You are invited to read this commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

Tea, Anyone? Take II

"It is still morning in America," Beck said. “It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting for four hours morning.” The question is what made us sit there in the john vomiting for four hours?" Dana Milbank in Washington Post

CPAC, the eye of the conservative activist community in the U.S. has recently concluded its annual rite of pre-spring in Washington that ushers in the 2010 political season. For once it appears that the winds are at its back, and whatever entrails are read by political prognosticators all point to a substantial gain in conservative political influence as a result of the 2010 election just over 7 months away.

For its closing summation, it chose Glen Beck, the darling of the Tea Party movement and a featured Fox Network television host. Glen, a graduate of his professed university of individual study, proceeded with humor and chalk to eviscerate the forces of progressivism that are arguably on the cusp of driving America over the cliff into an era of unprecedented national hurt!

Glen summed up his thesis by noting, “We all know what the problems are. Tax and spend. One party will tax and spend. The other party won’t tax but will spend” He mocked Republican calls for a “Big tent” by asking “What is this, a circus?” and seriously noted that “America is not a clown show. America is not a circus. America is an idea. America is an idea that sets people free.”

The villain he indicts is progressivism which he called a “…disease in America.” It cannot co-exist with freedom. He characterized it as a cancer and noted that you cannot cure cancer by saying; we are only going to give you “a little bit of cancer. You must eradicate it.” There was little comfort for Republicans, however, as he said the Party was in “denial” and proceeded to chant out a variation of the alcoholics’ anonymous litany, “I am a Republican, and I have a problem. I am addicted to spending and big government.”

Normally I can put on my policy wonk cap with its twirling propeller and judge the political terrain with a detached eye. This year the questions posed for the electorate are so starkly different in their policy outcomes, it is not so easy. During my lifetime, including the Reagan years, we have faced a spectrum of policy choices that, regardless of being more or less conservative, could be described as “business as usual.” The sheer departure from that reality for the Tea Party agenda caused the national media initially to dismiss them out of hand and to lump them all as “wackos.” Taking its cue from the national media, the Democratic Party has consistently failed to answer them directly. Instead it regurgitates the “Change” rhetoric from the ‘08 campaign and acts as if it has responded. It has not, and now the political firmament has shaken in New Jersey, Virginia and, most unexpectedly, in Massachusetts. Will the nation be close behind?

National polls confirm that if the election were held today, Tea Party candidates on the ballot would win. Internet postings in the main stream media, however, continue to treat them either as wackos or prophets of the second coming. For a growing number of Americans, they are an answer for their greatest fears and to reclaim their greatest dreams!

Seven months is a long time in national politics, but once attitudes have hardened, a national impetus is hard to turn around. What may be the ingredient to create the rage that will wipe out scores of Democrats from Congress is the decision of the White House to double down on its discredited health care bill.

Against the advice of many in the legislative branch to shelve it, and the real possibility the votes are no longer there in the House, they have let it leak that they are willing to shove health care legislation through Congress via a parliamentary maneuver that only takes 51 votes in the Senate. In the Kabuki theater of the absurd, while this filters through the Capital, The White House held a “Bi-partisan Health Care Summit.” (Read: Do it my way!) Republicans participated and put to the lie that they do not have a private sector focused set of answers to the liberal agenda to federalize health care in the U.S.

Gridlock is the likely result. It is not a stranger to the national scene, and it is only the disappointed who lambast the process that has let it happen. Republican and Democratic administrations in the past have often faced it. Each has complained until they are in the shoes of the minority and embrace it heartedly as their best friend. Some administrations are better than others in, nevertheless, fashioning a governing coalition for the art of the possible.

President Clinton tacked to the center after the congressional races of 2004 and despite the pain of his personal time in the spotlight, managed to have a very credible 8 years in office. The Administrations that do better are among the more politically astute and least doctrinaire. Regrettably the stars have aligned to make this administration tone deaf when the nation is in greatest peril. Glen Beck noted that the current gridlock is different in that this time, “People are losing a fundamental belief that things will get better.”

Administrations come and go. Each has its campaign goals to accomplish. Seldom do they include up front and center what is the growing specter for every administration- National spending and debt! Without a sound economic footing, there are no entitlements. Who says that health care is a right? At what cost? If it is a right what level of care is enough? The Constitution of the United States does not say anything about healthcare, nor can you posit that authority under the Necessary Clause, and it is a real reach to fashion the level of national preemption proposed from the Commerce Clause either.

It is however the primary duty of all members of Congress to provide for the national security of The United States. Given the level of debt we are carrying, it should be the primary objective not to add one more dime to the debt and to reduce it to no more that 20 percent of normal annual GDP before any new programs are added to our national burden. The national debt clock is spinning out of control with 2.5 million dollars being added every minute to our burden. While it sits currently at $12. 4 trillion which is bad enough as it is, it does not include debt such as those trillions of dollars on the books of our GSEs such as Fannie and Freddie Mac. We must be insane to be spending time considering any measure that would only add fuel to the fire of our own destruction. Let’s turn the rest of this Congress to solving our national economic problems, and a number of perceived problems will disappear along with our economic peril.

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Copyright © 2010 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr., is president of the Free Enterprise Foundation. He is also the first BB&T Visiting Professor in Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. A regular contributor to the Mercury, Prof. Freer may be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. If you would like him to appear before your group or organization to speak on any of the subjects about which he writes, please contact him at The Citadel. Copies of his earlier columns may be found at www.FreeEnterpriseFoundation.org