Writer David Weigel of the Washington Independent was on NPR radio today with Terry Gross. The entire transcript from the program is available online at NPR. According to Mr. Weigel, the Tea Party activists have some bizarre goals.
Mr. Weigel on NPR:
...They basically stand for undoing first the end of the Bush years and everything's Barack Obama's done, but then really rolling back all reform of American economics and social democracy, back to the pre-Teddy Roosevelt kind of gilded age politics.....
Later, Mr. Weigel said this----
....I mean one of the Republicans who is taken most seriously by the Tea Party is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and he's explicit about this. He's introduced bills that would take people's Social Security taxes, put them in funds that they can keep for themselves. These are policies that used to be things the Republican base might talk about but wouldnt do and now you can't be a real Republican, you can't be a real Tea Party activist, if youre not for those things.....
Here are the facts:
Teddy Roosevelt was President from 1901-1909.
The 19th Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote in 1920.
Social Security was signed into law in 1935.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.
Medicare and Medicaid were part of the Social Security Act of 1965.
The voting age was lowered to 18, and many other laws and rights were passed after 1909.
Apparently, tea partiers are against all of this, plus more.
I always thought that the tea party people wanted to turn back time to the 1950's. However, their desire to go back to before President Teddy Roosevelt's term only confirms my belief that these people are racists, anti-women's rights, and they are against equality and freedom for all Americans. The Tea Party people are clearly too extreme.
