Reason magazine’s Matt Welch asks a good question: What did Delaware’s GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell actually run on?
In a campaign that was long on anti-establishment, I’m-no-RINO pique, and short on policy specifics, Welch concludes that O’Donnell mostly emphasized that she’s “staunchly anti-earmark, anti-TARP, anti-Obamacare, and anti-cap-and-trade.”
All right.
Let’s stipulate that in a campaign against an inveterately squishy Republican like Rep. Mike Castle, there’s appreciable daylight between him and an “authentic conservative” like O’Donnell. But with the exception of TARP, congressional Republicans are right in step with O’Donnell. If she makes it to Washington, she will find few GOPers to her left.
Clearly, something else is going on here. What is it about the so-called establishment that so aggravates the Tea Party right?
We’ve all heard the obvious answers: that establishment Republicans aren’t serious about curbing spending, that they’re concerned foremost with the perpetuation of their own power, that they’re far too cushy with big business and special interest lobbyists.
[Read more about the deficit and national debt.]
On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh charged that Republicans in Washington have marinated too long in a city that “socially and politically is controlled by liberal Democrats”--and anyone who worries about securing “relevance” in this self-dealing scene is fatally compromised.
There’s no doubt some truth to this. Like Hollywood, Washington is indeed a kind of mill town.
But my sense, after living here for the last 12 years, is that the primary difference between the Republican “base” and the establishment is this: The base believes Washington has created “this mess”--i.e., the growing size of government and the debt that finances it--and the establishment, though it does not like to say so publicly, realizes that “this mess” has been broadly ratified by the public for decades.
Remember Tom DeLay’s remarks in 2005 about fat in the federal budget--“after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good”? DeLay perhaps felt honest making this shocking statement because, in its annual appropriations process, Congress has control only over discretionary programs. The big money--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--is on autopilot. The fat that Congress actually controls is more like gristle.
Rep. Paul Ryan, who has ably and honestly positioned himself as a bridge between the establishment and the base, comes close to admitting the truth in his response to New York Times columnist David Brooks: “The explosion in government spending and overreach has been a bipartisan failure, not for years but for decades. Politicians continued to make promises that simply cannot be kept.”
Correct. But Ryan tiptoes around the elephant in the room: Politicians made promises to whom? Russians? Europeans? Martians? Venusians?
The Wall Street Journal noted in a front-page story yesterday:
Efforts to tame America's ballooning budget deficit could soon confront a daunting reality: Nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history. ...
Yet even as Americans express concern over the deficit in opinion polls, many oppose benefit cuts, particularly with the economy on an uneven footing. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted late last month found 61 percent of voters were "enthusiastic" or "comfortable" with congressional candidates who support cutting federal spending in general. But 56 percent expressed the same enthusiasm for candidates who voted to extend unemployment benefits.
This is fundamentally why I refuse to take the Tea Party-Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin-O’Donnell brigade seriously: They rail at distant, indifferent Washington, but consider themselves and their like blameless and incorruptible.
The truth is, we’ve all created “this mess,” and it’s going to take cooperation and cool heads to fix it.
- Check out our editorial cartoons on the Tea Party.
- Follow the money in Congress.
- Read more coverage of the political stories of the year.
Reader Comments Read all comments (12)
steve of IL 2:24PM September 18, 2010
david of ID 12:21PM September 17, 2010
steve of IL 11:56AM September 17, 2010