That more than one in four people in this country would agree that tea partiers are the political equivalent of al Qaeda is dispiriting, not for what it says about the tea party but for what it says about 29% of our countrymen.
The tea party is the only reason anything at all is being done to try to save this country from complete ruination. Like an alcoholic who just can't stop drinking we have spent ourselves into a stupor, and the Democratic party has no desire to stop. Indeed, anyone who tries to wrest the bottle from their hands gets labelled by the masters of Orwellian Newspeak a "terrorist" or "extremist" who's trying to destroy the country.
Let me switch to a related thought. One frequently hears the irritatingly misleading claim by commentators (I even heard Glenn Beck say it) that the problem is Congress or the problem is that our politicians are too busy squabbling to agree on a solution to our economic troubles.
This is, in my opinion, absurd. The problem is not Congress as a whole, the problem is the political Left, including many in Congress, who refuse to do what's necessary to rescue us from calamity.
We're in this mess because we spent too much, starting under Bush, but skyrocketing (by a factor of 4) under Obama. The tea party was largely responsible for electing a Republican House last November which resolved to stop and reverse this insanity, and almost 30% of Americans, including some prominent Democrats, think it's the tea party who are the terrorists?
The stock market has dropped 2000 points in the last few days, wiping out many people's savings, because the market no longer has confidence that the Democrats will allow this problem to be fixed, and it's the tea party who are the terrorists?
For the first time in history the United States' credit rating has been downgraded from AAA because the Democrats refused to pass the GOP's "Cut, Cap, and Balance" legislation, and it's the tea party who are the terrorists?
Meanwhile, for two and a half years the Democrats have refused to offer a budget, the president has refused to offer a plan to cut the debt, but it's the tea party who are the terrorists.
