Payback at the Polls

By Robert Scheer, Truthdig


Let’s not shoot the messenger. Yes, the tea party victors are a mixed bag espousing often contradictory and at times weird positions, the source of their funding is questionable and their proposed solutions are vague and at times downright nutty. But they represent the most significant political response to the economic pain that has traumatized swaths of the nation at a time when so-called progressives have been reduced to abject impotence by their deference to a Democratic president.


Barack Obama deserved the rebuke he received at the polls for a failed economic policy that consisted of throwing trillions at Wall Street but getting nothing in return. His amen chorus in the media is quick to blame everyone but the president for his sharp reversal of fortunes. But it is not the fault of tea party Republicans that they responded to the rage out there over lost jobs and homes while the president remained indifferent to the many who are suffering.


At a time when, as a Washington Post poll reported last week, 53 percent of Americans fear they can’t make next month’s mortgage or rent payment, the president chirped inanely to Jon Stewart that his top economics adviser, Lawrence Summers, who was paid $8 million by Wall Street firms while advising candidate Obama, had done a “heckuva job” in helping avoid another Great Depression. What kind of consolation is that for the 50 million Americans who have lost their homes or are struggling to pay off mortgages that are “underwater”? The banks have been made whole by the Fed, providing virtually interest-free money while purchasing trillions of dollars of the banks’ toxic assets. Yet the financial industry response has been what Paul Volcker has called a “liquidity trap”—denying loans for business investment or the refinancing necessary to keep people in their homes.


Instead of meeting that crisis head-on with a temporary moratorium on housing foreclosures, as more than half of those surveyed by the Post wanted, the president summarily turned down that sensible proposal. Instead he attempted to shift the focus to his tepid health care reform and was surprised that many voters didn’t think he did them a favor by locking them into insurance programs not governed by cost controls. Health care reform was viewed by many voters with the same disdain with which they reacted to the underfunded and unfocused stimulus program. Neither seems relevant to turning around an economy that a huge majority feels is getting worse, according to Election Day exit polls.


That is a problem that is not obvious to the power elites whom the leaders of both political parties serve or to the high-paid media pundits who cheer them on. The tea party revolt, ragged as it is, fed on a massive populist outrage that so-called progressives had failed to respond to because of their allegiance to Obama. As a result the Democrats squandered the hopes of their base, which rewarded the party with a paltry turnout at polling stations.

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But it now remains for the tea party victors to prove that they are a viable alternative, or by the next election they too will find that their base of support has evaporated. This should be of great concern to the libertarian wing of that movement, which scored a considerable victory and a much-enhanced national presence with Rand Paul’s Senate victory in Kentucky. Will he stick to his promise to hold the Federal Reserve accountable and oppose the continuing favors to Wall Street that he has blasted as “a transfer of wealth from those who have earned to those who have squandered”?


The tea party is now in the awkward position previously occupied by the Obama hope crusade of having to deliver and will suffer a similar political fate if it fails to deal with the economic crisis. In particular, the Republicans who will control the House, thanks to the tea party, must come up with proposals to solve the housing crisis or they will stand exposed as political opportunists who intend to exploit rather than deal with the economic anxiety felt not only by their base but much of the country.


Some Democratic leaders will urge Obama to follow President Bill Clinton’s lead after his party’s electoral reversal in the 1994 election and move even further to the right to strengthen his prospects for re-election. It was that opportunistic shift by Clinton that led to his signing off on the radical deregulation of the financial industry that caused the economic meltdown. If Obama follows such advice it will spell further disaster for the nation.

Payback Time for the Tea Party

It's payback time.

Tea Party leaders, livid over the passage of health care reform on Sunday night, say their next step will be to turn from fighting the bill to running the people who voted for it out of Congress.

The bill's narrow passage was inarguably a victory for President Obama and a blow to those who opposed it. Though Tea Partiers joined with Republican officials to rally in Washington and across the country against the package up until judgment day, Democrats were able to assuage skeptical lawmakers and muster the votes needed to send the sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system to the president's desk.

Now those lawmakers have to go, Tea Partiers say, and they're planning to sustain their fight into November by registering voters, pumping money into ad campaigns against Democratic incumbents and supporting their challengers.

Some want to elect lawmakers with the ultimate goal of repealing the bill; but with repeal a heavy lift, at the minimum the groups are out for vengeance.

And while the Sunday vote was a defeat for the cause, it was potentially a boon for membership.

"I am deluged with phone calls this morning (from) people wanting to join the Tea Party," said Gina Loudon, a founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, which campaigned against the bill during Obama's stop there two weeks ago. "I literally cannot even return the phone calls quickly enough. ... This has absolutely awoken a giant."

Loudon said she and other activists -- who met up at a pub in downtown St. Louis Sunday night to mourn the passage of the bill -- are already drafting a game plan for the months ahead. She said getting involved in congressional campaigns will be a big part of that.

Expect Tea Party political action committees (PACs), to gain a lot more prominence in the months ahead. Loudon said the Ensuring Liberty PAC, the political group announced last month at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, is going to be raising money and influencing targeted races -- her husband is a board member of that group.

Debbie Dooley, co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party and a national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, agreed that the focus will be on voting out health care reform bill supporters.

"Yesterday, they chose not to listen to what the people want," she said. "We, the people, will have our say in November."

She said lawmakers like Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. -- who had been a holdout against health care reform over abortion funding concerns but who switched to a yes vote after striking an agreement with the White House -- are top targets. She said Tea Party groups plan to continue holding rallies and showing up at lawmakers' town hall meetings and congressional offices to protest the bill.

"This health care vote was not the end. It is just the beginning of the fight," she said.

The House on Sunday passed the Senate-approved health care bill along with a package of changes that House Democrats want the Senate to approve next. The bill is being considered under reconciliation rules, which would allow Democrats to pass it with just 51 votes, as opposed to the 60 that would otherwise be needed to avoid a filibuster.

Dooley said Tea Party groups will do what they can to fight the reconciliation bill as well -- not out of any particular objection to its contents but out of concern about the reconciliation process and a desire to hold House members accountable for the vote on the Senate bill.

They argue that preventing the reconciliation bill from passing could make some House Democrats even more vulnerable in November.

"We want to make this election a referendum on the bill," said Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, the conservative organization that's closely aligned with Tea Party groups across the country.

Tea Party Express, a separate group of conservative activists, is also planning to kick off a nationwide tour Saturday in Searchlight, Nev.

Levi Russell, spokesman for the group, said the tour will focus on health care and on highlighting the "worst offenders" in bringing the bill over the finish line. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be the top target at the Tea Party Express kickoff, which former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to attend.

Though health care reform may continue to be the overriding issue for Tea Party groups in the months to come, the activists say they're ready to divide their attention among whatever issues Obama chooses to pursue -- immigration reform or cap-and-trade or something else.

"We are as passionate about those as we are about health care," Loudon said.
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