Tea for Two (or Three) More Election Cycles

With the 2010 midterm elections seemingly in the bag for the Republican Party, I predict that the discourse will begin to turn toward the future of one of the key players in this massive midterm sweep - the Tea Party.  This grassroots movement, spurred on by (but not sprouted from) the famous anti-Obama rant that CNBC's Rick Santelli bestowed us with last year, began to make serious waves in the Spring and Summer of 2009.  Tax day rallies across the nation raised the public awareness of the movement's existence, and though mainstream media coverage was sparse at first, by the beginning of 2010 it became apparent that the Tea Party was going to be a big factor in the upcoming campaigns.

I had the privilege of attending the first gathering of the Albany Tea Party on April 15th, 2009.  It was a fun and inspiring event: Al Roney, host of the late "Al Roney Show" on 810AM WGY in Albany, handled much of the organization for the gathering, and the featured speakers included veterans, aspiring local politicians, and a large group of entrepreneurs whose livelihoods depend on a business-friendly approach to government.  Most people brought handmade flags, signs or T-shirts, and activists were present gathering names and contact information to spread awareness for their individual causes, all of which centered around classic American themes.  There were veteran's support groups, government transparency petitioners, and advocates for tax-relief and social security reform, along with the strict-constructionist crowd, dressed in Colonial-era garb and wearing tri-cornered hats.  I signed a petition to "Audit the Fed", though I now fear the results of such an audit.  To whit, thanks to big-government largesse and the loosest monetary policy in living memory, the US of A is probably far more than the estimated $14 trillion in the hole. 

At the very core this is what the Tea Party is about.  Limiting the scope of government involvement in the day to day lives of ordinary, working Americans - and incidentally, all other Americans - is it's lodestar.  The Tea Party as envisioned by realists is not a social conservative movement like the Moral Majority or Focus on the Family.  Though I'm sure most of the members of the Tea Party would have no problems with more restrictions on abortion, or for gay marriage to remain outside the realm of recognized unions, this is not the principle behind the movement.  Tea Partiers - or Tea Baggers if you're a small child or Anderson Cooper - represent a wide swath of the Republican Party, and all American conservatives.  The call of the day is for limited government, spending restraint, and a sensible policy on entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and Social Security.  Bowing to the pragmatic sense that's made me who I am, I can tell you right now that abortion will never be outlawed (though in a perfect world, late-term abortions would be completely banned for ALL reasons except the life and health of the mother - if you got raped by your cousin and took 7 months to decide on aborting the fetus, too bad).  There should also be some modifications to the parental notification laws so that minors cannot get abortions without their parents knowing.  Same deal on gay marriage - I really could not care less, and in my view it's an issue for the church, not the state.  If a gay couple can find a church that will marry them I believe that marriage should be just as legal as any other.

Many pundits have opined that the Tea Party will fizzle out after this election cycle.  The thinking is that if the GOP sweeps the House and evens up the odds in the Senate, their progress in halting or reversing the Obama agenda will still be unimpressive, and this will cause a dissolution of the movement.  Once momentum is lost (the classic, "We've won!  Now what?" scenario), and once the next election is years in the future, the activists will not be able to sustain interest in the general public.  Some have even pinned this down as Obama's strategy.  Lose the House in an off-year election, keep the opposition party engaged and under fire for the next two years, then ride a wave of anger on the Left and renewed apathy on the Right to a retaking of government in the 2012 general election.  This strategy is not too far-fetched, but I have serious doubt that the Tea Party movement will die out so gracefully as that.

Keep in mind that this movement is not really an organized thing.  Though there are some key figures that have emerged to act as part-time leaders of the cause, there are really four or five major Tea Party coalitions nationwide, with a scattering of independent groups all about.  Liberals tend to believe that the uniting force that keeps this voting bloc together is some combination of paranoia and racism, but this is not the case.  Concern for the direction of the nation and a wish to undo decades of bad monetary and spending policies is the real force behind this nebulous movement.  Because liberals understand conservatives to a far weaker degree than conservatives understand liberals, this is lost on the elites as a whole.  Furthermore, this concern will not simply go away in 2 years, 4 years, or 6 years.  It will take far longer than that to fix what is broken about our nation and the Federal Reserve and I believe that the tipping point against apathy making a resurgence has been reached.  Tea Partiers like facts - they understand that just because things might get better if the GOP has a good year, or Obama loses reelection in 2012, this does not mean the mission is over.  Tea Partiers also have a long memory - they remember the pathetic show made by the GOP in the final years of their Congressional majorities, and many of the conservatives who stayed home in 2006 (and 2008) because of apathy are now part of the Tea Party, and are finding it to be a thrill to have feelings of concern and anger in common with most other working Americans.  This thrill will not be easily banished.

