Granted, I’ll give credit to Dick Armey and another Tea Party congresscritter they quoted in that story, Chris Gibson, for at least giving lip service to the notion that something needs to be done to rein in defense spending. But overall I can’t say that I’m surprised that the Tea Partiers, and GOP in general, are hemming and hawing over this.
Yes, it’s entirely predictable. Somewhat less predictable, but still probable, is that they will make sure government keeps its hands off their constituents Medicare and Social Security. And taxes go without saying. Oh, and a healthy amount of them are okay with earmarks for their district.
Which means of course that they are proposing deficits as far as the eye can see.
Until the Tea Party has something to offer other than meaningless platitudes wrapped in the flag, it’s best to simply assume they’re retarded children who don’t understand how math works and treat them as such.
To be fair, the truth is they fucking HATE giving medicare and social security to the sick and disabled and old. They were only pretending to defend them to scare people into thinking the Democrats were going to get the government involved in Medicare. If they could gut those programs they’d do it in a second.
Not only that, they don’t understand it. Much like the idiot at the Tea Party rally in DC with the placard that said “keep the government out of my Medicare” these frosh congressoids really don’t know how these programs work. One of them was yammering about the free market that thankfully provided his 85 year old mother with excellent medical care. His mother is not independently wealthy, she has and uses Medicare coverage, but he went on for several minutes about it, utterly convinced that she’s not one of those lazy scroungers relying upon some government program and by George, no one oughta.
As much as I hate the idea that you have to be a lawyer to be elected to higher office, we’ve put together a freshman class in congress populated by used car hucksters, pizzeria owners and opthalmologists, and the new GOP leadership is full of big hair marketing consultants like that smirking frat boy who gave the official SOTU response, and it’s very clear that many of them (even with multiple terms in the house under their belts) don’t really understand the fundamentals of how the U.S. government operates.
There’s is no such thing as the “Tea Party”. There is no unity, there is no center, there is no leader. The biggest chunk of “TP” is the Tea Party Expess, which is little more than an overblown PR stunt headed up by Dick Armey and funded by billionaires, most especially the justly despised Koch Brothers, may a thousand diseases of the camel fester in their groins.
A telling moment. Tea Party Express announced some time ago, via Maximum Leader Dick Armey, that the Tea Party was ferociously commited on the issue of “net neutrality”, and came down firmly on the side of Comcast in this dispute. I find two things very hard to believe there. One, looking at the crowds of tea partiers, its hard to believe any of them give a rat’s about “net neutrality”. Numero two-o, is that anybody, anywhere, loves Comcast.
Maybe a day later, it sank beneath the waves without a ripple, but for just a moment there, a huge inflamed grassroots movement came out in favor of the cable company. The widely beloved and admired Comcast.
There is no such thing as the “Tea Party”. Its not a discrete entity, it is a sprawling amoeba of retarded political thinking.
As for them waffling - they campaigned on reining in runaway spending, but then shy away from tackling military spending, which represents the single biggest government expenditure and one you can’t ignore if you’re serious about lowering the deficit while insisting on tax cuts.
According to yesterday’s Slate.com article, these so-called “fiscal conservatives” are planning the majority of their cuts to come from the small sliver of discretionary spending in the federal budget. They’re not touching defense, medicare, medicaid, or social security. Only in the non-defense discretionary budget.
In the end, these tea bagging shitholes are simply typical conservatives in disguise, seeking to trim necessary but liberal policies in favor of their fat, bloated military and retirement funds
Well, that’s the same thing. There is no indication they ever campaigned on cutting DOD spending.
So what? Unless they campaigned on cutting defense, they’re not “waffling over cutting defense budget”. Defense may be the biggest single expense, but it’s still less than 1/4 of the budget.
Sorry, but you put a thesis out there, and it doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Is this the same thing like when conservatives defend Bush and Cheney because they never specifically said the sentence “Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11”?
The campaign by the Tea Baggers were about cutting waste and excessive government. The military’s budget represents the biggest portion of waste and excessive spending in the entire budget. Anyone who says they are looking to reduce government, reduce spending, and cutting the deficit needs to look at military expenditures. Now they are not doing that. They are dishonest hypocrites
I think what John Mace is saying is that if that’s your point, the thread title should be something along the lines of “Tea partiers waffle over cutting spending to preserve bloated military budget” or what have you.
Technically, if the Teapers were never in favor of cutting defense spending per se, then it doesn’t count as “waffling” when they don’t cut it.
It wholly depends on what you define the mission of the military. Do you want to be able to respond to Taiwan when the balloon goes up and China starts some shit? Better have a bunch of F-22s, and carriers in the area. Do you want to be able to maintain two simultaneous engagements like Iraq and Afghanistan? I know that there are a ton of doves here, and that’s fine, but just cutting for the sake of cutting is bad policy.
I know that Gates (and Obama) are looking to shutter JFCOM (Virginia/Norfolk) and both Warner and Webb coming out against it (both Democrats). So while it’s de rigeur on this board (and the NY Times… ) to hammer Tea Partiers, it’s a little disingenuous to claim that they have the monopoly on using DOD dollars to create jobs.
Tea Partiers aren’t retards because they want to maintain a strong military or use DOD dollars to create jobs or because they view the military budget as more important than other programs like Medicare or Social Security. They’re retards because their platform is based on complaining that the government spends too much, without being able/willing to propose specific detailed cuts.
You make a decent case for maintaining a strong carrier-based navy and air force. Fine, if we as a country want that, we have to pay for it. Ditto not having our elderly eating dog food. Ditto not having people die in emergency room waiting areas because they don’t have an insurance card in their pocket. Ditto having our food inspected so we don’t get e coli outbreaks. Ditto having security at our sea and airports.
Children expect to demand things and have them magically appear. Grownups know they have to pay for the things they want.