What Digby Says: A Bad Meme Arising!

Dangerous Meme Alert

by digby

Listening to tea party congressmen on MSNBC right now defending cut-go and this keeps coming up whenever Mitchell asks why they refuse to pay for tax cuts if they are so concerned about the deficit. I discussed it before and it's really catching on now:

"We don't think tax cuts are something that we have to be "pay for" because it's the people's money to begin with, not the government's." Greg Walden (R) Lunatic.

Who does the government belong to, I wonder? And who's supposed to pay for it?

This is a very pernicious meme the Democrats need to refute quickly and decisively because these Republicans are squawking it in unison like a bunch of trained parrots. So far,the only reaction I've seen from them or the gasbags asking is slack-jawed stupefaction. I don't think that's sufficient.

Mitchell points out that Tea Partiers make up a third of the new House majority.

FEARLESS PREDICTION: The Dims will cave.

They'll concede the rhetorical ground. They ALWAYS do. So they'll lose here, as they lose everywhere.

The GOPukes have successfully delegitimized the very possibility of a Dim claim to the authority to govern.

And the Dims LET them, out of an ingrained sense--I believe--that their constituency (poor, marginalized, disadvantaged, minority people) really ARE actually INFERIORS to the GOPuke constituency (wealth & power), and therefore don't REALLY have the authority to DEMAND their needs be met, or to significantly OPPOSE the demands of the Pukes for concessions, breaks and give-aways.

Put it this way: Remember High School? The Pukes are the party of the cool, rich, hip, popular kids. The Dims are the party of the pizza-faced, sloppy, fat, ugly folks.