By Mr. Curmudgeon

You have to give Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) points for trying. When she formed the House Tea Party Caucus, she thought she and her measly 28 House Republicans distanced themselves from the incumbency that taints every member of Congress…no matter their party affiliation. It doesn’t seem to be working.

Campaigning for Missouri’s Republican Roy Blunt, Bachmann’s cheerleading met with Tea Party resistance. “’Roy Blunt voted for TARP and Cash for Clunkers. For Michele Bachmann to come to Missouri and give the impression that all the Missouri Tea Parties support Roy Blunt is an abomination of everything we have been standing up for,” said Franklin County Tea Party leader Jedidiah Smith.

Branson, Missouri, Tea Party leader Eric Farris bluntly stated the principles that separate his members from Beltway Republicans, “We encourage all voters to examine the voting records, positions, and values of all candidates, to determine whether they promote the core values of the Tea Party Movement: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally-limited government, and free markets.” Old Eric is setting the bar much too high for many of Washington’s Republican accommodators.

The Jefferson County Tea Party hit the Beltway boys below the belt…deservedly so, “Big spending Republicans that voted to increase the size and scope of Government during the Bush years are part of the problem, not the solution…If posing as a fiscal conservative were a crime, Roy Blunt would be on the top 10 wanted list.”

The Washington Post reports that a main strategy for desperate incumbent Democrats this election season is to “link the Republican Party to some of the most extreme elements of the ‘Tea Party’ movement…”

Stumblebum Beltway Republican’s should be so lucky.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“John Kerry knows that the power of America is our values and ideals,” said Gen. Wesley Clark at the 2003 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. “John Kerry knows that our soldiers embody the best of America’s values: Service. Sacrifice. Courage. Compassion.”

When Democrats speak of compassion, of course, they mean the act of taking your money and giving it to targeted constituent groups to buy votes. In fact, there was no better proof of this than in Sen. Kerry’s own tax returns.

From 1992 to 1995, Kerry’s charitable contributions totaled $3,034. George W. Bush and his wife Laura, on the other hand, contributed a total of $91,442 from 1991 to 1993. When Kerry and his fellow Democrats open their hearts, they don’t necessarily open their wallets. However, you wallets are a different matter all together.

That point was driven home when the Boston Herald reported that Kerry is docking his $7-million yacht, the 75-foot New Zealand-built sloop Isabel, in neighboring Rhode Island. In doing so, Kerry saves $70,000 a year in excise tax compassion.

When confronted by local media, Kerry said, “There is nothing more to say about it… Let’s get this very straight. I’ve said consistently that we will pay our taxes. We’ve always paid our taxes. It is not an issue. Period. We’ve always paid our taxes, we’ll pay our taxes. Can I get out of here please?”

And that’s the plea of those of us trapped by Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and compassionate Republican’s authoritarian big-government. “Can we get out of here please?” Their answer, of course, is a hardy “No!” Because, in the age of Obama, the price of compassion has gone way up.

Speaking to the Netroots Nation convention (a collection of lefty blogers and activists) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Nancy Pelosi tried to calm the frustration of conventioneers upset that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi nexus hasn’t yet pushed America into matching the compassion of Castro’s Cuba, “We can do only so much maneuvering, but we really do need outside persuasion. Just ourselves alone can’t make this happen. If you want these changes to come, make us do it.”

And this November, the Tea Party hopes to stop her “maneuvering” and those who make her “do it.” Love of country, freedom and real compassion compels them.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat paid America’s conservative movement (read Tea Party) the ultimate compliment. Regarding Harry Reid’s admission that cap-and-trade carbon emissions legislation is dead, Douthat writes, “If their bill is dead, it was the American conservative movement that ultimately killed it. Climate legislation wasn’t like health care, with Democrats voting ‘yes’ in lockstep. There was no way to get a bill through without some support from conservative lawmakers. And in the global warming debate, there’s a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the conservative movement and the environmentalist cause.”

In what has to be a major blow to the New York Times, Beltway Republicans appear to be more frightened of the Tea Party than a verbal knuckle-wrapping by columnists at the Times. Environmental supporters of the legislation blame “…figures like Lindsey Graham and John McCain, erstwhile supporters of cap-and-trade who have steadily backpedaled away from it.” It just underscores the importance to the Republican cause for voters to “backpedal” from accomodationist Beltway Republicans in the primaries.

