The first-ever National Tea Party Convention began today, and you can watch the frightening proceedings online on CSPAN.com. It’s actually re-airing on television right now. Now, I’ve been part of a nascent political movement. I’ve been to conferences just like this one where like-minded people came together to get organized in an effort to win back Congress and to take back the White House. And I’ve seen that movement be part of the successful achievement of those goals. So, I don’t dismiss these people. I don’t dismiss them, but I will tell you two things. If they’re successful, they’re likely to be far more disappointed than progressives are with our victory. But if they aren’t disappointed, we’re going to lose our democracy.
Why do I say that? Well, on the first score, they’re likely to learn just how hard it is to really change Washington. If you think it’s hard to trim the defense budget and get the permanent establishment to reevaluate our forward-leaning foreign basing strategy…if you think it is hard to pass health care…just try to change entitlements or the tax structure. These tea-baggers won’t find a lot of friends in the White House or Congress when they get to Capitol Hill. It’s no different for true progressives. But, if they did actually succeed in getting their policies enacted, we’d be living under an authoritarian, Christianist, nativist, eschatological thumb. The debate over torture would be decided once and for all, in favor of torture. Any semblance of the rule of law would be lost forever.
But maybe you should watch the proceedings. At the moment Joseph Farah, the founder of WorldNetDaily, is going on at length about how the rule of law is being violated because Obama wasn’t born in the United States. He also appears to be somewhat drunk.
