If a white candidate would line up number they will use. X amount of budget cut that WILL happen. X amount that he will try to make happen. Programs in list Y WILL be cut. Programs in list X willl be studied in order to streamline them. Rather than saying "smaller gov''t", they should have hard numbers.
Unless the reductions are aimed at minorities, the hiphop, muslim, hispanic, jewish americans would get behind him.
I understand.
I also don't think there has been a "fiscal conservative" since Calvin Coolidge. That's why I hate the term "fiscal conservative". It's worse than meaningless. It's totally phony. I'm not talking about you, but just in general. Liberals like spending on social programs and infrastructure. Conservatives love defense spending and war spending. There is a very tiny constituency that might want to slash both medicare and defense spending to the bone. But its such a small constituency, that no politician at the national level can ever run on a platform promoting that constituency.
Regarding your examples: I think what you're talking about are cosmetic changes to the budget. Streamlining, ferreting out waste, and running things more efficiently are worthwhile goals. That's not that controversial. Most people want efficient government, because at its best it can provide very cost effective services. Medicare offers health insurance that is as good as, or better, than most of the private insurance crap one could buy off the interwebs, at a fraction of the price. Government funded scientific research, through public universities and public labs costs a fraction of the amount we would have to pay Dow Chemical Corporation scientists to conduct core research for us. Every developed nation on the planet understands that transitioning to low-carbon, green technology requires massive public investments. And we're going to learn the hard way that we fucked up, if we don't do the same. China and Germany will economically dominate the low-carbon green technologies and opportunities in the next few decades if we take the advice of the Tea Bag party - and "get government out of the way".
But efficiency and cosmetic changes don't even put a dent in the federal budget. And the tea bag party isn't talking about cosmetic changes. Most tea bag partiers hate food stamps, hate medicaid, hate medicare, and hate social security. Oddly, I've never seen a sign at a tea bag protest against the Iraq war or pentagon spending.
I concur with Mott in this respect: Virtually every poster on this board who is a self-identified Tea Bag party fan/apologist/advocate, also voted for Shrub twice, and supported massive deficit borrowing to invade Iraq. The only poster on this thread that can legitimately claim to be an independent libertarian – rstringfield – said the Tea Bag party is owned by bible thumpers and NeoCons. Which I think is closer to the truth.
I don't think there's a shred of doubt that that the Tea Bag party is just an angrier, more disgruntled, and perhaps even whiter permutation of the Bush republicans. There's no doubt that an angrier and more rightwing faction of highly motivated Bush-republicans can win seats in a low-turnout, off year, anti-incumbent election cycle. But, over the long term I can’t see the bible-thumping, and the faux and empty “fiscal conservatism” rhetoric from the tea bag movement gaining much steam.
