One Question, If I May

I see the promise of a better tomorrow in a fiscally conservative (socially liberal) America.  That was the promise of my Tea Party in October 2008.  But what happens to us if the GOP-absconded Tea Party of October 2010 is successful?  The political redresses of the Tea Party are now standard-fare partisan-rhetoric and have provided for very radical candidates and ideas.  They have lost the simplistic beauty of their initial battle cry.

You may be a Tea Partier or even willing to vote for one, and that is your Right.  I appreciate that and congratulate you on participating in the process.  But, here is the question I cannot get answered:

“Where will the Tea Party (R) candidates draw their line in the sand between helping the citizens of this great country and their interpretation of the Constitution and the US Governments obligations?  If you don’t believe in non-Constitutional spending, what goes?”

I believe it is a simple question to ask and an important question to have answered.  Chris Matthews (MSNBC) made a very extreme and unfounded statement on his unabashedly liberal program on 10/13/2010: (Paraphrased) “Those miners would be dead if the Tea Party was in control”.  Wow, offensive and incendiary – but damn important at its core.  In a black and white Tea Party world, the government would not get involved because it would be diverting tax payer money to provide for a rescue activity that isn’t inferred in the rights provided for in our Constitution.  Do you get that?  Better put: we balance the obligations of the Government with welfare (the constitutional definition) and charitable acts every day.  We send money overseas, we provide drug rehab services to those who cannot afford it, and we provide food stamps and unemployment checks to misplaced or disabled workers.  This list is long and for some, the source of our spending problems.    In the unknown Tea Party world, all this may disappear.  Those aren’t my words, these are the words of the “welcomed conservative movement”, the self-proclaimed “true patriots”.

I believe that the promise of the Tea Party that I once supported has morphed from its original resonating mantra of fiscal conservatism and small government to a broader Beckian and Hannitarian stance of social conservatism and anti-liberal everything.  Social security is on the chopping block list of many Tea Partiers, unemployment, welfare of every sort, government mandated (not government run) health care.  These programs (and many more) are up for cuts and elimination.

Where does it stop?  Even better, where does it begin?  On the first budget request of the next Congress, what will be cut? 

We are in a deep hole, $14T hole that is about 2700 feet deep, and 300 million of us are simple “miners” in a dark place and we are wondering what the Tea Party will make its line in the sand.  So, Chris Matthews, keep asking the extreme questions before we elect too many extreme Politicians who will simply plug the hole instead of addressing the problem.  We need to know the answers, specifically.