The Tea Party is winning - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

[kpete]

The Tea Party is winning

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, February 21, 2011

......................

Thanks to the Tea Party, we are now told that all our problems will be solved by cutting government programs. Thus the House Republicans' budget bill passed Saturday. They foresee nirvana if we simply reduce our spending on Head Start, Pell grants for college access, teen pregnancy prevention, clean-water programs, K-12 education and a host of other areas.

Does anyone really think that cutting such programs will create jobs or help Americans get ahead? But give the Tea Party guys credit: They have seized the political and media agenda and made budget cutting as fashionable as Justin Bieber was five minutes ago.

More striking is the Tea Party's influence on Washington's political elite, which looks down at the more extreme men and women of the right when they appear on Fox News but ends up carrying their water.

................

In his State of the Union address, Obama made a good case that budget cutting is too small an agenda and that this is also a time for more government -- yes, more government -- in areas that would expand opportunities and strengthen the economy. That argument has been entirely drowned out. If politics is reduced to a crabbed and crabby accountants' war, Obama loses. The country will, too.

the rest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/20/AR2011022002480.html?tid=nn_twitter