Sunday, February 14, 2010
The left needs its own Tea Party
Christian Trejbal
Recent columns
- Montgomery schools' $6.2 million deficit
- This column does not compute
- Make political parties pay for their primaries
- Tough times ahead for schools
From the RoundTable blog
Tea Party activists are wrong on nearly every issue. They degrade the civic conversation in this country by substituting passion for reason and facts. They stand against everything that marks progress in the 21st century. Theirs is a philosophy devoid of logic, science and compassion.
And I love them. They add something to the political landscape that has been sorely missing.
The Tea Party gives voice to a radical, right-wing agenda. Even misguided citizen activism is better than silent conformity.
Republicans are listening, too. Candidates who ignore the Tea Party risk a challenge from the right in not only the primary but also the general election.
"This movement is the future of politics in America," Sarah Palin told the party at its gathering last weekend.
I hope she is right. If the Tea Party coalesces into something more, it could cause a schism among Republicans. Moderate Republicans, if such exist any longer, could stick with the GOP; hardcore conservatives could run under the Tea Party banner.
Now the same thing must happen among liberals. Democrats need a schism of their own. The left needs its own version of the Tea Party.
Conservatives accuse Democrats of being socialists, radical hippies straight out of the '60s.
They are nothing of the sort. Today's Democratic leaders are where Republicans were not long ago. The entire political spectrum has slid to the right. If there is an oppressed political persuasion, it is progressive.
Ask a real liberal what she thinks of the Democratic leadership's policy positions and you will find disappointment, even hostility. Democrats have not delivered on progressive priorities.
On privacy and national security, President Obama maintained, even expanded, a dismaying number of his predecessor's worst abuses.
On religious liberty, he extended President Bush's faith-based initiatives that funnel tax dollars to church programs.
On health care, the bills causing so much heartache offer a weak plan that caters to the private-sector insurance industry. Few Democrats even paid lip service to a single-payer system.
On guns, Democrats have given the National Rifle Association everything it asked.
On gay rights, there has been no real attempt to repeal the misnamed Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Even with 60 seats in their Senate caucus -- now 59 -- Democrats cannot pass anything resembling a progressive agenda. Granted, they face Republican obstruction and filibusters, but the GOP had only 50 seats a few years ago and managed to ram through the most conservative agenda the nation had seen in a generation.
The left, the real left, is rightly angry at Democratic incompetence, failure and capitulation to the right.
Your thoughts
They need to get vocal; they need to demand better from officials; they need to challenge spineless, conservative Democrats from the left, just as the Tea Party activists have forced Republicans to heed the right.
With any luck, liberals could cause a Democratic schism to match one on the right. The mood in the nation might be ready for such radical change.
The Tea Party could keep Republicans honest and the ... well that progressive group needs a name.
They must be careful not to make the same mistake as Tea Party activists who wound up saddled with "tea baggers."
"Coffee Party" seems a natural to play off "tea" and to bring to mind the progressive Pacific Northwest, but it would become "latte-sipping liberals."
"Wine Party," too, would become "whiners."
Better to follow the historic, not the liquid, example. I suggest "Green Mountain Party" in honor of the Green Mountain Boys.
For those who have forgotten this bit of American history, the Green Mountain Boys were a militia group from the area that would become Vermont. They fought in the American Revolution and captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
The name would work on so many levels for liberals. It is patriotic. It contains the term "green" with its environmental connotations. It is from Vermont, which is one of the states that allows gay marriage.
And the founder and leader of the Green Mountain Boys was Ethan Allen. He was a freethinking Founding Father who urged people to rely on reason rather than blind dogma. That is precisely the progressive approach to governance a Green Mountain Party could restore to the political landscape.
