Sully: Tea Partiers Not Serious

Andrew Sullivan spells out his differences with Tea Party protesters despite agreeing with their small government philosophy on The Daily Dish. He notes their support for Bush when he was running up deficits and violating civil rights as well as their complete lack of advocacy for specific alternative policies.

My worry about the tea-partiers is not that just they are Johnny-Come-Latelies (even though most are). It is not that they are partisans (some of them clearly aren't). It is that they are motivated by an amorphous distrust and loathing of government that never seems to get translated into actual policies (and that is itself more populist than conservative). And they are pushing the GOP leadership to take talk-radio abstract positions, rather than tangible proposals. They are deeply unserious.

If they were proposing a serious set of cuts to entitlement or defense spending, or an alternative to the Democrats' health insurance plans, or an openness to a VAT to rescue federal finances, I'd be on their side. But what they currently are is a form of ideological protest movement with no hope for or intention of actually bringing any of this about. I feel about them as a small government type the way I used to feel about ACT-UP as an HIV-positive gay man. They're more about theater and therapy than protest and progress.

--Ballard Burgher