- MR. GREGORY: There's also the issue of the sort of opposition that the president faces. Where is the Republican Party? We talked a little bit about that. Again, part of the conversation we've had outside the hour today in some outside interviews includes one with Dick Armey, a former congressman who's now part of FreedomWorks, who is part of this tea party movement that was influential in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Here's what he said about the center of American politics.
- (Videotape)
- FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): This is the broad center of American politics. Look at the polling data. Right now the tea party polls higher than the Republicans and the Democrats. And it is becoming increasingly clear to the electorate out there, and they're expressing their understanding, it is the Democrat majority in Congress and the president that's on the liberal fringe and we are on the center. There's no doubt about it.
- (End videotape)
- MR. TODD: Oh, well, I don't know if they're in the center. I mean, when we did our own polling on this, it's clear that the tea party gets a big benefit because there's one news organization that gives them a huge bump all the time. I mean, their favorable rating among Fox viewers is through the roof, and the rest of the country sort of doesn't know a lot about these folks. But the message of the tea party sort of saying "the government doesn't work, these institutions, and we've got to shrink the size of government," is tapping into what we were just discussing before...
- MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
- MR. TODD: ...which is this, this--I would--not disgust, but it's sort of this distrust of all institutions that are out there, government included. But I think that--I want to go to something E.J. said about the Republican Party. I think the most striking thing about the minority party today vs.--that is that a Republican can't go home, and it's mostly because of this tea party cra...owd, cannot go home and sell a piece of pork that they got from Washington. It is now, when you bring home something, saying, "Hey, I brought federal dollars to this." You're on the defensive now.
Whichever it was, I couldn't think anything but "Hallelujah!" I credit the Club for Growth and its standard bearers, Jeff Flake, Tom Coburn, and Jim DeMint for planting the seeds of this by repeatedly embarrassing the Spendican wing of the Republican party via their continued assault on earmarking -- both the process and the results. Nevertheless, I have to credit the Democrats for reverting to tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend form so promptly after the muddle-headed middle gave them the keys to the Treasury.
I can only hope that the present rage against the machine will continue through November 2.
