The Tax Day (or more accurately, Tax Weekend) observances of the Tea Party movement weren’t as large or well-publicized as in the past, but they did reflect the hardening consensus of conservative activists against both the appropriations deal just agreed to by congressional Republicans, and the coming legislation increasing the public debt limit. This consensus is being reinforced by potential presidential candidates and other opinion leaders who are encouraging the perception that the Beltway GOP is once again “selling out” the conservative movement and its latest Tea Party incarnation.
This snapshot of the mood at New Hampshire Tea Party events by Michael Crowley is illustrative:
The overall picture is one of a restless Republican base that sees defeating Obama as a matter of national survival. Angry conservatives believe Washington is spending the country into oblivion, and that lazy freeloaders are leeching federal money at the expense of ever more squeezed middle-class taxpayers. They also feel that the Washington game is rigged against them: “We’re constantly being lied to,” fumed Dan Dwyer of Nashua at a local GOP confab on Thursday night, still angry that Republicans had “caved” in their budget negotiations with Democrats earlier this month.
At a Wisconsin Tea Party rally, anger at congressional Republicans was fed by none other than Sarah Palin, who “unleashed a withering critique of congressional Republicans Saturday, lambasting them for not cutting spending deeper and faster, and saying the party needs to ‘fight like a girl.’” Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty, who spoke at a number of Tea Party events, has been urging Republicans to oppose a debt limit increase on the questionable grounds that arrangements could be made to avoid a federal credit default until the autumn.
The superficially confusing aspect of this rhetoric is that the conservatives who are being most vocal about the dire nature of the deficit-and-debt emergency are precisely the same people who are fearful that congressional Republicans might cut some long-term budget deal with Senate Democrats and the administration that leaves increased taxes on the wealthy on the table. That’s why they are linking any approval of a debt limit increase not just to some deficit agreement, but to acceptance of the kind of deep spending cuts and “entitlement reforms” laid out in Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.
Accordingly, we will soon see Tea Party fire concentrate on those Senate Republicans said to be negotiating a deal that would include some tax increases. The Republican point man in the so-called “Gang of Six” of bipartisan senators engaged in these negotiations, Saxby Chambliss of GA, is already drawing unfriendly home-state fire from Red State’s Erick Erickson, who had this to say today:
Senate Republicans are going to support raising the debt ceiling and raising taxes all while refusing to demand passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. House Republican Leaders will no doubt decide that . . . well . . . Republicans only control one house of one branch of government so . . . .
Bend over America.
This conflict will soon make it more obvious than ever that most conservative activists, including those identified with the Tea Party Movement, are less concerned with deficit reduction than with permanently shrinking the size and reach of the federal government and pushing both radical spending cuts and continued tax cuts.
On another front, there are growing signs that Republican elites have decided to give Donald Trump the same dismissive treatment that was said to have led to Sarah Palin’s steady decline in credibility as a potential presidential candidate. Over the weekend, Karl Rove called Trump a “joke candidate.” Playing his snooty Tory role, George Will called The Donald a “blatherskite,” and warned he could seriously screw up Republican presidential candidate debates. Slate’s Dave Weigel went to the trouble of reading Trump’s 2000 proto-campaign book, and noticed that Trump expressed a fondness for the Canadian single-payer health care system. Surfing off that disclosure, the Club for Growth put out a release calling Trump a “liberal.”
It’s almost certain that this offensive was stimulated by the Public Policy Polling survey of Republicans that was released on Friday showing Trump jumping out into a sizable national lead over the rest of the potential presidential field. Trump’s 26 percent is higher than any proto-candidate has registered in early national polls. And the internals, showing 23 percent of Republicans saying that could not vote for a candidate who believes Barack Obama was born in the United States (and another 39 percent saying they weren’t sure if they could or not), were probably terrifying to beltway GOPers.