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When Tea Party wants to go back, where is it to?

Harold Meyerson

As battle cries go, the Tea Party's "Take our country back" is a pretty good one. It's short and punchy, and it addresses a very widespread sense that the nation that Americans once lived in has changed, and not for the better.

When the Tea Partyers get around to identifying how America has changed and to whose benefit, however, they get it almost all wrong. In the worldview of the American right -- and the polling shows conclusively that that's who the Tea Party is -- the nation, misled by President Obama, has gone down the path to socialism. In fact, far from venturing down that road, we've been stuck on the road to hyper-capitalism for three decades now. The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they'd see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward -- radically upward. From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans -- effectively, all but the rich -- increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too -- from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 -- a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

Since 1980, it's been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it's been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined -- going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.

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But the country the right wants to return to isn't the America that the Greatest Generation built. Judging by the statements of many of the Republican and Tea Party-backed candidates on next Tuesday's ballots, it's the America that antedates the New Deal -- a land without Social Security, unions or the minimum wage. It's the land that the Greatest Generation gladly left behind whey they voted for and built the New Deal order. All of us should want our country back, but that country should be the more prosperous and economically egalitarian nation that flourished at the time when America was not only the world's greatest power, but also a beacon to the world.

Full article

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We have to look at what is in the Pledge to America.  If BOTH House and Senate are with Repubs there will be a myriad of new legislation and some will get far enough that the POTUS just might sign them.  In fact, both House and Senate going Repub makes the POTUS (veto)  MORE powerful.

The Tea party coalition within the GOP is way too much to the right.. and will certainly drive the Repub agenda.

In fact, Tea Party only need introduce a LOT of new bills and Senate assess a lot of them but not necessarily pass them... They can wait until after the 2012 election for the next President.... and get their pet bills passed...
.... and that squarely puts us in the bad spot.. if Hillary does not run for 2012..  I would not want a Repub leading for nothing if it is both House and Senate with Repubs as well.  

Never again should we have straight through one color.

It is really sad that we do not have a real moderate third party.


-- Edited by Sanders on Thursday 28th of October 2010 12:09:45 AM