On Sunday, my wife was reading the paper, and announced that there was something in there about what Lindsey Graham said in that New York Times Magazine profile recently.
Turns out it was a rehash of the quote about not being gay.
What I had HOPED was being quoted was what he said about the Tea Partiers, because it’s the one question that ought to be asked of those folks repeatedly:
“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham said as Cato drove him to the city of Greenwood, where he was to give a commencement address at Lander University later that morning. On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was “very, very contentious,” he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: “ ‘What do you want to do? You take back your country — and do what with it?’ . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.”In a previous conversation, Graham told me: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.” Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: “We don’t have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.” Chortling, he added, “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.”
Whenever I hear Nikki Haley (you know Nikki Haley — she’s that extremist who wants to censure her own party’s senior U.S. senator for being a rational human being) say that line, “take our government back” to Tea Party cheers, I wonder the same things. Take it back from whom? To do what with it?
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It’s far easier to be angry than to show leadership. It’s as simple as that.
I, too, think that they will splinter, and ultimately disintegrate, the question is, will they do so before doing serious harm to our country.
I gave money to Lindsey Graham after reading this article. First Republican contribution of my life. While I disagree with Senator Graham on almost every issue, he’s a responsible voice for all moderate voters of South Carolina. Once he’s gone, the Republican Party will eat itself alive until NO ONE is pure enough to win it’s party’s nomination AND general election.
Oops. And how’s that for a run-on sentence?
The whole “take our government back” spiel is so much empty rhetorical drivel. They are long on confrontation and very short on any kind of concrete ideas. Just exactly how do they want to make government smaller? Do they want to reduce the size of the military? How about social security? What about eliminating unemployment benefits or the national parks? When you get right down to it they are just angry in a general sort of way but lack anything of concrete value to add to the public discourse. Until they can offer up something specific they really don’t amount to anything more than a bunch of hyperbolic yackers.
Actually, I think they do know what they’d do with the country, but don’t have the courage to say, to wit: They’d take it back to about 1950, before women, blacks, browns and other suspect groups had any real rights, nor was there any thought of providing redress for the wrongs done them. They’d put Gawd back in the classrooms (they haven’t probably asked the tough questions of exactly whose God–many of these are people who splinter and splinter into smaller sects over interpretations of who HE is). They’d stop government interference with business, except of course for the trade protections they’d like/dislike. They’d remove all environmental regulation, because after all, we have dominion over everything–until one of their loved ones get really sick from the environment, or hurt on the job–until then, they’d do away with OSHA, too.
I heard a radio advertisement for a Tea Party rally to “take back our government” just this morning and I had the exact same thought: From who? Calling the opposing side Un-American seems to be mostly a republican/conservative thing. The fact that Graham is tolerable to some Democrats makes Republicans hate him even more – to their own detriment, I believe.
Karem McLeod,
If I may ask, what serious harm to our country do you most fear, or do you believe is most likely to materialize from tea partiers if they do not self destruct before 2012?
Are you able to be specific or is your fear for our country more of a generalized, vague notion?
The Tea Party doesn’t need to be “sustainable”. It’s bad enough getting things past Coburn or Demint. If Paul or Angle get elected, the way the senate operates, everything may come to a grinding halt for years?
Juan, What I fear is a continuation of the policies and actions that occurred during the previous president’s administration. During that time we lowered taxes on the very rich. While we did this we waged an unfunded war. This combination of poor policy has resulted in tremendous deficits, while turning our ‘safety net’ into nothing but ragged strings. I’m worried about the further deregulation of the financial institutions. Yeah, some of the things the Democrats did earlier weren’t the brightest ideas, but the incredible encouragement toward selfishness, and the deification of the almighty dollar has left us in a disasterous situation. Our mega-businesses, such as big oil, big pharma, and big farming have power enough. They don’t need any more. I’m also worried about the laissez-faire attitude the previous administration had toward the environment. We need to get busy and consider major environmental action. Yeah, there’s plenty of specific things that I’m worried about. But mostly what I’m worried about with Sen. DeMint is his highly partisan, ‘my way or the highway’ approatch to everything. He has made it clear again and again that his primary goal is to destroy this administration, simply because it is this administration. If he’s not willing to consider each subject and work toward creating useful legislation he doesn’t need to be there.
It’s simple – many of us want to see a government that is efficient, does what a government SHOULD do, is free from corrupt hacks, patronage, and waste. That’s what “taking it back” means. Taking it back from Harrell, Leatherman, Coooper, and McConnell. Taking it back from the clowns who think blowing $100 million dollars on Innovista was a good idea. Taking it back from what Vincent Sheheen calls the culture of cronyism at the Department of Commerce.
The government continues to grow and grow (50% larger now than it was a decade ago). And it’s not doing a better job. If they can’t do it right, they don’t deserve to have our money to waste.
I would agree with Doug T. if the
Tea Party represented some sort of middle ground, instead of some kookoo puritan sect of the Republican party: the libertarians minus the good stuff.
Forget about the future possibility of the Tea Party disintegrating and recognize it for what it is: the splintering of the Republican party.
Here’s a better explanation of what “taking it back” is based on:
“There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn’t work, that it is incapable of solving America’s problems. Americans are fed up with Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by the Republicans.
The American people wanted change, and who could blame them? But now there is no change they can believe in. Sixty-two percent believe we are headed in the wrong direction—a record during this administration. All the polls indicate that anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is greater than it has been in many years. For the first time, Obama’s disapproval rating has topped his approval rating. In a recent CBS News poll, there is a meager 15 percent approval rating for Congress. ”
Who wrote that? Mort Zuckerman. An Obama supporter.
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/07/02/mort-zuckerman-obama-is-barely-treading-water.html