BartBlog

Sometimes when you look at the Tea Party agenda, you think that you are looking at a Progressive’s dream come true. They want to cut down on the influence of party hacks and lobbyists in Washington. I’m a Progressive. I want that too!

Teabaggers want states’ rights, Constitutional rights, individual rights and financial safety for their families. Me too. They want bankers to stop getting away with stealing trillions of OUR dollars. They want an end to a horrific deficit that mostly goes into the pockets of fat cats. Those are agenda items that I too support 100%.

The Tea Partiers speak reverently of liberty, justice and freedom. And isn’t that the whole point of being a Progressive? It is for me. And what about Truth? Both sides seem to like the concept of Truth a lot.

And smaller government? The Teabaggers are definitely in favor of that — and so am I. I’d love to see the Pentagon budget get cut by half, all that pork-barreling stop, TARPS ripped out from under the wealthy and “No Child Left Behind” left in the dust.

There are so many things that Teabaggers and Progressives have in common. And yet the Tea Party turned to the GOP for hope, shelter and consolation. Isn’t that a bit like Little Red Riding Hood turning to the Big Bad Wolf for help? “Lie to me,” Tea Partiers begged the Republicans. And the GOP did. Bigtime.

And yet Progressives don’t lie. But the Tea Party hates us anyway. Why oh why is that? Progressives walk the walk. But the GOP just talks the talk. Why chose Them over Us? Forming a Tea Party alliance with the GOP just doesn’t make sense.

To quote Matt Taibbi in the Rolling Stone, “The GOP leadership largely succeeded this past fall in appropriating the political energy of the Tea Party for its own ends, pulling off a brilliant coup by using Tea Party rage to push through the long sought-after extension of the obscene Bush tax cuts. This was always going to be the model of how Republican Party hacks would deal with the Tea Party: Bash the living hell out of hated blue-state Gorgons like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, jack off the mob by incorporating the Tea Party’s Constitution-and-liberty rhetoric, hand the Tea Party those reforms that the GOP’s big campaign contributors want anyway (most notably, tax breaks for the rich and deregulation of big business), and then cough up a note from the doctor or some other lame excuse when the time comes to actually cut spending.” http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/4506-the-crying-shame-of-john-boehner

While I truly do not see what Teabaggers have against Progressives, I can see very clearly why Tea Partiers should hate-hate-hate the Republicans. And yet it is the GOP that Teabaggers choose to climb into bed with. And even as they are getting royally screwed by Republican fat cats, Tea Partiers apparently don’t even have the moxie to ask for payment for their services after the dirty deed is done.

Go figure.

PS: If Teabaggers and Progressives could finally begin to see their common ground and actually begin to work together, America might actually become an honest and decent place once again.

As Matt Taibbi clearly states, “Congress used to be an easy job for any man with a nice fairway stroke, a limited moral compass and a keen sense of bureaucratic loyalty…. But things are different now. America is so broke, there’s no longer really any money in the Treasury to give away — the job of overseeing corporate handouts that used to belong to the leaders of Congress has now moved to the Federal Reserve, which itself is so broke that it has to invent dollars out of thin air before it can give them away to influential billionaires. This leaves congressional leaders with nothing to do but their ostensible jobs — i.e., fixing the country’s actual problems — and few of the current leaders have any experience with that, Boehner being a prime example…. He now finds himself the party’s last line of defense against millions of angry voters who, for the first time in recent memory, are at least attempting to watch what Congress is up to.”

I’m an angry voter. And the Tea Partiers are angry voters too. So let’s stop all this hatin’ on each other, team up, work together, and take our American democracy back from the oligarchs and fat cats who own it now.

Boy, I bet that fat cats like Boehner, Beck, Palin and the owners of the New York Times and Washington Post would HATE to see Progressives and Teabaggers united — instead of happily at each others’ throats and distracted away from this oligarchy’s own lies and misdeeds.