What Are They Angry About?

The Teabaggers are pissed off.  We know that much.  But why?  As Steve Benen notes, they went insane a month after President Obama signed the largest tax cut in history for 95% of America. and complained Americans were taxed too much.

National Review published a couple of items recently about President Obama having cut taxes for 95% of working families. This is, in reality, what happened, but the conservative magazine was incredulous. "If the taxes of 95 percent of Americans actully [sic] had been cut, surely somebody other than Obama would have noticed," one NR writer put it.

It was a curious argument. It doesn't matter what President Obama did -- in this case, approval of a tax cut -- it matters what people perceive, even if the perceptions are patently false.

And perhaps no group of people is fueled more intensely by misperceptions of reality than the Tea Party crowd.

Of people who support the grassroots, "Tea Party" movement, only 2 percent think taxes have been decreased, 46 percent say taxes are the same, and a whopping 44 percent say they believe taxes have gone up.

Now, we know that this 44% is wrong. We also know that in nearly every instance, the 46% are wrong, too. Indeed, my challenge to them would be to go look at their most recent paystub, and then dig up their paystub from, say, December 2008, before Obama took office. The math isn't that hard -- did their tax rate go up, down, or stay the same? Opinions and perceptions are nice, but arithmetic can be stubborn.

But as this relates to politics, John Cole noted that these folks "don't even know what they are mad about." Indeed, it's easy to forget this, but the first Tea Party crowds started protesting in March 2009 -- exactly one month after President Obama signed one of the largest tax-cut packages in American history into law. The protestors wanted to make clear that they are "taxed enough already," choosing to pretend that they hadn't just received a tax cut from the president they hate so intensely.

So it's not the taxes they are angry about.  It's not the government spending...that was Bush who spent far more and not a word out of the Tea Party.  If it's taxes and spending the Teabaggers tell you they are against, they are lying.  Period.  It's not government growth.  After 9/11 Bush and the Republicans created the PATRIOT Act, the TSA, a host of federal agencies and new layers of bureaucracy, and of course got us into two wars that cost us thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars.  Not a peep from the Teabaggers.  So the Tea Party is lying about the size of government too.  Wasn't the bailout.  Bush started that.  Henry Paulson insisted we needed to pay off trillions to the banks to keep America afloat.  They are lying if they are telling you Obama's bailout of the banks is the problem.

Democrats came to power in 2006 in Congress.  No Tea Party movement then.  So it's not "We're mad at the Democrats."  Another lie.  Tea Party movement didn't come until after Obama took office: Feb 19, 2009.  Wasn't health care.  McCain had a health care plan too.  Wasn't the stimulus.  Bush signed into law a stimulus plan too.  Remember your tax rebate check in 2008?

What's different?  What's left that remains?  It's not Obama's political party or leanings.  It's not government spending or taxation or the size of government.  Why the massive populist outrage now?

What's the one thing that's left?

Obama is primarily famous for being the first what, exactly?  What's different about Obama compared to the first 43 Presidents this country has had?

Answer that question and you know why the Teabaggers are really mad.  They are deluding themselves with all these fantasies to cover up the truth about why they hate Obama.

And nobody in the Village dares call them on it.

I will.  Racism is an ugly, ugly thing.

[UPDATE 11:50 AM]  Nope.  Sorry.  Wasn't the Great Recession either or the millions of jobs lost:  That too started on Bush's watch and all throughout 2008.  No Tea Party then, either. 

If McCain were President, we'd not have the stimulus, so unemployment would be higher, and you wouldn't have the tax cut, so your taxes would be higher too.  But there would be no Tea Party Movement.

Again, what's the only reason that's left, folks?