| I admit I'm confused by the "Tea Party" movement. It's populist, right? So you'd think they'd want to advocate for government that's actually responsive to everyday Americans and that works in their interest. Right?
Wrong:
Last Thursday, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock was served with a lawsuit filed by an organization "dedicated to fighting the radical environmentalist agenda" and a Bozeman-based Tea Party activist challenging the state's century-old ban on corporate political spending.
The suit, which also names Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth, follows the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial Jan. 21 ruling that blocked the ban on corporate political spending, a ruling Bullock opposed.
The plaintiffs are the Colorado-based Western Tradition Partnership, which calls itself "the leading organization fighting the anti-jobs, anti-taxpayer policy agenda of extreme environmentalist front groups," and Bozeman's Champion Painting, owned by Ken Champion, a member of the Gallatin County Campaign for Liberty and the Bozeman Tea Party. Champion, according to the lawsuit, "is concerned with the way inflation, taxation, and spending are exploiting, impacting, and bankrupting America and Montana's small businesses," and he seeks to spend corporate funds to support candidates with similar political beliefs.
Program director of Montana Conservation Voters notes that the Western Tradition Partnership "would like to eviscerate the very laws that protect Montana's clean air, cold rivers, and public health..."
"I'm pretty nervous about Exxon or Arch Coal or someone else pulling out the stops and airing TV ads in state legislative races where individuals can only contribute $160 each, and where candidates are teachers, farmers and other regular folks."
Of course Exxon or Arch Coal won't run the ads themselves, they'll have the Chamber of Commerce do it for them.
Handing the reins of government to corporations is hardly my idea of "freedom." But based on the rhetoric of the Tea Partiers and other radical conservatives, it's apparent that they have already abandoned any notion that they have any civic responsibility for the state of their government.
And I'm still confused by the news that SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas' wife is starting a Tea Party chapter. As Andrew Cohen notes, her husband is in large part responsible for the government and its interpretation of the Constitution:
What part of the Constitution does she believe no longer means anything? What role does she ascribe to the Supreme Court, and to her husband, in making this so? To what particular "place" would she like to bring the Constitution and who would she like to help her along the way? What part of our current constitutional structure does she believe is leading us toward "tyranny?" And just exactly how does she define that word, tyranny? The same way Thomas Jefferson did or the same way Justice Clarence Thomas now does? And who in official Establishment Washington really fears tyranny anyway?
The idea of someone so close to power, so close to interpreting the Constitution, can lead a chapter of a populist "revolt" against a government based on its relationship to the Constitution is completely surreal. |
