Why the Tea Party and I are Not in Agreement!!!

Yesterday, reporters went searching for voters who had voted for David Brat.  What they found were people who are angry with Eric Cantor for voting on compromises.

Regular readers know that I believe democracy is founded on compromise because no one is correct about anything 100% of the time and no where is that more true than when it comes to government.  That is why the founding fathers, so revered by the Tea Partiers, set up a government that has checks and balances, including a legislature where people of different views get together and talk to each other.  Then they look for legislative language that satisfies a majority of the legislators and the President.  That is our system.

Now Eric Cantor was a hardly a compromiser of the sort that I would vote for.  He said no to any number of things I think the government should be doing.  So what did the voters find objectionable?
Apparently, it was a slight musing that some compromise on immigration might be something he could support.  Apparently, it was voting to keep the government running and it was a picture taken of him meeting the President to have a discussion on something.

Let me see, you are the majority leader of the House of Representatives and you have direct responsibility for a key aspect of the government and you are not supposed to either keep the government running or have any discussions with the President.  Well, how are you going to do your job?  And if you are doing your job, why should we pay you to sit in the House of Representatives?  Why don't we just disband the whole legislative process seems to be the view of the Tea Party.

I am almost speechless after taking that logic to it's conclusion, but my real thought of the day was a poll taken by the Pew Research group that found partisanship increasing on the liberal side and a shrinking (but still majority) group of people in the middle.

This is sad because I do not support 100% of liberal biases despite what RedStateVT may think.  I believe environmental change has to be done in a way that maintains economic growth.  I believe in the power of markets and I do not believe the government should be interfering with business beyond prudent regulation because markets can be excessive in ways that only self-correct by damaging innocent people.

And responsible members of the GOP should think about what a Tea Party libertarian set of policies would look like.  Isolationist would be near the top of the list.  A return to the boom bust cycle of late 1800's and early 1900's.  Greater concentration of wealth which in the same time period let to anarchists and Marxism as a response.  And legalized drugs for everyone to have access to (that could lead to some rational policies that our current War on Drugs has failed miserably at).

Fortunately, I do not believe a Tea Party candidate can win any election other than a rural one.  So let's be thankful the President has a veto power and hope this rise of the Tea Party will motivate less committed voters to come out for the elections this fall and elect a few more Democrats then it looks like will win today.