Douthat makes the usual mainstream media claim that to be a Republican automatically makes you a conservative. John McCain? Lindsey Graham? Conservatives? Really? Mavericks, certainly. And by mavericks, I mean the kind of Republican that has compromised with every damaging big-government enterprise that now brings our once great country to the brink of collapse. This brand of Republican conservatism hasn’t the stones to perform the duty implied by its very name…to conserve. They are too busy helping Obama’s Democrats deconstruct America into a leftist banana republic.

It’s bad enough that Beltway Republicans let the New York Times define conservatism. The question that puzzles me is – why do Republican voters?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

President Obama was riding high after signing his Wall Street reform legislation into law. Then Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), came along to rain on the president’s parade. Barofsky’s report to Congress estimates that US taxpayers are on the hook for $700 billion this year (heaped atop an already staggering $3.7 trillion), resulting from the administration’s effort to stem the growing foreclosure rate. And the culprits?

“The increase was largely due to the government’s pledge to supply capital to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to buy their securities and guarantee mortgages to prop up housing,” reports the Reuters News Service. It’s funny how the President’s “sweeping financial reform” accidentally left out Freddie and Fannie…on purpose.

Barofsky lived up to his reputation for being Rep. Barney Frank and President Obama’s worst nightmare. “…I fear that the growing public suspicion that this program is an outright failure will continue unless and until Treasury…comes clean with what its goals and expectations are.” Ouch.

And while the president and his party howl about compensation for executives at the nation’s largest banks and brokerage houses, CEO’s Michael Williams (Fannie Mae) and Charles Haldeman Jr. (Freddie Mac) are both pulling in $900,000 a year. Where big government is concerned, nothing succeeds like catastrophic failure.

And speaking of failure, Obama’s “sweeping financial reform” just gave “too big to fail” the weight of US law. Now Barney Frank and friends can continue feeding the beats Freddie and Fannie tax dollars so as to continue their destructive behavior.

When conservatives criticize Obama’s new draconian law for overburdening our damaged economy, he will no doubt don his trusted fig leaf for cover. “I didn’t create TARP,” he’ll say, “Bush did.” And, sadly, he will be right.

Remember John Snow? As Bush’s Treasury Secretary, he once testified before Washington’s lawmakers, saying they needed to draft “legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises [Freddie and Fannie].” He was ignored by his president and a Republican controlled Congress. A Wall Street Journal poll of leading economists declared Snow an ineffective Treasury secretary by a margin of two to one. Bush eventually fired him.

During the 2008 campaign, John McCain suspended his politicking to participate in legislative negotiations that began the “too big to fail” bailouts. “Now is the time to come together,” said McCain to the adoring press, “Democrats and Republicans – in a spirit of cooperation for the sake of the American people.”

Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The economic crisis that now engulfs our nation, and that Obama uses as an excuse to radically transform America, is the handiwork of Democrats and Republicans working together in a “spirit of bipartisan cooperation.”

Yesterday, senior economist at CoreLogic, Sam Khater, told the Associated Press, “The Economy and the housing market are going to remain stagnant for a long time. There’s nothing that’s going to propel sales anytime soon. It’s all about jobs and income growth.”

Obama’s transformative socialist agenda makes certain that jobs and income growth will remain a distant mirage. And we can thank that damned “spirit of bipartisan cooperation” for it.

America, is it beginning to dawn on you why the Tea Party is so important? This is a drum I will continue to beat until I stop hearing how the Republican Party is the answer to all our problems. They controlled Congress for twelve long years. There was even a Republican president in the White House for six of them. Where were they?

If John McCain returns to Washington after the midterms, do you really believe he will work to undo the horrific damage done to the American people by Obama? Or will he revert to “maverick” mode and obstruct every rational attempt to repeal our current socialist transformation? You know the answer.

There are currently 178 Republicans in the US House of Representatives. Twenty-eight formed a “Tea Party Caucus” giving lukewarm support to the principle of limited government. The question is, Where was the Republican leadership?

“He hates being politically labeled,” said POLITICO.com of Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner. “That’s why he avoids joining caucuses. For example, earlier this week he passed up the opportunity to join the House Tea Party Caucus.” The last thing a man of conscience wants to do during a time of great crisis is take sides in an epic moral struggle to save his country. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, were all to quick to choose the distructive dark side.

Tea Party, Tea Party, Tea Party!

By Mr. Curmudgeon

President Obama is in Bar Harbor, Maine, and in campaign mode. “Too often,” said the president, “the Republican leadership in the United States Senate chooses to filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress. And that has very real consequences.” The leader of America’s socialist utopian left is waging a war against an imaginary enemy. What Republican leadership? What Republican filibusters? Or for that matter, what recovery, what progress?

