jdona wrote:

---

I got to tell you, the rise of the tea party period scares me. I'm not a liberal dem or a conservative republican. I'm in the middle. But the tea party doesn't represent sanity and the dems are too far left. Where does that leave the rest of us?

---

Likewise, jdona, I am VERY concerned about the Tea Party movement.

Sadly many liberals joined in the early part of the movement without realizing that the movement is totally taken over by the far right.  Not only is it GOP it is the very far right of GOP. 

FISCAL scale - ECONOMY, TAXES, DEFICIT - In fact, while they are supposedly energized about the stimulus and public expenditure, there is little to nothing from the Tea Partiers by way of recommendation on an alternative way to "stimulate" the economy. Perhaps they want more tax cuts for the rich so that... they can make more money??? Creating more jobs is not going to happen without demand.. and the global demand is non-existent.. so has to be domestic demand... and that means spending.

There is no realism in the dialog.. no real and meaningful effort to tackle the realities of the huge DEFICIT... which is looming large and may throttle our presence on the global stage...  a threat that only Hillary Clinton seems to be recognizing... and Pres.Obama seems to be in a rush to sweep under the rug.  The right is expressing anger at the deficit without any plans.

Hopefully with expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the government is a bit less into red.  But, now the tax cuts may be getting extended including for the rich?? It makes no sense.  No, it will not do squat to stimulate the economy.. and no it will not to squat to hurt the economy if those tax cuts are let to expire.

SOCIAL scale -- I am finding that Tea Party activism is mostly about the social scale. With the code word of "values," Relgion, and anti-choice message is being pushed through and through.

No one can convince me that O'Donnell's win is good for women.
No one can convince me that O'Donnell has better values than...Obama.

What I am observing is that conservatives are behaving as if they have the corner on values... and all others have none.  Well, each to their own values.  And, in fact, even Principles are not universal.  It would be a real mega mistake to asssume that just become conservatives mouth the word principles and values a lot that all others are devoid of principles and values.   And, each side has its own set of corruption, and its own set of inconsistencies between actions and the principles and values they preach.  Each shall be measured by the principles and values they preach and espouse.  Duty of one not the duty of the other.

RETURN TO THE FOUNDERS -- well, I dont know what that means. One of these days, this will be clarified. Does this mean we will undo all the Constitutional amendments?  Does this mean that this country is going to be good for only Christians? Or are we going further back to the principles of the native Americans? Why not go that far?

Words such as "Founders" and "Values" are being used by Tea Partiers to make their statements "irrefutable."  Hello!  I dont find the need to be politically correct on these words. We are NOT the America that the Founders founded 200+ years ago. We are not the one religion set of people that the Founders were... and there is no presumption in the constitution that the word "God" belongs to any one religion. That GOD for that!

IMMIGRATION - Well, we are lucky that people still want to come to America. It now has more to do with the open space, bigger house, larger greenery than anything else. And, that truly should be scary.  We often forget that immigrants actually are a big source of demand in this economy. They have nothing they inherited. They contribute a lot to the economy... and their labor is the absolute least of it.  They have very high relative consumption as they truly do not have anything that is hand-me-down in this country.  As the babyboom generation has matured and has completed its consumption cycles -- just reflect upon how much you are actually buying and how much that has to do with the fact that you really do not need much -- the children of the baby boomers really do not need much more than the fashions and comforters to keep up with peer; most of the larger expenses in the household are already covered.  The hunger, the yearning for better living, and the fire in the belly of the immigrant is large.  It is not possible for immigrants to come in and take up the cushy jobs.. not within one or two generations. It takes that long for them to establish and develop connections and influence necessary to lead to better jobs.  In other words, Immigration is not an imminent threat to anyone, but an 'imminent' big plus for the economy as a whole.  It was very short sighted of Pres.Bush to narrow the immigration pool in his eight years; the result is the IT industry grew by leaps and bound in India when it could have boomed in the US instead/at a much faster pace.

MILITARY - As to the Tea Party's worship of the military might... our entire definition of military mission as well the definition of victory in a mission will need to be redefined in the new world of the Internet, YouTube and Twitter. No one party has the monopoly on messaging.. and the end of the war is all about messaging and framing the mission and the "win."  The new war is of the minds and the human spirit.  Yes, the conventional war is still a means to an end but no more a desirable measure. Sooner the right recognizes that the better it will be... Otherwise, we will end up with more misguided misadventurous wars like Iraq that the leader poses as the right thing to do to avert some imminent danger that we are all unfamiliar with..  Can you just imagine a Tea Party leader doing that? Sure, I can.  Well, I shudder at the thought.

There are many reasons why the Tea Party movement need to be recognized as the farthest right wing of the party because that is exactly what it is.

If anything, it is the one thing that may end up giving us a second term of the current POTUS. If the GOP nominee is a Tea Party candidate, I will vote for the Dem nominee... even if that is the current POTUS.  The activism of the left is more suitable for the current economy and day than that of the far right.


Both extreme ends are unnecessarily draining energy from people... and from the economy.

I sincerely hope that Pres.Obama does not run for 2012... and asks Hillary to run. That would be the absolute best thing that can happen to DNP and the centrists...  and I hope they do not wait too long before making it obvious that he will not run and that she will.   Barring that, I truly hope a centrist party of MODERATES emerges quickly.