re: #606 lostlakehiker

Economists talk about ‘revealed preferences’. You can look at peoples’ behavior and discern what they really really want. In this case, I’d say what the tea party movement wants is lower taxes and smaller government, not civil war.

They’ve taken no steps toward civil war, nor toward a putsch. There may be several reasons for this, and one of them surely is that it wouldn’t stand a chance. We all know this. They know it too. But another reason is probably that that’s not what they want anyhow. What does stand a chance is the project of electing some candidates who don’t have a long track record in politics and who would be less likely to acculturate to the Washington way of doing things. They’d be less likely to go along to get along, and they’d be steadfast in voting against further expansions to big government.
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If that were the case, they would have been out in force during the Bush years. They get to hide behind the rhetoric of “lower taxes and smaller government” because they really have a problem with a black guy being president.

It’s fairly clear that the tea partiers and their candidates have nothing concrete in the realm of how and what to cut.