What Would the Tea Party Do?

Eleanor Clift asked the question last week in Newsweek. I think it was a rhetorical question, but I will do my best to answer it here.

"What would the tea party movement do about the Gulf oil spill?"

Clift is of the mind that there are no constitutional answers to the question. As usual, she only envisions big government answers to big government and big corporate problems. As usual, she is wrong.

I'm reminded of a debate I had on TV once in which I asked Clift if she knew what the term "self-government" meant. She was insulted and explained that it means "small government."

I told her that it meant no such thing. Self-government is, quite simply, when people govern themselves. That's what the founders had in mind. They were establishing what they hoped would be a system of self-government. To achieve it, they explained, the populace had to be morally capable of governing themselves, which the colonists clearly were. Whether Americans are still capable remains to be seen — especially when our star journalists have so little understanding of the basics of American civics and political theory.

But I digress. Let's accept the challenge. What would the tea party answer be to the Gulf oil spill?

A tea party president would have recognized from day one what a terrible tragedy had occurred. His first thought would not be who to blame for what was, by all accounts, an accident of immense magnitude. His first thought would have been how to stop the bleeding.

A tea party president would have graciously accepted the help and expertise offered by three European nations — Norway, Holland and Belgium. He or she would have mobilized the best resources available to focus on stopping the spill, cleaning up the Gulf and protecting the beaches and marshlands.

Obama, the anti-tea party president — the president who birthed the tea party movement as surely as King George birthed America's first tea party movement — did none of those things.

Had a tea party president been in office, much of the damage done to the Gulf and the businesses and jobs associated with it could have been prevented.

But Obama, the anti-tea party president, focused his attention on finger-pointing, targeting blame — in his own words, asking a lot of questions so he would know "whose a— to kick."

Of course, the real question on Clift's mind was how the constitutionalists in the tea party movement would pay for the damage of this disaster. Would a tea party president force BP to pony up $20 billion in an escrow account to pay for all claims?

Well, actually the Constitution mandates three separate branches of government. Nowhere in the Constitution is the president authorized to shake down corporations the way Obama shook down BP. Now, don't get me wrong. I have no sympathy in my heart for BP. I believe BP has a moral and legal obligation to repair the damage its apparent negligence caused.

But the president is not a dictator. He does not have the power to be judge, jury and executioner. In fact, he has no judicial authority whatsoever.

Therefore, a tea party president would do something very strange to Eleanor Clift. He would allow others to adjudicate the matter, because it is not his responsibility. He would no more assume authority in this matter than he would decide whether a policeman in Cambridge, Mass., acted appropriately or not by arresting a belligerent friend of the president.

Eleanor Clift thinks she discovered the ultimate "gotcha" for tea party activists who actually still revere, respect and submit to the law of the land. It sounds to me like Eleanor Clift would prefer to live in an authoritarian country headed by a rogue regime unaccountable to the law of the land.

Ask yourself which kind of country you would prefer — one populated by tea party activists or one populated by people like Eleanor Clift.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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