By JAMES TARANTO
There was a time, oh, a week or two ago, when the mainstream media portrayed the tea-party movement as an assortment of crazed angry extremist redneck racist idiots. What changed?
The headline we've given this column is a phrase coined by the conservative writer Tom Bethell to refer to the media's attitude toward conservatives who veer leftward. What we're about to describe is a bit different: more an epiphany on the media's part than a change in the object of coverage. It seems unlikely that the tea-partiers have suddenly become mainstream.
Yet that's what you'd think from reading some of the recent coverage. The Christian Science Monitor, which a month ago baselessly labeled Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell a "right-wing extremist," begins a Saturday story by rehearsing the stereotypes but then cautions that "political experts say that many such criticisms are near-sighted, if not outright inappropriate--and ultimately may miss the point":
Indeed, polls suggest that tea party activists are not only more mainstream than many critics suggest, but that a majority of them are women (primarily mothers), not angry white men.
What's more, the release this week of the top three planks of the "crowd-sourced" Contract From America project, to some activists, shows a maturation from sign-wielding protesters to a political reform movement grounded in ideas.
The top three vote-getters among 360,000 respondents on the Contract From America website: Calling for an enumerated powers act to force lawmakers to check the constitionality [sic] of new laws; requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for any tax hike; and a legislative backstop to prevent the EPA from "backdoor regulating."
CNN--which became notorious a year ago for its hostile coverage of the movement, including the use of antigay slurs--carries a report titled "Disgruntled Democrats Join the Tea Party":
Some Americans who say they have been sympathetic to Democratic causes in the past -- some even voted for Democratic candidates--are angry with President Obama and his party. They say they are now supporting the Tea Party--a movement that champions less government, lower taxes and the defeat of Democrats even though it's not formally aligned with the Republican Party.
To be sure, the number of Democrats in the Tea Party movement is small. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows that while 96 percent of Tea Party activists identify themselves as either Republican or Independent, only 4 percent say they are Democrats.
Another poll, however, suggests this is less of a dog-bites-man story than CNN makes it out to be. "Four in 10 Tea Party members are either Democrats or Independents, according to a new national survey," reports the Hill:
The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.
Writing in the Washington Examiner, Kristen Soltis of the Winston Group notes another important point:
What truly sets the Tea Party apart from even Republicans or conservatives broadly is its commitment to economic conservatism. Tea Party members, like voters overall, are very focused on the economy and jobs; some 36 percent say it is their top issue. Yet while only 6 percent of voters overall say that the national deficit and spending are their top issues, that number spikes to 21 percent among Tea Party members.
The Tea Party is a movement defined by its preference for fiscal restraint and low taxes. Presented with two competing proposals to create jobs, over four out of five Tea Party members say tax cuts for small business will create more jobs than increased government spending on infrastructure. When the options were expanded, tax cuts still were chosen as the top job creator, but are closely followed by "expanding development of all energy resources." Interestingly enough, the next runner up--"cracking down on illegal immigration"--was not more popular among Tea Party members (19 percent) than voters overall (16 percent).
When it comes down to it, the Tea Party does not appear to be focused on economic conservatism as an end in and of itself. When asked in the January survey if they favored "reducing unemployment to 5 percent" or balancing the budget, 63 percent chose reducing unemployment--a negligible difference from the 64% of voters overall who agree. Jobs are the goal--items like tax cuts and balanced budgets are a means to achieve that goal.
It all adds up to a remarkably broad-based and nonideological movement--one that has gained strength as the Democrats who currently run Washington have proved themselves to be narrow and ideological. Had President Obama governed from the center--above all, had he heeded public opinion and abandoned his grandiose plans to transform America, he might well have held the allegiance of many of the people who now sympathize with the tea party.
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend. The media, of course, repeated these claims, but no evidence has surfaced to corroborate them, and Andrew Breitbart makes a very good case for skepticism:
The proof that the N-word wasn't said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter--even though the press dutifully reported it as truth--Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a sh---eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd--the Speaker--to put herself in harm's way.
Reader Taylor Dinerman notes: "Part of the function of a political media operation is to make the other side despair, lose hope, feel bad, etc. It's one of the reasons I gave up reading the New York Times. In one of Isaac Asimov's Empire series, he describes a drug called 'desperance' whose function is to make whoever takes it despair and be ready to kill or commit suicide. The bad guys feed it to someone they intend to use to murder the galactic emperor."
