Okay, so Tea Party darlings aren’t always the most sophisticated politicians. They get facts wrong, they make enemies more often than they make friends, they positively reject the very notion of accommodation and compromise upon which democracy depends. They spout hateful rhetoric and downright wacky ideas so often that it’s almost ceased to be funny. But at least they’re just ordinary guys like you and me, and they’ll keep the mean ol’ gubmint out of our lives, and make sure the little guy gets heard, right?
Don’t you believe it. Joe Miller, the teabagger to unseat incumbent Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary seems now to have lost to her subsequent write-in campaign. No doubt his loss is largely self-inflicted, a product of a series of gaffes including praise for East German techniques of population control. I say “seems†to have lost because, technically, the vote is still being challenged.
Before the election, Alaskan courts ruled that write-in ballots would be counted despite small spelling errors, a ruling expected to help Murkowski in a state perennially rated near the bottom of the list in educational indicators. Miller, unable to find a sympathetic ear in Alaska, has turned to federal courts to punish Alaskan voters for bad spelling, thus proving his dedication to small government and his platform of keeping federal government out of state institutions, and even calling for states to take over federal institutions like Social security. He’s not even in office yet! (And, god and the rule of law willing, never will be.)
I think we can expect that level of dedication to principle across the board from teabaggers, just as we saw small-government Republicans squealing for federal support in the BP spill, small-government libertarians drawing multiple government pensions or calling for big corporate handouts, and small-government conservatives demanding the feds stay out of health care but interfere directly with Terry Schiavo’s treatment and your abortion.
Teabaggers want big government just as much as anybody else; the only difference is that they only want its benefits reserved for themselves. That, and the way they bitch the loudest when they don’t get it.
Postscript: …like Congressman Andy Harris. What an ignorant, hypocritical, perquisite-grubbing ass.
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