You would think the smartest guys in the room of American politics would have figured out the Tea Party by now, especially after the momentous defeat voters handed them in November.
But you would be wrong. Abundant proof was just provided by the opinion page of the New York Times, the utterly predictable voice of the political elite, in an indignant editorial titled “The Repeal Amendment.”
The Repeal Amendment is a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to enable the legislatures of two-thirds of the states to repeal a federal law they find objectionable. It comes as a surprise to no sentient being who has witnessed the grass-roots rebellion — aka the Tea Party — against expanding federal power sparked by President Obama’s nationalization of General Motors and Chrysler, hundreds of banks, health care, the student loan industry, the Internet and insurance.
The evidence is clear that most Americans agree with most of the positions articulated by most Tea Party adherents. But even if only the 40 percent of Americans who identify themselves as conservatives align with the Tea Party, it’s anything but a fringe element.
So how does the Times view the Repeal Amendment and the Tea Party behind it?
“The proposal is sweeping, expressing with bold simplicity the view of the Tea Party and others that the federal government’s influence is far too broad. It would give state legislatures the power to veto any federal law or regulation if two-thirds of the legislatures approved.
“The chances of the proposal becoming the Constitution’s 28th Amendment are exceedingly low. But it helps explain further the anger-fueled, myth-based politics of the populist new right. It also highlights the absence of a strong counterforce in American politics.”
Three points:
First, the Times rejects the Tea Party belief that “the federal government’s influence is far too broad.” A little further on in the editorial, the Times argues that the Founders actually intended the Constitution to “promote economic development that would lift the fortunes of the American people.”
No, the Founders’ intentions were clearly expressed in the Preamble, which described the Constitution’s purpose as to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
The Times’ bastardized rendering of the preamble is an intellectual sleight of hand that reads back into the document the elite’s view that what the Founders should have intended was a powerful central government capable of enforcing the Progressive vision of “the nation’s commitment to equality and welfare.” The Times is rewriting history, again.
Second, the Times claims the Repeal Amendment’s prospects for adoption are “exceedingly low.” This prediction comes from the same experts who spent much of 2009 reassuring each other that the Tea Party movement was an inconsequential fringe.
Third, after their November shellacking, the experts now offer more of their standard diminution of the Tea Party as just another “anger-fueled, myth-based” populist movement. It’s an illegitimate movement because its adherents are moved by passion instead of reason, and they espouse a disreputable myth about an American past that never was.
Stripped of its arrogant trappings, that argument is an ad hominem fallacy: Dismissing a proposal by linking it to an alleged flaw of its advocate.
Maybe these people won’t engage the Repeal Amendment on its merits because they know it accurately reflects the Constitution, the founding document created by the states the Times now claims ought not be able to force Barack Obama to respect, following his repeated violations of a solemn oath to uphold it.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s CopyDesk blog on washingtonexaminer.com
