All joking aside, the tea party movement comes down to two things: 1) ignorance, which thinly masks its 2) racism.
Watching Chase Whiteside's latest video, along with the following poll, seals the deal:
Of people who support the grassroots, "Tea Party" movement, only 2 percent think taxes have been decreased, 46 percent say taxes are the same, and a whopping 44 percent say they believe taxes have gone up.
Everyone making $250,000 or less has received a tax cut. Arguably the largest middle class tax cut in American history. But the tea party people would prefer to believe that their taxes have gone up. Why? Because they need fiction to disguise the ugly reality about their movement.
Throw into the mix the fact that this president is laser focused on deficit reduction, much to my chagrin and despite the tea party accusations that he's spending out of control. Another obvious fantasy perpetuated by the teabaggers.
Likewise, Whiteside's video revealed that whenever a teabagger talks about the "Constitution," he or she isn't talking about freedom of speech or habeas rights or separation of powers -- they're really talking about the "natural born citizen" part. They would argue that it's also about the 2nd Amendment, but, again, the president hasn't touched gun control as an issue. So another fantasy masks the teabagger reality.
The core Birther ideas are more pervasive than anyone will admit, and, as we're well aware, it's derived from the fact that the president is mixed-race with a dark-skinned black Kenyan father of Muslim origins. And even though it's no longer really discussed in serious circles, it's still there and it's fueling the entire tea party movement -- even if they don't really want to talk about it. (Throw into the mix the obvious racism of Dale "Niggar" Robertson, one of the founders of the formal tea party movement.)
In other words, they can't reasonably go around saying that their movement is about race, so they make shit up about taxes, government spending and guns. From there, easily lead bumpkins in American flag shirts buy into the fantasies about higher taxes -- after all, why would Glenn Beck and Dale Robertson lie to them?
The tea party movement began before President Obama had really passed anything. Days into his presidency, they already wanted "their country back." It doesn't take much observation to realize that the movement's anger doesn't really have anything to do with the president's policies, but instead who he is.
If they were capable of actually seeing beyond their racially-motivated blind rage, they would see that this is a president who is doing more for the American middle class than any president in recent memory. Tax cuts, for example. And, by the way, he doesn't need those words scribbled on his hand in order to remember them.