What do the Tea Party’s offer our country? Lecturing.

The NY Times recently wrote this:

The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska. “We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist.

Is dangerous too strong a word? Not in this case, and here’s why.

Instead of providing solutions, crazy tea party constitutionalists and now "serious" political candidates, are going to give us lectures on their version of the Constitution. Forget the recessionary suffering and joblessness, sit down and listen. I wish I were kidding.

I promise that if these extremists do find their way into Washington, they will try to etch in stone their jackass channelings of what the founding fathers really meant and will do nothing to provide for the general welfare. After all, “welfare” is a dangerously socialist word, a word slipped into the Constitution in the middle of the night, and passed before anyone had a chance to read it.

A question from Fox’s Chris Wallace inadvertently revealed the tea party plan of governance, when he asked Senate candidate Joe Miller how he would solve poverty and help the unemployed during the recession. It started with “the lecture.”

Joe Miller: "The question is, what is the role of government?”

That’s the pat answer we’ll being hearing from now to eternity. The lecture continues...

Joe Miller: What we have in this country is an entitlement mentality…that, if all goes wrong, it’s the government’s role to get in there, and provide for “the general welfare.” To basically provide for the insolvency of states and other entities…the Constitution provides enumerated powers…show me the enumerated power. And then look at the Tenth Amendment that says, if it’s not there in the constitution, it’s a power that belongs to the state and to the people.”

Yes, it’s right there in the Tenth Amendment, “the power that belongs...to the people.” The states can pass their laws, but so can “the people” federally. The Tenth Amendment is clear:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

That's pretty specific language, except to the many hard line constitutional scholars who think the founding fathers were dumb enough to try and list every power in the founding document. The writers in fact feared the Bill of Rights might be interpreted that way.

Miller also believes that the money in Social Security has been stolen from him. Miller believes the government borrows money with interest, with the intent of never paying it back? What a patriot. Like all conservative con artists, Miller wants to convince Americans they will not get the money back, that it's gone forever, letting them off the hook. Sorry, you borrowed money from the lower and middle class and made fun of the idea of a lock box; now pay it back you freeloaders.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jim: Joe Miller maintains unemployment benefits are unconstitutional Video Cafe (videocafe.crooksandliars.com)
• Alaska U.S. Senate Candidate Joe Miller Believes Unemployment Benefits Are Unconstitutional (alan.com)
• Joe Miller Says Unemployment Benefits Are Unconstitutional, Struggles To Say How He Would Deal With Poverty (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)