Promises, Promises

Promises made; promises broken.


Rich Lowry: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_president_reality_problem_WMuCZTkNKv10LAtLG9DLqK

Tea Partiers:

"What I Saw at the Tea Party" [Jonah Goldberg]

Glenn Reynolds reports from the convention.

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

Mr. Obama made those promises because the ideas they represented were popular with average Americans. So popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention. The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack.