Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Be specific!

I don't normally care for Andrew Sullivan, but he makes a good point about today's faux-grassroots teabagging parties:

But the substantive critique must remain the primary one. Protesting government spending is meaningless unless you say what you'd cut.

If you favor no bailouts, then say so. If you want to see the banking system collapse, then say so. If you think the recession demands no fiscal stimulus, then say so. If you favor big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, social security and defense, then say so. I keep waiting for Reynolds to tell us what these protests are for; and he can only spin what they they are against.

All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

All that and where in the hell were they while the deficit grew exponentially over the past eight years?

They're angry that *the top earners* will go back to the same tax rate they had under Clinton, which was an era of entrepreneurship and prosperity, and which was lower than the tax rate under Regan?

I scratch my head in confusion.

Fig said...

I want to know who the genius was that came up with "teabagging" and 2m4m back to back.

Who ever it was, I thank him or her for bringing me joy and my right wing coworkers embarrassment.