I’d like to personally thank Sarah Palin for gracing this fair city with her presence on Saturday, because her speech answered a few questions I had about her beloved Tea Party.
In the biting cold and stinging rain, in front of yet another crowd on the steps of the Capitol, Palin expounded on fiscal conservatism, labor and Washington politics. She struck all of the right chords with Madison Tea Partiers, congratulating the women’s hockey team and the Packers on their championship seasons, claiming “this is where the line has been drawn in the sand” and reminding supporters that with Walker’s budget, “Your state won. Your beautiful state won.” It’s hard to blame her for enjoying herself a bit; for once, Tea Partiers have come out on top in a political battle.
Unfortunately, much of what Palin had to say was just washed-up rhetoric. Her comments on the way “violent rent-a-mobs trash your Capitol and vandalize businesses,” made it clear she is still a master of aggressive sound bites meant to fire up angry crowds. Some of her slogans were even downright witty, such as, “‘Win The Future?’W.T.F.is about right.” If Sarah Palin hadn’t gone into politics, she would have a promising career in conservative talk radio. These snarky comments made up the majority of Palin’s rant, and she shared the blame evenly between Madison liberals, theGOPestablishment, government deficits and President Barack Obama.
What is obvious is Palin and her Tea Party don’t stand for anything – they just defiantly stand up against everything. Palin was willing to admit this herself when she claimed, “The Tea Party Movement wouldn’t exist without Barack Obama.” She then set about lambasting his “big government agenda,” which she compared to rearranging deck chairs on the sinking Titanic (as opposed to Obama’s comparison last fall to a car in a muddy ditch).
The problem with the Tea Party in general is it has few principles of its own to stand on, but relies on reactionary antagonism. Palin was right – without a common enemy of “big government” and an arch-nemesis in Obama, there would be nothing to unite fiscal reformists, social conservatives and right-wing extremists into any sort of organized movement. Because of this, the Tea Party exists purely in opposition. Thankfully, this is why it has been so slow to gain political credibility, because speakers like Palin verbally abuse not just Obama for his free spending, but also the Republican Party in Washington for their “capitulation.”
It’s about time America has a serious discussion about its new Tea Party. It has inspired a new wave of governors to make a coordinated attack on labor unions, and this same sort of extremist, fiscally conservative ideology is paralyzing budget talks in Congress. Its stance on immigration is borderline racist. The Tea Party is also blocking “cockamamie, harebrained ideas like more solar shingles, more really fast trains,” and preventing the United States from moving forward with 21st century transportation and power. Palin’s idea to solve this energy problem is to drill into oil reservoirs in Arctic Alaska, arguably America’s last great wilderness, an idea that would make Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin’s own Aldo Leopold somersault in their graves. These ideas have gained a small following because there are people who are disaffected by our government. Taken by themselves, they seem insane.
On the bright side, because the Tea Party today is simply an angry, reactionary opposition, it isn’t here to stay. Real political parties are founded on ideas, not shared enemies. Saturday, Palin spoke on behalf of Gov. Scott Walker and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as the “wife of a union member” and the “daughter of a family full of schoolteachers.” She also reminded me not to lose sleep over the Tea Party. As the son of a true hockey mom and a dad who believed in Reagan, I’d drink a cup of imported Earl Grey to that.
Charles Godfrey ([email protected]) is a freshman with an undecided major.