The Tea Party is not an anti-government movement as some would cast it.  I doubt you could find a sane member who would prefer total anarchy over a patch of federal and state and local authorities that take administrative and legislative matters into consideration via a body politik.  But the Tea Party, and the people who are part of it, is an anti-politics movement.  Politics as usual in Washington D.C, and in the statehouses in Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, and others, has driven the nation into a ditch that will be difficult to climb out of.  Politics is a dirty word to many folks in the Tea Party and to me as well (though I am not a member and have no intention of joining).  The paradox is a strange one: I love talking about politics, arguing about politics, and writing about politics, but if you put me in a room with a bunch of politicians, scurrying staffers, and the entourage that comes with the scene, you'll soon find me looking for the nearest exit, or a handy window to throw myself out of.  A town hall meeting, with a pol facing the constituency, is a different story - I love watching politicians squirm without regard to their persuasion.  But a night of political theatre, with all the back-slapping and back-stabbing that entails, is not as fun as I'd thought it would be.  Sadly, the true believers in a crowd like that (and there were a few) are usually outshone by the propagators of cow pies.  This was a crucial error on my part because I figured a night with the in-crowd would be fascinating.  It wasn't, and I understand why.  Being told I looked uncomfortable a dozen times that night didn't help, but that's a different story.  I hate wearing ties . . .

Nor is the Tea Party, in it's current form, a viable third party.  Rather, like the Blue Dogs on the Democratic side of the aisle, the Tea Party must live or die for the moment as an extension of the Republican Party.  Because of the divisions within the party itself, and because the movement is focused on fiscal conservatism and it's scope beyond that is terrifically limited, it has no major policy objectives that don't relate directly to the financial health of the nation and it's people.  Matters of war and peace, civil rights, and environmental policy are not within the purview of the Tea Party collective, and this is a good thing.  Serving as a fiscally conservative wing of the GOP is a good mantle to take up in these times. It is my sincere belief that if the Tea Partiers stick to this line instead of trying to dismantle the GOP or combat it directly, there can be a harmonious symbiosis between the two entities.  Furthermore, the Tea Party may serve as an outlet for those on the Left who hold socially liberal views but wish for a tighter supply-side model to the US economy.  Though this is perhaps a long shot, it is never wise to discount something improbable as being impossible, especially in politics.

In summation, the Tea Party will have a good run at the polls this year.  If it remains true to it's core principles, consciously limiting it's objectives to the fiscal realm, and maintains homeostasis with the current GOP establishment while slowly weeding out the remaining blue bloods who refuse to see the problems with our current economic establishment, it should remain a viable and vibrant movement for at least another decade.  If not, then at least the American conservative population, which has never been much for organizing or holding rallies on a large scale, has been made aware that when the time comes, such an upwelling of grassroots feeling is possible for those on the Right, just as it is for those on the Left.

Far Eastern Promises

The thing that scares me most is the prospect of another world war.  I'm sure there are a lot of folks to whom that prospect is terrifying, but I'm not talking about the type of war you might expect.  There's a lot of reasons that a war between the major powers fought with the most destructive military arsenals money can buy would be horrifying, but the war I refer to could end with nary a shot being fired.  This is beyond World War Three.  My greatest fear is the First World Economic War.

Fighting with guns, and ships, and airplanes - and nowadays with satellites, robot bombers, and directed-energy weapons - is nothing to scoff at.  The nuclear considerations aside, even the conventional weapons of armies worldwide have become so destructive it's hard to describe in terms that most Americans could truly relate to.  There are artillery shells that rain down thousands of miniature yet highly destructive bombs with a single volley, bombs dropped from planes that can hit a mailbox from 40,000 feet, and guided missiles that can do the same from thousands of miles offshore.  But the sheer power of this force aside, consider just how much more destructive a war which could damage the very foundations of not just a building, but of a nation.  A war which could cause worldwide famine, depression, epidemics, and societal collapse, but not a shot gets fired between nations.  Or a war which turns you and everyone you know into a slave to the ink on an accountant's pen.  I'm talking about an economic war, and in later days I'll be discussing this topic much more.

