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From: "sinslayer@windstream.net" <sinslayer@windstream.net>
To: charityisgreat@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 9:08 AM
Subject: Fwd: forward through the Elk County Tea Party
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May God bless and keep you in His arms.
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From: "Blaise Dornisch" a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:babkb@windstream.net">babkb@windstream.net>
To: a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:babkb@windstream.net">babkb@windstream.net>
Subject: forward through the Elk County Tea Party
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 19:58:37 -0400
Glenn Cook
Reid expects Tea Party to fade away
Can Harry Reid wait out the Tea Party?
The Senate majority leader seems to think so.
Reid sat down with more than 30 Review-Journal staffers Friday afternoon for
an hour-long Q&A session at the newspaper's offices. The bulk of the back
and forth was dedicated to federal spending and how Congress might tame
exploding budget deficits.
Reid blamed everything that ails Washington and the nation on Republicans.
He slammed the GOP for its refusal to go along with tax increases as part of
this month's debt-ceiling deal, saying hard-core fiscal conservatives are
making it impossible to strike a long-term deal that slows the growth of the
national debt.
"(Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell has done a good job bringing the
country to a standstill," Reid said.
The reason Republicans have drawn such a deep line in the sand on tax
increases, of course, is the Tea Party movement. The populist uprising that
was born from Washington's bailouts achieved critical mass after Democrats
decided to start spending like no government before. The stimulus. The
ObamaCare overreach. Budget deficits that made President George W. Bush look
like a piker.
Democrats were tossed from office in record numbers last November. That
groundswell is shaping the 2012 campaign.
But Reid doesn't expect it to last.
"The Tea Party was the result of a terrible economy," he said. "I've said
that many times, and I believe that."
"That (the Tea Party) will pass. They will lose a number of seats next
year."
Reid has amassed his considerable power by never underestimating his
adversaries. And he has been known to throw out strategic fibs to create
misdirection.
However, Reid left the indelible impression Friday that as long as he's
leading the Senate Democrats, the Tea Party agenda is dead on arrival in his
chamber. In exchange for a modicum of reduced growth in federal spending,
Reid said someone will have to pay more. There will be reductions and
entitlement reforms without tax increases. He singled out the rich and oil
companies as especially deserving of punishment.
Perhaps Reid is still savoring his November re-election victory over Tea
Party darling Sharron Angle. Perhaps he's oblivious to the number of
Democrats, in both House and Senate races, sprinting to the right to boost
their 2012 chances. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking.
But there's no way the Tea Party is going away -- certainly not before the
2012 elections, and certainly not when the national debt is projected to
shoot past $20 trillion before the end of the decade. Anyone who minimizes
the Tea Party by extension minimizes the massive spending problems that
created it in the first place.
Reid rationalizes that those problems are all Republicans' fault. He opened
Friday's group interview with a two-minute reminder that George W. Bush is
responsible for the country's spending and America's economic woes. After
all, Bush inherited a projected $7 trillion budget surplus from Bill
Clinton. (Never mind that Clinton served his final six years over a
Republican-controlled Congress. They had nothing to do with that period of
spending restraint.)
There's no denying that Bush did little to rein in the fat-and-happy
Congresses that shoveled out the pork during his first six years in office.
That deficit spending did incalculable political damage, allowing Democrats
to position themselves to the right of Republicans on fiscal policy and
falsely run as conservatives in 2008.
But budget deficits under Bush were in the $100 billion to $400 billion
range, mostly related to the post 9/11 wars. The Obama administration --
working with a Democratic House and Senate its first two years -- set the
course for budget deficits of more than $1 trillion into the distant future.
Obama is on course to pile up more debt in three years than Bush did in
eight.
Democrats -- led by Reid -- now own this country's debt problem and its
struggling economy. The 2012 election will be a referendum on Obama and
Reid, not Bush. The Tea Party will see to that.
Among other interesting things Reid had to say Friday:
-- Echoing the sentiment of other Democrats and devoted Keynesians, Reid
said the failed stimulus just wasn't big enough. "I had $100 billion in
infrastructure development in the bill, but I needed three Republican votes.
Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins made me get rid of it."
-- Nevada's redistricting mess, sent to the courts when the Legislature gave
up redrawing congressional and legislative districts, will probably "take at
least another five months" to clean up. That means candidates might not know
what districts they live in until January or February, with filing for
office beginning in March. Fundraising for legislative candidates, in
particular, will be hurt by such a delay.
Mercifully, no one on the Review-Journal staff asked Reid about green
energy.
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