Michael Barone‘s latest Washington Examiner article addresses the notion that Tea Party activists might have lost some of their enthusiasm:
Has the wind gone out of the sails of the smaller-government movement? Is the Tea Party movement going through a hangover?
You can find some evidence for these propositions. In Washington, Democrats like former National Chairman Howard Dean look forward gleefully to a government shutdown, and Sen. Charles Schumer thinks he can drive a wedge between Speaker John Boehner and “extremist” Tea Partiers.
And in state capitals some new Republican governors are getting hostile receptions to their plans for cutting spending and curtailing the power of public employee unions. …
… Given their druthers, voters oppose tax increases and spending cuts. But they’re responsive to the message that in these hard economic times it’s not possible to have all good things.
They have seen that vast spending increases haven’t generated jobs and they understand that tax increases can choke a sputtering economic recovery. Given the facts, they understand that public employee unions inflate spending, reduce accountability and operate as a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayer money to one political party.
The press won’t make that case. Republicans and Tea Partiers need to do it themselves.