God willing, Tea Party America will give the president an ideological enemy worthy of attack. Maine, the state of GOP senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, is hardly the venue to condemn so-called obstinate Republicans. The RHINO Republican duo helped give the president and his utopians control of the nation’s financial sector, making it yet another arm of our big-government welfare state.

“Some Republican leaders actually treat this unemployment insurance as if it’s a form of welfare,” said Obama of Democratic efforts to extend unemployment benefits out to infinity – like a form of welfare. “They say it discourages folks from looking for work. Well, I’ve met a lot of folks looking for work these past few years….” That, of course, begs the question: “Since you have piled 13-trillion dollars of debt onto the backs of Americans (working, unemployed and yet unborn), with no positive effect, how much more of America’s dwindling wealth needs to be shoveled into federal furnaces before you look into the mirror to face the real instead of imagined enemy?”

Who are these phantom Republican obstructionists Obama so hysterically rails against? John McCain? Mitch McConnell? John Boehner? These men couldn’t press a noun against a verb to save their lives. The only real vocal and articulate opposition to the president and his party’s brand of National Socialism is the Tea Party. Why do you think every proponent of authoritarian hope and change – from the editorial board of the New York Times to the NAACP – labels the independent grass-roots movement racist? They need to change the conversation.

After all, you know things are looking sour for the president and his party when Democratic strategist James Carville’s Democracy Corps conducts a poll that finds 55% of likely voters describe President Obama as a “socialist.”

And who, exactly, is it that accurately defines the president as such on signs and in speeches? First, let me tell you who it is not…John McCain, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. It, of course, is the Tea Party.

The Democratic campaign strategy to salvage something out of November’s disaster will be: One, to drive a wedge between independent voters and the Tea Party by labeling it as racist (a job taken on by the increasingly irrelevant voices in the mainstream media and at the NAACP); Two, the president will appear to stay above the fray by attacking fictitious hairy-chested Republican leaders building barricades to stop the advance of hope and change.

Utopians have a hard time dealing with reality. Soviet utopians rode the fantasy until their system evaporated on that blessed New Year’s morn in 1991. Obama’s utopians can tilt against Beltway Republican windmills till the cows come home. Here in the real America, the Tea Party idea – forged over two hundred years ago – that government serves at the pleasure of its sovereign, We the People, is about to get what Abraham Lincoln called a “new birth of freedom.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The mainstream media’s underwear was in a knot over a Tea Party billboard in Mason City, Iowa, containing the images of Adolf Hitler, Barrack Obama and Vladimir Lenin. “Radical Leaders Prey on the Fearful & Naïve,” reads the billboard.

“I think comparing a president of the United States to totalitarian dictators responsible for mass murder is appalling,” said Democratic National Committee Executive Director Jen O’Malley Dillon in an e-mail to her party’s financial supporters. “I think calling Barack Obama a socialist is nonsensical. But I don’t think any of this is surprising.”

The billboard has since been removed.

The question: “Is comparing this president of the United States to totalitarian dictators responsible for mass murder appalling?”

What do all three men – Hitler, Obama and Lenin – have in common (besides each man’s peculiar brand of socialism)? All three came to power during periods of crisis – political and economic. All three men offered salvation, and that salvation meant increasing government power at the expense of individual liberty.

It’s unlikely most of their supporters were in favor of gulags or death camps. They just wanted someone to make their lives better and were willing to give these leaders “transformative” power. The reason? Because desperate people can be counted on to forget history’s most repetitive lesson: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Like the sign said, “Radical Leaders Prey on the Fearful and Naïve.”

The signpost was meant to serve as a warning along America’s superhighway to serfdom. That was what most offended Democrats and apologetic Beltway Republicans.

The media plastered photos of the billboard all over the newspapers and Internet to get a jump on distracting from the sign’s intended Tea Party message: stop big government incumbents in the elections of 2010 and 2012…before big government politicians stop you.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Now that Sen. John McCain is locked in what appears to be a losing re-election campaign against Tea Party-supported J.D. Hayworth, the endangered Beltway dinosaur is running, not walking, away from his “maverick” media designation. “I never considered myself a maverick,” the disingenuous maverick recently told reporters. McCain is desperate to lose the title that distinguished him as a man who would do anything to accommodate his Democratic “friends across the aisle.” McCain’s new non-maverick status has left a vacuum, if only temporarily, that the mainstream media is desperate to fill. Enter Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina.

