When the dust cleared it was evident that the embarrassing tantrum the world witnessed over the past 16 days during the Government Shutdown cost $24 Billion.
Call me silly, but the Tea Party should not be calling themselves Conservatives anymore. A Conservative in America has traditionally been your staid, stoic Father who lived through the great depression surviving on flour dumplings because his family couldn’t afford meat. He works hard, prefers sameness to change, and small, steady progress to wild theories and erratic behavior. He wants to know what is coming next and hates surprises. He prefers an uneventful Sunday, raking the leaves, and watching a nice football game. Kind of like a hobbit. No adventures, thank you very much. Perhaps a drink to unwind from a day of working hard and saving dutifully for his retirement. Conservative. Just like we mean it in engineering. Playing it safe. Being concerned about the unintended consequence of untested risk taking. He teaches his children not to whine and believes volunteering in the community and helping your neighbor are expected of real men.
I never thought I would long for Congressmen and Senators like Bob Dole, who represented that wing of the Republican Party. Men like my Dad or Father in Law, who always voted Republican because they were concerned about not wrecking the future financially. Men who both served in the military, and saved their pennies carefully, and my father in law who maintained his house in perfect working order. He had a system for everything and stuck to his routines so that everything ran smoothly. They both knew how to have fun, but never ever would they be reckless and endanger their families by not concerning themselves with paying their bills on time or getting that boiler checked once a year.
Conservative. That’s what it used to mean. I think Republican Senators of what is now called the “Sanity Caucus” should reclaim that title again from the Tea Party. Losing $24 Billion is in no way, shape or form Conservative. Old fashioned Conservatives also were concerned about the environment. Many of them grew up as boys hunting and fishing and really appreciated the pressure relief valve of the outdoors from a stressful world. Republican Teddy Roosevelt helped us create the National Park System, and even Richard Nixon – a Republican - helped create the EPA. A conservative “cloth coat” Republican created the EPA. Think about that. Conservation. Environmental conservation. Conservative. See?
What has happened is that social issue Tea Party politicians have commandeered the term. Our fathers may have issues with Marriage Equality because again, it wasn’t what they were used to and they hate change, but the Tea Party has taken social conservatism to such an extreme that they now threaten financial conservatism, which has gone out the window. We need to appeal to the Sanity Caucus to reclaim the Conservative title and leave the Tea Party with a more appropriate moniker that conveys their reckless approach to the economy and refusal to accept scientific fact. The End Times Party seems to fit, because they seem to fervently, gleefully wish to bring about the financial and environmental end times for the rest of us.
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