Tales of tea-party racism could have been calculated to demoralize America's anti-ObamaCare majority by presenting them with an ugly choice: accept the fate the Democrats have imposed upon us, or side with (as the Christian Science Monitor puts it) "neo-Klansmen and knuckle-dragging hillbillies." The strange new respect for the tea-party movement suggests that this approach is too invidiously partisan even for the mainstream media.
See No Evil--Except on the Other Side
- "The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction--the right, not the left."--Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, March 30
- "Two Republican party officials were shocked to hear someone had thrown a brick through a window at their headquarters downtown--with a message directed at stopping conservatism. 'Stop the right wing,' was written in purple ink on a piece of notebook paper."--Marion (Ohio) Star, April 1
Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
The Boston Globe reports on the unintended consequences of requiring insurance companies to sell policies to people with pre-existing conditions:
The Boston Globe reports on the unintended consequences of requiring insurance companies to sell policies to people with pre-existing conditions:
Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.
In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state's largest private insurer provided the Globe.
The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company's data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions.
Other insurers could not produce such detailed information for short-term customers but said they have witnessed a similar pattern. And, they said, the phenomenon is likely to be repeated on a grander scale when the new national health care law begins requiring most people to have insurance in 2014, unless federal regulators craft regulations to avoid the pitfall.
And federal regulators are great at avoiding pitfalls! Ironically, the Massachusetts medical misadventure may be a problem for Republicans in the 2012 election. Former governor Mitt Romney, in many ways an attractive candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, led the Bay State "reform" effort and to this day refuses to admit he made a mistake.
In Romney's defense, he did a lot less damage as governor of a single state than Barack Obama did as president of 50. But try putting that on a bumper sticker.
Specter to Stevens: What's the Rush?
Justice John Paul Stevens turns 90 two weeks from tomorrow and has begun to talk retirement. He says he hasn't made up his mind but may leave the bench at the end of the Supreme Court's current term this summer. Not so fast, says a man the Associated Press calls "a leading Democratic senator":
Justice John Paul Stevens turns 90 two weeks from tomorrow and has begun to talk retirement. He says he hasn't made up his mind but may leave the bench at the end of the Supreme Court's current term this summer. Not so fast, says a man the Associated Press calls "a leading Democratic senator":
Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., worries that a nomination fight this year would mean gridlock in the partisan Senate. Specter thinks there's a better chance for consensus next year.
It is overwhelmingly likely that the Republicans will gain seats in the Senate this year, which means it would be easier for them to block a nominee they view as too left-wing. Barring a surprising Democratic comeback, the only way a year's delay would be more likely to yield "consensus" is if the greater GOP strength induces President Obama to choose someone more acceptable to Republicans--which seems like an odd thing for "a leading Democratic senator" to say.
But let's keep in mind Specter's position. Although he is seeking his sixth term in the Senate, this is the first time he is running as a Democrat. He switched parties a year ago so as to avoid a likely primary loss to Pat Toomey. Now (assuming he prevails in next month's Democratic primary, as seems likely) he will face Toomey in November, in an election in which Toomey looks surprisingly strong.
The most likely explanation for Specter's wariness of a Supreme Court battle, then, is that he fears defending a controversial Obama nominee would hurt him in November. That can't be what he expected when he traded in his R for a D.
Then again, maybe Specter is just hoping Stevens breaks Oliver Wendell Holmes's record. Next Feb. 24 Stevens will be 33,182 days old--one day older than Justice Holmes at his retirement from the court in 1932.
Scientific M.O.
London's Daily Telegraph reports on the latest global-warming scandal, "a scheme to claim $60 billion in carbon credits for keeping intact a large chunk of the Amazon rainforest which is not under any threat":
London's Daily Telegraph reports on the latest global-warming scandal, "a scheme to claim $60 billion in carbon credits for keeping intact a large chunk of the Amazon rainforest which is not under any threat":
The architects of this imaginative project are the environmental campaigners of the WWF and their close ally the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.
Last week a letter to this newspaper from Woods Hole's CEO, William Brown, averred that it was not, as I had said, an "environmental advocacy group" but a "widely respected scientific institution." This is precisely the claim which has been dismissed by, among others, the renowned atmospheric physicist Professor Richard Lindzen, who has more than once emphasised that the Woods Hole Research Center is "an environmental advocacy center, not to be confused with the far better known Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution," a genuinely respected scientific body.
Meanwhile another advocacy organization, Greenpeace, is urging "mass civil disobedience" to intimidate those who are skeptical about global warming:
If you're one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let's talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.
If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
And we be many, but you be few.
That be politics. It sound like incitement, though threat not be imminent, so probably it be protected by First Amendment. But definitely it not be science.
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