Where the Bailout Went Wrong

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

And they have their true believers who defend the right to screw us over at all turns, saying that they're not really at fault, and that the old American dream of "you can make it if you try" is still alive and well. What are you gonna do, man?

I know I'm going to be mocked horribly for this but.... join the Tea Party! Granted, their material results haven't been all that great yet, but their political results over a relatively short span of time can't be argued with, and you'll never take out the government-industrial complex without removing the government part first. Easiest way to do that is to demand government fiscal responsibility, which is exactly what the tea partiers are all about.

What the tea-party movement represents, maligned as it is by the left, is a shift in Republican politics and eventually (I hope) party platform. The Repubs are infamous for spending just as much (and in some cases, more) than the Dems. I think the success of the tea-party movement may be indicative of Americans actually sending a message to Washington more or less successfully, which is better than nothing at all.

More importantly, in a two-party system, if one party definitively adopts a stance, the other party is all but required to adopt the opposite stance to garner the largest possible number of votes. In the event of another tea-party success, that could put the legislature in the hands of the tea-party Republicans and independents.

My main worry about them is that they will lose momentum and stop complaining, or conclude that the effort is hopeless or too much work. If they do that before 2012, we just continue with the same system, so we're screwed. If they do it after 2012, or even 2016, we may well end up with another single-party legislative dynasty, which would eventually be even worse.

Aside from that, there's always the option of supporting a third party with a fiscal-responsibility agenda, like the Libertarians. I'm not saying you need to throw away a vote in a presidential election or a presidential primary. Just get the word out in a local election. Or just cast a vote in one. Nobody votes in those things anyway, so your vote carries more weight, but what really matters is that every Libertarian elected at a local level carries the weight of thousands of district votes (y'know, unless your district has less than thousands of people). Apply pressure from the ground up, rather than the top down.

Or don't. Whatever you do, don't just give up. Every vote of no-confidence in the current government is ammunition to bring about the reform of government, even if all you do is convince one person on one forum. Y'know, as long as you don't convince them to vote for more government to fix the current government.