Conservative Summer of Discontent

13 July 2010 |permalink | email article

The one truism about the Tea Party movement is that it has no national leader. Instead, legions of angry nihilists have a favorite adverb which is easy to remember – no! And then there are Republican conservatives like Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Sen. John Kyl of Arizona on the edge.

Bachmann, the keynote speaker at a Western Conservative Summit in Denver on Friday night called for a constitutional conservative takeover to free “a nation of slaves” imposed by 18 months of Democratic rule, and an end to a progressive agenda.

She called for a multi-step program to cut government spending, taxes and a host of programs, including securing the borders and limiting foreign entanglements.

But what brought the crowd of 600 conservative voters to their feet was her reading from a founding father John Jay: “We are determined to live free or not at all. We are resolved that prosperity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world.” I mean, is she channeling us from Jupiter or Mars?

Kyl, the second highest Republican in the Senate, according to Talking Points Memo, was on his own extreme rant, doubling down on a controversial statement he made over the weekend. In greater detail he argued that tax cuts for the wealthy should never be offset by tax increases in other areas – but that unemployment benefits need to be fully paid for by either spending cuts or tax increases.

Kyl’s view is that very existence of unemployment insurance is a “necessary evil,” while tax cuts ought not be paid for by increases in order to shrink the size of government.” He dismissed the view of the Congressional Budget Office, and a larger number of economists, than during a recession, extending unemployment is one of the ripest forms of stimulus.

One of a several very wealthy Republican senators not keen about extending unemployment benefits Kyl would do well to brush up on how FDR put millions of unemployed back to work with the stimulus in the 1930s.

 

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