The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
A False ‘Contradiction’
The New York Times wants to know what this tea-party thing is all about, so the paper commissioned a poll. One finding seems to us to refute the notion that the movement is racist, though critics will see it another way: Among tea-party supporters, “25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites–compared with 11 percent of the general public.”
Our take: One would expect a racist to agree that “the administration favors blacks over whites,” though this view itself is not necessarily racist (the administration does, in fact, favor policies that give blacks advantages over whites in areas such as government contracting and college admission). If 3 out of 4 tea-party supporters don’t even agree with this statement, how many racists could there possibly be?
The Times story closes with this absurdity:
In follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security–the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.
Others could not explain the contradiction.
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”
President and Mrs. Obama released their tax returns today, the Los Angeles Times reports. They reported income of $5.5 million and paid $1.792 million, or less than a third, in federal income taxes. Obama believes taxes on “the rich”–a category that would include him–should be much higher. Is there a contradiction between his believing this and paying taxes at existing rates?
Of course not–even though it surely would be much less of a hardship for him to donate an extra million to the Treasury than it would for Jodine White to forgo her Social Security check. This finding of the New York Times poll shows no contradiction at all. Tea-party supporters are largely reconciled to longstanding government programs like Social Security and Medicare, but they oppose the creations of massive new ones. That makes them moderates, not hypocrites.
Meanwhile, Times columnist Gail Collins weighs in on tea parties and taxes:
According to one much, much-quoted study by the Tax Policy Center, 47 percent of American households didn’t have to pay one cent of income tax for 2009. . . .
According to the Gallup polls, 45 percent of Tea Party supporters have incomes under $50,000. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, Tea Party activists are virtually the only segment of the population in which a majority feels its tax burden is unfair. Clearly, these are not the kind of folks who would cancel their anti-tax rallies just on account of not being taxed.
“We’re here to take our country back,” said a former Missouri House speaker at a Tea Party rally at the State Capitol, where nobody appeared to be grateful for the good news about the bottom 47 percent at all.
Let us stop for a minute and consider this “take our country back” mantra. Some people believe it is the cry of angry white men who don’t like seeing a lot of blacks, women and gay people in positions of power. I prefer a less depressing explanation, which is that all this yearning for the golden days of yore has less to do with Washington than with the fact that so many of the Tea Partyists appear to be in late middle age. I think they just want to go back to the country that existed when they were 28 and looked really good in tight-fitting jeans. Which is no longer the case.
Wow, that’s some penetrating insight! Just a few points: First, the technical term for people who pay no income taxes is “lucky duckies.” Second, we seem to remember reading recently that the 47% figure relies “on a cleverly selective reading of the facts.” Let’s see, where did we read that again? Oh yeah, in the New York Times!
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