Boehner and the Tea Party Insurrection

Boston Tea Party illustration by Currier
Boston Tea Party
illustration by Currier

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, third in line to the Presidency of the United States, was felled by a procedural dispute.  The dispute unfortunately for him was with a group of congressmen and women he could no longer ignore, or avoid. Maligned and derided, miscast as at best doofuses or at worst racists, the tea party insurrection has quietly gone about its business, and is now progressively shaking the very core of what represents the conservative political movement in this country,   The tea party movement, now just over   six years old, has managed to help win first the House majority for Republicans in 2010, then the Senate majority in 2014, elect political stars such as Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and  Ted Cruz,  take down House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and now, Speaker of the House Boehner.  Not bad for doofuses.

Who are these ‘doofuses’ and what do these ‘doofuses’ want?  The establishment politicians, enamored with their supposedly invincible incumbent status, gold plate retirement plans, and propensity to support the version of democracy that functions as a one party state, the government party, are asking the question much as the British establishment did at the original tea party in Boston Harbor in December, 1773.  It was hard to project in 1773 how such an obscure rebellious act would result in the revolutionary tumult only a few years later. Such is the obscure origin of the current tea party insurrection.  Smoldering for years, as Washington grew progressively larger and larger and more and more tone deaf, the ignition spark occurred when a little known financial reporter for CNBC, Rick Santelli, went on a spontaneous rant on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, on February 19, 2009. Santelli railed  against the new Obama Administration that was willing to spend billions of stimulus money to secure mortgages that had been given out by many banks to individuals who had no assets to pay for them.  Santelli spoke up for the average person who plays by the rules, takes appropriate risk, and has no one look out for them when fate determines a bad outcome.  Santelli felt something profound had just been broken, the equal opportunity that was at the heart of the American Dream.  Little did he know what his four minutes of rant would start:

Within weeks “tea Party” movements broke out across the country, and a slow steady wild fire began.  Initially formed as Tea “Taxed Enough Already” Party, the movement began to develop unappreciated depth, impressive patience, and significant political acumen.  Early missteps with unprepared candidates such as Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin were learned from, and the skill and winning ways of the candidates began to take hold.  Scott Brown winning the Senate seat previously ‘owned’ by Teddy Kennedy in deep Blue state Massachusetts,  Scott Walker achieving and then retaining the governorship of Wisconsin despite a furious and vicious effort to defeat him in three elections over four years, and Eric Cantor’s stunning loss to unknown David Brat showed a disciplined and committed movement.  Further earthquakes prior to Boehner  began to show themselves in the summer Presidential process, with establishment favorites Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton loosing traction despite enormous money advantages, and a ‘throw the bums out and make America great again’ demagogue named Trump storming to the top of the polls. The concept of Trump is closely tied to the poor selections of O’Donnell and Akin but can be seen as the temporary weapon the modern movement is using to evidence its displeasure with the status quo and warn everyone what is coming.

Which brings us back to Boehner.  The final straw had nothing to do with taxes per se.  It had everything to do with leadership mistaking their positions are not related to their experience with process, but rather, their grasp of principle.  Boehner committed the ultimate sin in suggesting that an electoral success of 2014 putting Republicans in the position of leadership of both legislative houses, would lead to clear actions thwart the runaway train that is the constitution subverting Obama administration.  Rather than show backbone and take stands that would make clear distinctions of philosophy between republicans and Democrats, the two houses sheepishly folded time and time again, as the President ignored laws and made laws that were never legislated with Obamacare, outsmarted Boehner and McConnell in avoiding any vote on the disastrous Iran agreement that would have at least made all parties responsible for their actions, and finally crumbled into silence on any action on defunding Planned Parenthood’s development as a fetus factory for profit.

The phony tears that are those of Boehner’s supporters suggest that there was little he could do with the numbers in the President’s favor.  For Tea Party proponents, the excuses rang hollow.  They had labored mightily to give Boehner his majority and hence his Speakership.  They saw him much like General McClellan in the Civil War, blaming his lack of action on the forever excuse of not having enough troops or provisions.  Lincoln, much like the tea party finally exhausted by the excuses, was willing to take a chance and absorb some heavy punishments on a considerably non-establishment figure, General Ulysses Grant.  He stated, ” I can’t spare this man- he fights”.  The tea party was not looking for Boehner to win in order to fight, it was looking for him to fight to win.

The tea party has grown into a principled social movement that demands that America return to rules of behavior, limited governmental size, reducing repression on personal freedom, equal opportunity, fiscal sanity, and firm defense of its exceptionalism.  In six short years, it has grown beyond insurrection, into something that is beginning to look like revolution.  Revolutions are unpredictable, but sometimes are necessary to re-orient a lost compass.  One thing is for certain, and John Boehner knows it now if he didn’t before.  The tea party is not the provence of a few raving reporters and political outcasts.  It’s a political movement that’s rocking the world.

 

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