When one analyzes the “anger” and “frustration” of the Tea Party Movement and Freedom Works Movement, which began in February 2009, one has to wonder would the same rise of these movements have occurred if John McCain had been elected President?
It is clear that the answer would be No. While there is no way that our economy would have been any better than it is now, if McCain had been in the White House, the difference is that we have an African American President in the White House! Either McCain would have done much the same thing along the vein of what George W. Bush was doing in his last months in office to deal with the economic crisis, or had he done nothing to stimulate the economy, we would be now in a Great Depression Number 2 rather than a Great Recession! But at least we would have a WHITE President, and the country would be “safe”!
It is not as if Barack Obama CREATED this economic collapse! It was caused by LACK of regulation under Republican control of both houses of Congress and the White House for six years. Obama INHERITED this mess, rather than creating it!
Why is it these discontented “folks” did not rise up in anger and frustration over the wild spending on two wars and a “socialist” Medicare Part D prescription plan during the Bush Administration? Why is it that doubling of the national debt under George W. Bush did not cause outrage among these people? Why is it that all of a sudden when an African American President, with the backing of almost 54 percent of the American people, the biggest margin since 1988, takes the oath, all of a sudden, there is awareness of how terrible things are, and they are totally the fault of someone who was not in power and did not have authority to do anything to prevent it?
It is quite clear and obvious that all of the attacks on Obama as a “socialist”, an “illegal immigrant from Kenya”, as a “racist” and a “Hitler” is motivated by anger that we finally have someone in the White House who is there for ALL of the people, not just the privileged upper class and the corporate classes! And again he is African American! What a horrible tragedy, isn’t it, in the mind of these bigots!
The Republican party and conservative ideology are the cause of this collapse of the American economy and society, just as it was in the 1920s, and again, we have to look to the Democrats and progressive values to restore America to a condition of promoting equality of opportunity and hope in the future, now under Barack Obama, as then under Franklin D. Roosevelt, who suffered the same ideological attacks, but is now remembered for his greatness, while his critics are forgotten or recalled as the “lunatic fringe”!
The Tea Party Movement and the Freedom Works Movement are indeed the lunatic fringe of today, groups with no principles or ideals except their own advancement and aggrandizement!