Reading the tea leaves
I want to find reason to be hopeful about the Tea Party– and hope that somewhere in its analysis of the factors bankrupting the United States is the high cost of pursuing a neoconservative foreign policy, adhered to by Obama as much as Bush. These hopes received a hard knock by reading here that a lion’s share of GOP congresspeople with Tea Party ties signed on to an idiotic resolution endorsing an Israeli military strike on Iran. The resolution is dumb in the first place, because Israel would only attack Iran if it had assurances that the US would step in to clean up the mess, and basically continue the war Israel started. But since that war would probably immiserate the United States with oil price spikes, plus ramp up the casualties in Iran and Afghanistan, it’s a bad deal. (Of course if you think maintaining Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Mideast is an absolutely vital US interest, no matter the cost, you probably think differently.) Anyway, sorry to see the Tea Party folks be so easily led, though I’m not that surprised. Not only is Ron Paul not part of this nonsense, I doubt his son Rand would be either. But until the movement matures, it’s impossible to say whether it will be a neocon cheering section with middle American roots or something more promising.
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