Under the headline “This Years Maverick” (you know there will be more after the November elections) the New York Times promotes the newest member of Washington’s R.H.I.N.O. (Republicans in name only) fraternity. And Graham is saying just what the media wants to hear (and prays is true). “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.” Graham is just telling the Times what Beltway Republicans will only say in private. And Graham is determined to drive a wider gulf between conservative small-government Tea Partiers and the GOP’s Beltway leadership.

“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 told the Times.

White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, “He’s willing to work on more things than the others. Lindsey, to his credit, has a small-government vision that’s out of fashion with his party, which stands for no government. . . . He’s one of the last big voices to give that vision intellectual energy.” In other words, Graham is what Beltway Republicans like to call a “big-government conservative,” which, of course, is an oxymoron…with the emphasis on moron.

Speaking of morons, John McCain came up in later conversation, and Graham’s comments are of paramount importance to Arizonans:

“I observed that if this conversation about how to resolve tough issues were taking place in 2006, I would likely be having it not with Graham but with his friend and legislative mentor, John McCain. ‘Totally agree,’ he responded. ‘I mean, I was the wingman, O.K.?’ But, he acknowledged, things are different now: ‘John’s got a primary. He’s got to focus on getting re-elected. I don’t want my friend to get beat.’

“I asked whether he was giving McCain a pass on anything risky this year.
‘Yeah,’ he said…Though Graham did not explicitly say so, he clearly seemed disappointed in his friend’s election-year drift to the right. He did, however, point out a bright side: McCain’s protégé now had an opportunity to show off his own legislative chops. And when it came to shaping the debate, Graham said: ‘I think I do that better than John.”

Are you listening Arizona? Republican media “mavericks” are posing as small-government Republicans for the primaries, only to abandon their electioneering conservatism after November.

Tea Party, Tea Party, Tea Party! Without them, the Republican Party is dead. Graham has done a great service by revealing what Washington’s entrenched GOP incumbents won’t say publicly.

If voters return a majority of GOP incumbents to office, look for a third party to form. And I’ll be elbowing my way through the crowd to join.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan her views on the Constitution, she declined to answer, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss how she might rule in future cases. She was being disingenuous. She just didn’t want to show her cards.

And I wouldn’t expect any better questions from the usual group of tongue-tied Beltway Republican Senate committee members either. So let me make a few of simple suggestions to the befuddled GOPers on the committee. Ask these simple questions: “First, do you believe the Constitution is a ‘living document?’ Second, do you believe words as defined, say, in Webster’s Dictionary have specific meanings, or are they alive and kicking as well?”

We all know, of course, that Obama would not have nominated Kagan if she were, as they say, a “strict constructionist” or believed in “original intent.” That’s soooo 18th Century.

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, nominees to the Supreme Court (including some by Republican presidents) have breathed new life – Doctor Frankenstein-like – into the Constitution.

The beautiful thing about a living Constitution is that it conveniently does away with the messy and time-consuming amendment process. Why bother submitting an abortion amendment to the fifty state legislatures for ratification when you can simply declare, “Hey, this living Constitution spontaneously grew another cherished right…and right before my eyes. We can kill the unborn! Where, you ask, did Thomas Jefferson write that exactly? Why, by the penumbras…next to the emanations, of course.”

That’s why the dictionary question is such a good follow-up.

Senator Curmudgeon to Elena Kagan:

Ms. Kagan, you are seated at an upscale Washington restaurant and order the filet mignon, medium rare, and a glass of their finest Cabernet Sauvignon.

Twenty minutes later, the waiter brings you a hot dog and a warm bottle of Bud. “This isn’t what I ordered,” you insist. “Yes it is,” the waiter shoots back indignantly, “we pride ourselves in having the best living menu in the city, ma’am.”

“Hey, pal,” you say, “filet mignon is the small end of the tenderloin, carved from the ribcage of a bovine beast. And warm Bud is not superior Bordeaux!”

“It is today, ma’am,” maintains the waiter. “Chef Maurice…at least I think that’s what he’s calling himself today…believes the menu must change with the times. Enjoy your filet mignon.”

Here’s my last question, Ms. Kagan: do you ask for your money back or do you accept Chef Maurice’s redefinition of the hot dog and a warm bottle of domestic brew?

Her answer will show whether America is getting judicial filet mignon or just another deconstructionist, black-robed, liberal weenie.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Until the other day, I was extremely pessimistic about the economic future of America. Then I read Paul Krugman, Nobel-winning economist and weekly contributor to the New York Times. He announced in his column that the country is in the early stages of a third Great Depression. And the reason for his pessimism? The assembled nations at the G-20 economic summit held last weekend in Toronto, Canada, listened to Obama’s Keynesian plea to spend, spend, spend and said, “drop dead.”

