Tea Party Agenda: Smaller Government

By B. Daniel Blatt

Scan the editorial pages of some of this country’s major dailies and you’ll come away with the impression that the most energetic political movement in the United States to have emerged since Obama took office is a bunch of angry racist red necks, lead by white men berating Barney Frank not for his big-government policies, but for his attraction to members of his own sex.

As Matt Carden, one of our readers put it, the media coverage of the Tea Parties is like social conservatives’ coverage of Gay Pride marches. They show us the freaks and call it the mainstream.

Well, today, via Glenn Reynolds, comes a piece of even-handed reporting on this movement which has galvanized hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of freedom-loving Americans. Those reporters who look at the Tea Party movement without prejudice find that instead of representing an amalgamation of angry right-wing freaks instead represent the mainstream of Americans.

In his piece for the Christian Science Monitor, Patrik Jonsson reminds us that, “polls show that the anger at big government exhibited by tea party protesters is shared by many, if not most, Americans“:

A Pew poll in early March found 71 percent of Americans “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today,” while a CNN poll showed that 56 percent of Americans are more than just discontented with Washington. Instead, that majority of respondents agreed that the government is “so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

Moreover, Paul Krugman’s fulminations notwithstanding, the Tea Party agenda does not include rolling back the Civil or Voting Rights Acts, but focuses on holding the line on the growth of government and its regulatory sweep:

What’s more, the release this week of the top three planks of the “crowd-sourced” Contract From America project, to some activists, shows a maturation from sign-wielding protesters to a political reform movement grounded in ideas.

The top three vote-getters among 360,000 respondents on the Contract From America website: Calling for an enumerated powers act to force lawmakers to check the constitionality of new laws; requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for any tax hike; and a legislative backstop to prevent the EPA from “backdoor regulating.”

Continue reading at the Gay Patriot…

Related posts:

1. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Amid Harsh Criticisms, ‘Tea Party’ Slips into the Mainstream
2. FOX NEWS: Tea Party Protesters Descend on D.C. with New ‘Contract From America’
3. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
4. WSJ: “Tea-Party Activists Stage Tax-Day Rallies”
5. End Runaway Government Spending

Tagged as: America Speaking Out, Commitment to America, constitution, Contract from America, Contract with America, limited government, media bias