Dear Tea Party: GOP Is Not That Into You

by Stuart Shapiro

Dear Tea Party,

I know you are having a tough week.  Your suitors, the GOP establishment, have turned on you quicker than even I thought they would.  Let’s look at the budget deal with President Obama this week.

• Academic elites (remember you hate academic elites) on the left like the deal:

And left-leaning policy experts said the package did more to create jobs than they had thought possible after the Republicans’ midterm election victories. Robert Greenstein, Lawrence Mishel and John Podesta — who run prominent Washington research groups that range from liberal to staunchly liberal — all offered praise for the package. Of its estimated $900 billion-plus cost over two years, roughly $120 billion covers the high-end tax cuts and the estate tax cut, $450 billion covers Mr. Obama’s wish list and $360 billion covers the tax cut extensions both parties favored.

• Obviously the rich love the fact that they are getting tax cuts (you don’t really like the rich either).

• Sen. DeMint hates the deal (you love Jim DeMint).

He doesn’t like the fact that the tax cut extension is temporary and he doesn’t like the extension of unemployment insurance.

• -President Obama negotiated the deal (you hate hate hate President Obama).

• The deal will explode deficits (you hate deficits).

The GOP will tell you tea partiers that spending cuts are next, but they aren’t.  No real spending cuts (an earmark here or there perhaps) will get done by this Congress or the next.  You’ve been used and lied to by your friends in the GOP.  But you are not alone.  They did it to the social conservatives for 25 years.  The only question is if you will be gullible for nearly as long.

If you need to talk, give us a call.

Hugs and Kisses,

The Left

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.