Tea Party

So "Re-electing President Obama in 2012 would be a disaster for America"? (Readers respond, June 10.) Yeah right, and Osama bin Laden's death was a great tragedy to freedom lovers everywhere. The only looming disaster in 2012 is the possibility (getting slimmer every day, thankfully) that the craven Republicans and their phony-populist, corporate backed and directed "tea party" fanatics can hang on to power and not be sent back under the rock they crawled out from. Fortunately, America is beginning to see through their lies and obfuscations.

Two Republicans claiming tea party credentials have emerged as front-runners among 11 candidates hoping to dethrone Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski in November. Eric Wargotz, a Queen Anne's County commissioner and physician, says he's the candidate to beat among Republicans after a Rasmussen Poll showed a 25 percentage-point gap between Wargotz and Mikulski in July shrank to 16 points among likely Maryland voters in August. "That's significant," Wargotz said of the poll, which shows Mikulski with a 55-39 percent lead.

In 1789 there was a great divide in the new American nation: Alexander Hamilton feared the tyranny of an uniformed majority, while Thomas Jefferson feared the tyranny of an elite minority. James Madison crafted the hybrid system that we have today as a compromise. Yet it was never anticipated that we would have today's tyranny of an uniformed minority. That tyranny is the roughly 20 percent (87 out of 435) of the elected officials in Washington who are being allowed to create this drama that threatens to bring the whole world to the brink of collapse, including those who call themselves Republicans.

Last week's party for GM's electric motor plant in White Marsh had all the ingredients for the start of construction of a major U.S. factory: a ceremonial groundbreaking, anodyne political speeches — and millions of dollars in free money from taxpayers. General Motors is paying for barely half of the $244 million plant. The automaker is relying on $105 million from the Energy Department and more than $10 million from the state of Maryland and Baltimore County. It's the kind of payoff that has become fashionable again now that the economy is growing and corporations are committing some of their hoarded billions to capital projects and relocations.

In their never-ending quest to predict the outcome of the next congressional elections, the professional crystal-ballers peered into another blurred sphere this week after the latest round of primary elections. The conventional wisdom is that 2010 is the year of the outsider, spurred by high federal spending, high unemployment, slow economic recovery and disappointment in Washington and President Barack Obama — and that view got a boost in the Senate Republican primary in Alaska.

Happy birthday, tea partiers: One year ago this week, we changed the world with our tax day protests. In towns large and small across the country, millions joined together to make their voices heard. Here in Maryland, the rain and cold could not stop us from exercising our freedom of speech in places like Salisbury, Bel Air, Baltimore and Annapolis. While I fully expect an outpouring of concerned taxpayers at this week's ceremonies, we must not lose the focus on our goal of bringing real change to all levels of government.

The emergence of the tea party movement as a force within GOP politics is a storyline worthy of analysis during the run-up to what promises to be a fiercely contested presidential election in 2012. In 2010, many tea party candidates fought and won competitive races, thereby ensuring GOP control of the House while narrowing Harry Reid's Democratic majority in the Senate. As a result, the last 18 months have witnessed a number of high-stakes budget battles, albeit with mixed success on policy and politics.

Cheer up. Not everything went down over the last two weeks. Granted, most things did. The stock market tanked, government's approval numbers fell, America's credit rating slipped as if on a cosmic banana peel. All of which is predictable any time the world's largest economy is driven to the rim of ruin while "leaders" bicker like kids in the back seat of the family car on a road trip across Texas. In August. With a busted air conditioner. But in the midst of that bleak litany of decline, there was a bright spot.

Did we miss the press release announcing that Peter Franchot had joined the tea party? The comptroller certainly sounded like he'd gone over to the side of anti-government activism Monday when he cast the lone vote against a proposal at the Maryland Capital Debt Affordability Committee to accelerate some of the state's planned borrowing in hopes of spurring the economy through infrastructure spending. The Montgomery County Democrat opined that attempting to create jobs through such public works was "failed policy," adding, "Let the private sector create jobs.

Well, it's official. A member of the tea party is on the presidential ticket. Think about that for a moment. This is a party that is backed by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers. A party whose members show up at Obama campaign rallies strapped with assault weapons at a time when deranged people are shooting up movie theaters. A party that wants to dismantle the U.S. government, get rid of Social Security and Medicare, and allow the warped philosophies of Ayn Rand to become the law of the land.