter-protesters and having to justify their beliefs, which tend to disintegrate upon forced self-examination.

After all, 2/3 of these supposed anti-socialists want to hold onto their Social Security and Medicare:

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

...and they'll come to feel that way about their healthcare rights as well, albeit cherry-picking at first. And maybe some will even break away from Fox News enough to learn that much of what they say they support, like buying health insurance across state lines, is represented in reform (in this case by exchanges).

The politicization of whatever are the core grassroots sentiments amongst this 18% of the population will become an increasing problem for both the Tea Partiers (overwhelmingly disgruntled Republicans, just 8 years too late to their tea party) and GOP. If Chief Justice Roberts is so incensed about Obama "politicizing" the Supreme Court when he called them out for their highly political (i.e. classic GOP corporatist) Citizens United decision during the State of the Union, what leg does he have to stand on when a member of his own wing, Justice Clarence Thomas, is used to promote the baggers and their political agenda -- thanks to his wife's involvement with the Washington astroturfing efforts to earn off the movement?

In speaking with a conservative colleague in DC recently I learned that there's a growing division between the grassroots purists and those who are earning bank off the movement, i.e. Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. To the credit of the purist faction, they don't want to be co-opted, which may be tough considering that was the central force behind their p.r. breakthroughs.

The fact is that there are only two political parties of any heft in American right now, the Democratic Party and Fox News. The Republicans are now a satellite of the earners at Fox -- as best evidenced by psychostar Sarah Palin, former half-term Governor of Alaska turned $12 million woman. The Republican Party was simply her stepping stone to the conservative media money machine, perhaps the first or at least the most clear-cut example of this new phenomenon.

There may develop a Tea Party as some sort of rump down-ballot presence, although my guess is that it will end up being too scattered for the consistency a true national party needs to grow. It smacks of the Ross Perot party or John Anderson, simply not enough. Back in my childhood these would have been the Right-to-Life Party, maybe crossing over to the Conservative Party, although more often than not the Republican and Conservative candidates were the same, ipso the Democratic and Liberal, although there were interesting exceptions in New York State, i.e. Sen. Jacob Javits and other line-blurrers.

As long as the main opposition party to President Obama is Fox News, the system will be out of whack. If they manage to succeed in unseating him at re-election time, that's pretty much the end of democracy in America -- and since the Roberts Court has legalized unlimited corporate spending on campaigns, there's all new ways for them to spend their profits tearing down the nation's leadership and cycling back to greater profits as a result -- including getting their candidate in the White House and opening the floodgates to Berlusconi-style media/political cross domination.

Should that happen, we'll see if any Tea Partiers start to wake up...and become real patriots.