Is it Patriotic to Manipulate Tea Party Malcontents?
14 May 2010 10:00 AM, PDT Over at The Atlantic, Michael Kinsley has some words of wisdom for those inclined to over-interpret the Tea Party mandate: Some people think that what unites the Tea Party Patriots is simple racism. I doubt that. But the Tea Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. It is an illustration of what ails America. Not because it is right-wing or because it is sometimes susceptible to crazed conspiracy theories, and not because of racism, but because of the movement’s self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault. I might add that these angry souls are apparently being manipulated into worrying about a “problem” that bothered the Republicans under George W. Bush not a whit: namely, the looming deficit that supposedly will capsize our economy according to the newly minted Grecian formula unless Barack Obama has his hands forcibly removed from the nation’s collective cash register.