Just when freshman House Republicans have finally learned their way to the Cannon Caucus Room, how to vote on a motion to proceed and which commissary serves the best tuna sandwiches, someone back home — worse, someone from their own party — wants to take it all away.
“I am taking a serious look,” said Weston Wamp, who is pondering a primary challenge to Representative Chuck Fleischmann, in his first term from Tennessee. Mr. Wamp said he was inspired by his father, Zach, who served in the House for many years. “My experience through my dad was seeing the very best of what public service can mean.”
It is miles to go before the 2012 Congressional races begin in earnest, but already some of the 87 freshmen who helped the Republicans win back the House last year are bracing for a challenge from within the party. At least half a dozen potential primary challengers to freshmen are considering a run, and there is heated chatter about more.
So what kind of freshmen could they be talking about? Well how about Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA). Kelly was endorsed by the Tea Party and even coined a “real Tea Party candidate“. But look at what Mike Kelly thinks of corporate welfare:
MODERATOR: This question is from Joshua from Erie. How can you justify continuing subsidies for oil companies with record profits while cutting vital services for working families? Oil companies don’t need subsidies and working families shouldn’t have to pay for them with…
KELLY: First of all, let me just ask one thing. Is there anybody in here that has a pension? Anybody have a portfolio? I want you to very carefully look at those portfolios. Those are usually made up by profitable companies.
CONSTITUENT: Why are we subsidizing them?
KELLY: If you really want to understand the whole thing, I would say that, number one, we want companies to be profitable. I said earlier about the class warfare, if we’re going to start classifying, “they’re too rich, they’re too wealthy, they’re too greedy. We don’t get enough, we need more, and we need to have rich people putting more money in. We need, we need, we need, we need, we need, we need, we need.”
So the companies should be made profitiable at the expense of tax payers? Well I guess it’s fine for Kelly, who is also a millionaire investor in big oil.
But this goes to the heart of the matter when it comes to these “Tea Party darlings” and what their actions really says about them. Michele Bachmann is another perfect example. She wants you to think that the government giving away any money is that “evil socialism”, but she sure didn’t seem to bat an eye when she took $250,000 in farming subsidies.
The problem can be summed up with one word – hypocrisy. We hear all these Tea Party politicians decry the government giveaways, but as soon as that money benefits them, they are the first ones in line with their hands open. The sooner the people in the Tea Party realize this, the quicker they will realize that the only way to truly fix the problem is to fix our electorate system – a system where only the rich can get elected. Of course publicly financed elections is the only cure to that and that is, well, a government handout to the right.