Here is why I laugh at the Tea Parties and the overall conservative movement and no, I'm not a typical liberal.
Conservatives are overly obsessed with the GM and Chrysler bailout over unions, which lost their power even within the Democratic party years ago.
However, as seen in another thread, banking bailouts and Federal Reserve Behavior seem to be OK to a better extent than the GM and Chrysler bailout even though, fundamentally, ethically, moral hazard wise, and monetarily they are going to cost the taxpayer more.
Do you live under a rock? You think the Obama bailouts, the various stimuli, including the first awful, absurdly ginormous one, and Bush's TARP before that are ok with Tea Party people/identifiers, and with conservatives generally? Have you seen the signs? Have you even listened to our main complaints about spending? And is Obamacare "peanuts" to you?
I'll give you points for not bringing up defense spending, at least not in this thread. That's the FIRST place every liberal wants to cut, despite the fact that it is the ONE budgetary area absolutely essential for national survival--and one of the few areas of federal spending specifically Constitutionally mandated; that also means a great deal to conservatives, whether or not spending falls within the ambit of federal Constitutional authority. And it's nothing to laugh at. Thus we should NOT be wasting money on a Department of Education, and the EPA has evolved into one of the worst drags on GDP in the nation's history. Neither is a specific, enumerated federal duty. If "general welfare" means EVERYTHING is potentially a federal duty, then why were other duties specifically enumerated? Or is the Constitution just a silly impediment to you?
We who stand against excessive federal spending when it is yoked to flatly anti-Constitutional federal intervention laugh at
you--and we pity you as well. You strive so much to affect an above-the-fray pose, but your impenetrable pretense is just ensuring that you remain ignorant. I really don't know for sure if you believe your muck about detesting both parties, as if you really can’t see that the Dems will always raise taxes and always overspend, while the Republican party, though far from perfect, offers a political platform to oppose excessive spending (you need only examine the vote tallies on Obama’s/Pelosi’s/Reid’s spending sprees to see where the parties stand NOW). I’m fairly sure that you do see the difference and are, as I said before, just adopting a pose that you imagine places you among the cognoscenti, instead of where it really places you—among the willfully ignorant. No, no, not for you agreement with 60%+ of the country—why, any set of tenets that attracts so great a following must automatically be wrong to you, and you must automatically oppose it, lest you be counted among the hoi polloi. The problem with that kind of unthinking autoelitism is that the majority are very often correct.
On this board you’re dealing with highly educated, very well informed, and deeply and broadly experienced people possessing extraordinary intellects well above the national median, and you’d better get used to not being the smartest kid in class, because you’re not even close.
You COULD open your mind and learn a few things here—but I’m not holding my breath.