The Uses And Abuses Of The Tea Party

by Jay Cost - August 10th, 2011 - The Weekly Standard

The following facts about the federal budget deficit are, as far as I know, widely accepted:

First. We have a long-term deficit problem that is due to the rising costs of federal entitlements, above all Medicare.

Second. Our current deficit is substantially larger than normal, due to several factors:

- The economic recession, which decreased the amount of tax revenue...

- An increase in government spending, in the form of automatic stabilizers...

- An increase in government spending, in the form of Keynesian stimulus...

- The continued weakness of the economy, which has kept tax revenues down...

Nowhere on this list do I see anything regarding the Tea Party [Or even anything that the Tea Party movement contributed to]. So why is this movement now so frequently mentioned as a prime factor in the country’s deficit woes?

To answer this question, we must understand that Democrats are in desperate need of a red herring...

And of course when the Democrats need a red herring, they have all of the deceitful training of Alinsky to guide their vitriol into attack mode against someone.

Democrats are the masters of innuendo and personal attacks. However I think this article is correct that this time they have picked the wrong target. For a lot of reasons, including the main issue addressed in article, the Tea Party movement is not a good sustainable target. Just as the claim all Tea Party adherents were racists failed due to the lack of tangible evidence of actual racism, the charge that the Tea Party is liable for our economic circumstances is easily defeated by the simple reality that they have done nothing to create the current circumstances.

When the factors that have left us so deep in debt occurred, the Tea Party movement was not even in existence! Democrats are deranged if they think that they can make this claim stick.