“…At last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting,” lamented Krugman, “governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.” Actually, they are obsessing over debt, not inflation. They prefer not to see general chaos in the streets, their citizens setting the police ablaze with Molotov cocktails. Instead of denouncing some in Europe for their unusual bout of sanity, Krugman needs to tell the Greeks to please ixnay on the riots-nay. They’re giving reckless Krugsian spending a bad name.

With American lawmakers already losing faith in Obamanomics (the Democratic majority refused to pass a bill extending unemployment benefits out  into infinity), the stage is set for a humdinger of an election debate on whether the U.S. should follow Greece down Krugman’s road to economic oblivion or elect Tea Party rationalists who believe Thomas Jefferson’s dictum, “In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”

A year ago last April, Krugman was absolutely delighted that tongue-tied compassionate conservative Republicans posed no threat to the president’s socialist agenda. “For now, the Obama administration gains a substantial advantage from the fact that it has no credible opposition, especially on economic policy, where the Republicans seem particularly clueless.” He was certainly right back then. Unfortunately for Krugman and President Obama, the Tea Party came along to fill the vacuum left by go-along-to-get-along Beltway Republicans. Tea Party candidates seem to be sweeping Krugman’s “clueless” Republicans into the ashbin of history.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 11% of Americans believe the government should increase the budget deficit, ala Krugman, to stimulate the economy. According to Rasmussen, “59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.” If that wasn’t bad enough, the survey also found “most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go.”

And then, the cruelest cut of all, “Eighty-three percent of Americans, in fact, say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.”

No wonder Krugman is talking about a depression. After November, he’ll need a psychiatrist to deal with his own.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

J.M. Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Research, is not the sharpest tack in the box. He can’t quite figure out what all the Tea Party anger is about. “…The vast majority of House Democrats are now avoiding holding town-hall-style forums – just as you might sidestep an enraged, jilted lover on a subway platform – out of fear of confronting the incubus of Tea Party rage that routed last summer’s meetings,” say Bernstein in his New York Times Op-Ed.

“It would be comforting,” continues Bernstein, “if a clear political diagnosis of the Tea Party movement were available – if we knew precisely what political events had inspired the fierce anger that pervades its meeting and rallies, what policy proposals its backers advocate, and, most obviously, what political ideals and values are orienting its members.”

The “Tea Party rage that routed last summer’s meetings,” the significance of which escapes the professor, was over ObamaCare. A significant proportion of the country objected to Obama and Pelosi’s idea that forced membership in their totalitarian health care plan should become the price of American citizenship.

Most significantly, Bernstein, like Obama and the media, wonder: “Where are the Tea Party’s counter proposals?” After all, didn’t Beltway Republicans salivate when offered a chance to bring an alternative health care proposal to the table? “If we call the tune,” say authoritarian Democrats, “and Beltway Republicans begin to dance, why won’t the Tea Party?”

The obvious answer is that the Tea Party says no to all the above — no to President Obama’s transformative authoritarian need to lord over a free people, and no to President Bush’s compassionate conservative death by inches. This explains why hope-and-changers and Beltway Republicans are equally puzzled by the Tea Party.

“It is by recognizing one another as autonomous subjects through the institutions of family, civil society and the state,” says Bernstein, “that we become such subjects; those practices are how we recognize and so bestow on one another the title and powers of being free individuals.” In other words, the clearinghouse of the state, not “nature and nature’s God,” ordain our liberties. Bernstein’s logic is neatly Orwellian.

Bernstein closes with a charge that will ring out from now until the Democrats are hammered at the polls this November. “With such rage driving the Tea Party, might we anticipate this atmospheric violence becoming actual violence, becoming what Hegel called, referring to the original Jacobins’ fantasy of total freedom, ‘a fury of destruction’? There is indeed something not just disturbing, but frightening, in the anger of the Tea Party.”

Fear is welling in the hearts of all those who believe liberty is far too messy and that individuals must be herded like cattle. The “atmospheric violence” that Bernstein speaks of, and not actual violence, is what he and Obama fear most. A growing number of Americans are rejecting the idea that a more powerful state will ease their burdens. That liberty lost is comfort gained. Ask any nanny-state Greek how that arrangement is working for them. For Bernstein, that more and more Americans reject the idea of an all-powerful state is a violent punch to the solar plexus.