Bloomberg reports on a poll showing that 90 percent of Tea Party backers say that while the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level, 70% want the federal government to foster job creation. Even as 80% say expansion of the government’s role in the economy is a high threat, almost half of them want the government to step into the economy and do something about Wall Street executive bonuses.
And the New York Times profiles Tea Party organizers like Tom Grimes, who called his Democratic congressman for help getting government health care when he lost his job, and then got 200 teabaggers to come to the office of the that same congressman to protest the supposed "government takeover" of health care. Grimes, who also receives Social Security benefits from that chunk of change us working folks get taken out of out paycheck under FICA, says "If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own."
Grimes is also looking into getting a part-time government job with the federal government's Census Bureau.
Or there's Diana Reimer, a national coordinator for the "Tea Party Patriots", who also collects Medicare and Social Security benefits. And there's folks like Jeff McQueen, a former auto parts salesman, who organizes Tea Party groups to agitate for smaller government and who blames the loss of his job on the government not doing enough to regulate trade, saying “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
Says Grimes, “If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore.”
Which pretty much summarizes the teabagger mindset: I know those folks are evil, so I don't have to bother with facts.
I miss having a sane conservative movement in this country, I really do.