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

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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

[xchrom]

1. spot on. nt

[myrna minx]

2. K&R n/t

[still_one]

3. The tea party is just george wallace reincarnated, only this time the media is sympathetic to them

which makes it even more dangerous

[mmonk]

4. LOL. Crabbed and crabby accountant's war.

[SpiralHawk]

5. The TeaBaggers are Whining

"I don't want to pay my fair share. I don't want to support my country." - TeaBagliCons

[Javaman]

6. They aren't winning anything...

the tea party are the repukes crazy uncle.

the tea party astroturf is funded wholly by the repukes.

while the repukes are too cowardly to profess their real feelings, in regards to destroying peoples rights, etc., they instead fund these halfwit water carrying wanna-be fools who are deluded into thinking they have any actual power into doing the bidding of the most evil arm of the repuke party.

the tea party assholes don't control shit, they don't have a message, they don't have a "movement".

So to say that the tea party assholes are winning is just plain ignorant of the playing field.

The wealthy repuke assholes are winning.

[spanone]

7. it's about dismantling all things democratic

[stillwaiting]

8. The Tea Party was simply an investment by the Billionaires, and it's paying off!

The existence of the Tea Party simply lends some legitimacy to the legislation that the powers that be wanted to have passed.

TPTB's goal is simply to provide a framework that allows for the masses to accept the increasingly austere reality facing more and more Americans. The financing and trumpeting of the Tea Party throughout the media was done to attempt to make us accept what's being and about to be done to us and our standard of living.

The Tea Party members are fools. Those financing them are ruthless.