"The Tea Partiers thus threaten to destroy both the Democrats and the Old School Republicans. They threaten to destroy the Democrats by destroying them, and to destroy the Old School Republicans by replacing them with different Republicans, Tea Party Republicans.
The Democrats say that the Tea Partiers are "extreme" Republicans, Republicans who are even nastier. They wish. The Tea Partiers are indeed creating a new sort of Republican, but not an even nastier Republican. They are creating nice Republicans. Electorally, the Tea Partiers are cleansing the selfish richness and snobbishness and nastiness out of the Republican brand, leaving the ideas that the Republicans appeared once to believe in untouched, and renewed in strength and quality. If the Republican brand resists too much, the Tea Partiers will destroy it and make another."
The "man-on-the-Clapham-Omnibus-tone" there is why that is unmistakably Brian Micklethwait, writing about the Tea Party movement in the U.S. from across the pond in London. Is he wrong in his assessment that, in electoral terms of course, the Tea Party "threaten to destroy" the Democrats? In the comments to that piece 'RRS' makes this excellent point, which he has made several times previously (comment 13):
"What has been brought into clearer focus is the issue of redistribution, which is now evolving more strongly into more aspects of governmental actions.
Previously most attention has been focused on "spread the wealth around" type of politics (tax the "rich" etc). Most of the "noise" has been generated around redistribution of incomes, plus a modest amount of wealth transfers (death taxes).What is evolving is a redistribution of COSTS....
Examination of the many forms of subsidies and transfers of funding to states are buttressing these "Tea- Party" type obsevations and reactions. The costs of public employee benefits, costs of state education systems, costs of state and municipal borrowing, and many other functions are being redistributed; it has been creeping up to what is now an accelerating pace involving ever increasing amounts.
So, what "Tea-Party" people sense is a "backdoor" to centralized socialism. When there are not adequate incomes for the political class to redistribute, the politicians will shift to redistribute costs (which are never in short supply) - by any means at hand."
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