WHAT THE TEABAGGERS' UTOPIA MIGHT LOOK LIKE

I'm very pleased to see Amanda at Pandagon expressing skepticism about the notion that tea party people are as anti-Republican as they are anti-Democrat:

I honestly think what's going on is a big time identity politics temper tantrum, and ... it's got very little attachment to policy outside of those policies that reinforce their identity politics argument. And that argument is that they are the Real Americans®, and the rest of us need to submit.

...right wing populists shut up and get behind Republicans when they're in office. They only do this shit when Democrats have power, especially if the sitting President isn't a member of their perceived tribe. What that says to me is that even as they preen around about how they're not loyalists to the Republican party, that is in fact what they are. And the reason is that Republicans do the work of telling the right wing populists that they're the only real Americans. And that's what matters to them more than anything else.

She's arguing with Frank Rich and Rachel Maddow, with some justification -- Rich was on Maddow's show Wednesday night and he was arguing, among other things, that teabaggers actually understand that our deficits ballooned because of the Bush tax cuts, and are pissed off about it. Funny how they managed to keep quiet about that, and failed to wave signs depicting Bush with a Hitler mustache.

Amanda's right about the key point being that teabaggers think they're the real Americans. As such, they'd never criticize Bush for tax cuts -- tax cuts are "real American." Spending is nasty and liberal. They didn't notice or care that Bush was spending when he was spending, and they certainly loved the war he spent a lot of money on, but still, spending is something they think our tribe does, not theirs.

I have one small quibble with Amanda's post. She writes:

If there was one thing teabaggers would probably rally behind, it would be a petition stating that the original franchise was the best one, before it was expanding to non-property owners, non-white people, and even women. Interestingly, since they're so allergic to being called out as racists and sexists, I suspect you could probably go farther suggesting that the vote should only belong to property owners.

I don't think they'd really deny women the vote in their utopia -- some of them would, I'm sure, the ones who think men should have dominion over their wives, but the others would be upset at the thought that that little patriot Willow Palin wouldn't be allowed to vote when she turned eighteen. I'm not even sure they'd go for something as blatant as white-only suffrage.

I think they'd want to restrict the vote to "taxpayers" as opposed to "tax receivers." I've seen this distinction made by right-wing bloviators, and I think it would figure in the teabaggers' ideal recasting of democracy. In other words, they'd want to deny the franchise to anyone who doesn't work, or who works for the government. (I'm sure most of them think nearly everyone in the latter group is nonwhite.)

Oh, they'd have to modify this somewhat -- people in the military, as well as cops and firefighters, would get to vote, as would people who don't work now but did work -- can't deny the franchise to all those teabagging retirees, now, can we? But current government workers apart from firemen and cops would lose the vote -- because, after all, they do precisely the work teabaggers think we could instantly abolish, and are paid by the icky taxes they think we should instantly stop levying, or at least drastically curtail.