When I think of the tomorrow’s primary election, I’m viewing it through a longer term lens:
Not that long ago I wrote that the Occupy movement and the TEA Party had far more in common with each other than they ever will with the politicians that purport to represent them.
Before those of you on the political right go into raging denial consider this from one of the smartest guys in the room that hails from the left about Eric Cantor’s crushing primary defeat:
For the time being, though, Tea Party populism is boxed in in such a way that it only further serves the establishment cause. But, unlike the perpetually moribund and bought off left, the populists on the right are the only players with even a slight chance of shaking things up. In many ways that’s a frightening prospect but it might also be the closest thing to a hopeful prospect one can imagine right now.
Jeffrey equates Bobby Jindal with the TEA Party and while I think it is true Jindal panders to the TEA Party he is not one of them. Same for Steven Palazzo. As for Cantor’s crushing primary election loss a couple of days ago The Economist had an interesting take:
Most GOP members have more to fear from their primary voters than from the general election in November. The Cook Political Report and RealClearPolitics, two political augurs, agree that there are only 17 competitive House races out of 435, so for most Republican congressmen the risk of suffering the same fate as Mr Cantor feels like the bigger threat to their jobs.
And what does this have to do with the commonalities I detect between the political left and right? Its that P word again, Populism. The folks at The Economist detect the intersection of right and left in just the right spot in corporate welfare: Continue reading “And here they come again down the stretch!”