Days of Change

Day 408 – Useful Idiots

What sort of politician do we want in the government? If we put away morals and ethics and boil it down to ideology, what is the best way to run the country? There are statists who want the government to direct everyone’s lives. There are libertarians who want the government to keep a standing army and let everyone else settle their own financial problems. There are liberals who want the everyone to be as equal as possible by redistributing wealth. There are conservatives who want to cut a lot of taxes and use government power to maintain the values they think some people can’t exercise themselves. Then there are all the ideologies in-between.

Lately, there is a movement to get money out of the government. People want the deficit spending to stop. They want the government to stop using money to control different shady organizations. They want their freedom back from politicians who want to tell them who to drive, what insurance to buy and which unionized industry to prop up.

The tea party movement doesn’t have much of an organization. This political season sees them forming an alliance with the Republicans, much like the foreign interests and the deadbeats have allied themselves with the Democrats. As much as the neoliberals want everyone to believe the tea party protesters are all Republicans, that party is only a mean to an end.

In many ways, the Republican Party is being treated as a group of useful idiots. A political party’s elected members can span both sides of the political spectrum. The Democrats gained majorities by selecting a number of “blue dogs” to run in conservative districts. It’s one of the things that may take that majority and make it basically useless for passing a liberal agenda.

On the other hand, the Republicans are reaching a level of unity not seen in a decade. 1994 ushered in a group of conservatives sworn to follow an ideological platform. There was no running of liberal Republicans to get numbers. They let their plans speak for themselves. Some of the agenda ultimately failed, but the party was remarkably steadfast for three election cycles and did some good before corruption set in. Again, the Republicans are looking at a set of core values that will make them useful idiots for conservatives. That beats the useless idiots in the Democratic Party right now.