Drinkin' the Tea Party kool-aid

It's alarming to think how many people seem to be swallowing the TEA Party kool-aid that is out there being served up by the likes of people like Sarah Palin. I can rightly understand the idea of smaller government, but not at the expense of needed things like schools, libraries, roads, bridges, police and fire departments, mental health agencies and more things that rely on tax dollars. I am as alarmed as anyone else about our burgeoning federal deficit and what it's going to mean in the long run for our country. But if these folks had their way, we would cut taxes so much that most of the publicly funded things that we need would wither and die on the vine. They don't seem to get what tax monies pay for. They're angry at what they perceive as hand outs to those who don't deserve it, and I admit, I was a bit put off by the big bank bailouts that resulted in hefty bonuses being paid to their executives, seemingly rewarding failure on their part. But what could have been done otherwise to keep the economy from completely collapsing, I do not know. I do know that too many years of failed policies out of Washington got us into this mess in the first place and that it is going to take many long years to clean it up. These TEA Partiers also want less regulation of everything, but we've seen, with the disastrous recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, what lax regulation can lead to. Lax regulation also led to the current recession, as banks failed to properly vet those to whom they were lending money. There were too many years of too easy credit, very similar to the situation that led to the stock market crash in '29. We obviously failed to learn the lessons of history on that one because we darn near repeated the same mistakes this time and came precipitously close to a full out Depression. As it stands right now, we're still mired in double digit unemployment and the partisan gridlock in Washington pretty much assures that things will not get any better anytime soon. The TEA Partiers have become the loudest, most obnoxious and the most far right wing of the conservatives and their influence has already been shown in the recent election of Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senatorial primary. He was their choice for a Republican candidate for US Senator, and he won. My fear is that they will become so influential as to affect the midterm elections in ways that are contrary to the national interest and that the last two years of the Obama administration will be too gridlocked to get anything accomplished. It's been the goal, since Day One of his administration, for the conservatives to cause Obama to have a failed presidency and to stymie him at every turn. So far, they've done a damned good job of keeping the Republicans disciplined and in lockstep to oppose Obama. The Democrats are disorganized and can't agree on anything between the Blue Dog conservatives and the more liberal Yellow Dogs. It's a party in frustrating disarray that no one seems to be able to unite, not even Obama with his celebrity power. So things aren't boding well for the fall midterms, and I am pessimistic about the next two years until the next Presidential election. I'm afraid that the prophecy of Obama being a one term President will, sadly, come true, and that his administration will go down in history as relatively unremarkable but for the fact that he will have been the first black President. We can thank the TEA Partiers and their leaders like Sarah Palin for that, unfortunately, because even people I thought were reasonable and intelligent people are buying the TEA Party line. And when that happens, you know we're in trouble as a country.