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Mainstream
Media Pushing Hard to
Defeat the Tea Party, Raise Taxes
By Dan Gainor
Published August 26, 2011
The
Politico headline read:
“Conservative elites pine for 2012 hero.” They could have shortened
that
sentence to “Elites pine” or more likely to “Elites freak the heck
out.”
Because it’s not just the conservative cognoscenti, it’s all of them.
The folks
in charge of the mainstream media equation miss the good old days when
they ran
everything and ordinary American voters and taxpayers did as they were
told.
Those
days are gone and the in-crowd
is afraid it is on the way out, too. Congress’s favorability rating is
down to
13 percent and even the lefties at Mother Jones are whining that both
political
parties are cancelling town hall meetings to hide from angry voters.
The
era when elite Washington – of all
three major parties: Republicans, Democrats and the Media – could just
raise
our taxes or cut deals behind closed doors has gone bye-bye. And the
Powers
That Be are determined to turn back the clock.
They
blame the Tea Party and rightly
so. A combination of a grassroots movement and a sophisticated
technology now
able to actually inform Americans has successfully taken away some
power from
politicians and the media. The logical solution would be for both
groups to
reflect more what the public actually wants from them – a saner, more
affordable government and a media that is fair to someone other than
just
liberals.
Instead,
the elites have declared war
on the Tea Party.
That
in itself is nothing new. Since
the first spot of tea a couple years ago, anti-tax, anti-Big Government
protesters have been called bigots, violent and a dangerous fringe
element. The
recent debt battle took it to a far worse level as those in power
sought to
blame Tea Partiers on our nation’s unwillingness to spend itself into
the
grave.
The
result of that battle was,
seemingly, a toss-up. The debt ceiling was raised and a super committee
established to discuss ways to solve the budget crunch. But the design
of the
committee makes tax hikes likely. The deck is stacked as everyone from
President Obama and Vice President Biden to Speaker Boehner and almost
every
generic pundit is now pushing to do just that. And the clock is ticking
as a
Dec. 23 deadline looms.
At
least a few admit they want to use
the chance to raise taxes. Obama, most Dems and even loud-mouthed
billionaire
Warren Buffett are begging for a tax hike.
On
Sunday, Aug. 21, the major media
chimed in. The Washington Post ran two huge pieces skewering the Tea
Party on
the economy and more. Columnist Allan Sloan led off the business
section
claiming “the Tea Party types bear primary responsibility.” Over in the
opinion
section (as if the first piece wasn’t opinion), they ran a
pro-spending,
pro-Keynsian economics piece complaining that critics of such policies
“almost
surely have it wrong.” The critics are, of course, the Tea Party and
politicians who are friendly toward it like Minnesota Rep. Michele
Bachmann and
Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The
very same day, The New York Times
produced an editorial urging “business leaders to change the minds of
the Tea
Party lawmakers” and back a “grand bargain that cut spending and raised
tax
revenue.”
The
push to raise taxes is near
universal across the media for two reasons. First, it boosts the size
of the
burgeoning Nanny State. The journalistic elite always support more
government.
Even when politicians trim the size of growth in government, reporters
bemoan
such “draconian” cuts. Journalists have never met a draconian increase
in the
size of government that they didn’t like, but taxpayers sure have.
Secondly,
a tax hike would require
squashing the Tea Party. And the elites have joined in the hunt.
Washington
Post columnist E.J. Dionne
Jr. has claimed GOP politicians are “subservient” to the Tea Party.
Dionne’s
columnist at the Post, Richard Cohen, concurs and said Perry “occupies
the
cultural and intellectually empty heartland of the Republican Party”
because he
“vows to diminish Washington’s influence.” Cohen calls that a “moronic
policy,”
instead claiming “what America desperately needs is more, not less,
Washington.”
The
network news shows use the same
strategy with just a dash more subtlety. When local Tea Party leaders
confronted Obama in Iowa, they were put down on air. On NBC, Chuck Todd
noted
the “bitter taste of the energy and confrontational style of the Tea
Party” and
their “in-your-face tactics.” ABC’s Jake Tapper referred to it the
“unruly Tea
Party style.”
Politicians
took the same view. “Former
Republican Senator Alan Simpson, who
co-chaired the deficit commission, said the American people are rightly
disgusted, and he’s personally bothered by Republicans undermining any
chance
of Speaker Boehner compromising,” explained Tapper July 12. That’s a
Republican
argument supporting Obama’s “shared sacrifice” plan where the elites
control
more of your money.
They
were mirroring the elitist
anti-Tea Party talking points, such as the one from Obama campaign
strategist
David Axelrod who called the downgrade of U.S. debt “a Tea Party
downgrade.”
That, despite the fact that Tea Partiers were the only ones willing to
cut
enough government to prevent the downgrade in the first place.
Wherever
you look, elites are moving
to crush resistance.
The
West does it the democratic way of
course. In Syria and Libya, they use tanks and guns and SCUD missiles.
Here in
America, elites use the more dangerous weapon of the media to hang on
to power
over everything we do. Their bosses envy the power of their
counterparts
elsewhere. France , for example, just “announced $16 billion in new
taxes to
ensure it reaches its deficit-reduction targets,” rather than cut its
massive
welfare state.
In
the U.S., Democrats and Republicans
alike embrace the tax-and-spend approach, so the Tea Party threatens
them all.
Naturally,
it must be stopped. Rep.
Frederica Wilson, (D-Fla.), made it all clear in a recent speech. “Let
us all
remember who the real enemy is. The real enemy is the Tea Party – the
Tea Party
holds the Congress hostage.”
Like
most politicians, she’s wrong. If
the Tea Party really had that much sway in Congress, our economy and
our nation
would be in much better shape.
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