For the moment, I want to focus in on a nation which might someday be our prime nemesis in just such a conflict.  China is undoubtedly the rising star of Asia at the moment, with an economy that grew by an impressive 8.7% in FY2009 (FY stands for Fiscal Year - in case you didn't know).  The year before, China managed to buck the collapsing economic trend as well with a 9.6% GDP growth.  Though not as imposing as the 11.4% growth reaped by Beijing in 2007, and certainly a downer from their previous 5 years of double-digit expansion, these numbers are not to be taken lightly.  While boom times in developing nations are often fleeting things, China is an oddball for many ways.  On March 5th, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao delivered an address to the Communist parliament in the Great Hall of the People which decried the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the country, reviewed the phenomenal growth statistics for the consumption of the masses, and promised action to combat the rising unemployment.  These are all major problems for the Communist government.  The chasm between the living situation in a village in the Chinese hinterlands versus a coastal megalopolis like Shanghai or Nanjing is a wide one.  The population is stratified in many places, such as northern provinces where there's a large presence of ethnic Mongols (one of China's neighbors), and to the western spur of the country with large Turkic and Nepalese populations.  In major cities there's also a huge disparity, and this is China - we're talking a lot of people.  And despite the relatively low unemployment rate (reported) of 4.35%, let us remember we are speaking of Commies.  It wasn't Benjamin Franklin who once said, "It doesn't matter who votes, it only matters who counts them."  It was a Commie (Stalin, to be precise).  The unemployment figures, like the value of the renmibi, are sketchy at best.  We do know that on October 8th, the China Post ran a story highly critical of government policy concerning underemployment and the wealth gap, which mentioned that 70% of the Chinese population is still in a state of rural development, working on family farms and kollectivs in the interior of the nation.  What would America look like if 7 out of 10 citizens were farming for beans in their backyards?

Despite these problems, the foundations of the Chinese economy are strong.  The Chinese have a solid resource base, and are the worlds largest exporter of rare earth minerals.  These exotic semi-metallic substances, like gadolinium, neodymium, and samarium, are highly valued for their uses in high technology fields like radiology, energy and fusion research, and computer hardware of all kinds.  A rumored trade halt to these minerals is currently spooking nerves in the aerospace and computer chip industries, and though the US has ample reserves of it's own, it is naturally cheaper to buy these metals from China.  China is also a net exporter of oil and natural gas, and has a fair amount of proven reserves, though the true figures might not be honestly disclosed.  We do know that the Chinese have been active in the South China Sea, attempting enforcement of their territorial claims around the Spratly Islands, the Paracel Islands, and the seabed gas fields at Malampaya.  Such a conflict might lead one to believe that the Chinese petroleum reserves are close to hitting their peak and then dwindle down over the coming decades, which is a strong possibility.  Beijing has taken a harder line on their territorial claims on the Spratlys recently, prompting fears of economic or military retaliation against the Phillipines and Taiwan for their competing interests in the region.  President Aquino of the Phillipines raised the issue at US-ASEAN convention in New York in September, though so far no action has been taken other than for the US to issue a statement two weeks ago calling for the parties of the non-binding Spratly Islands accord of 2002 to produce a stronger, potentially binding pact.  If this eventually does happen, it will likely be four or five years in the future.

Manufacturing is China's strong arm, of course, and produces a large segment of their GDP.  Roughly 45-47% of the Chinese economy is industrial, both heavy and light, and they manufacture almost every type of good that can be found in the entire world.  Televisions, computers, airplanes, and ships - the Chinese heavy industry is a powerhouse exceeded only by the industrial capacity of the United States in the years following the Second World War.  When you factor in construction and housing, the segment of industrial and development makes up roughly 60% of the Chinese economy.  This figure is balanced out by the fact that this sector also provides only about 17% of the employment available in China, which means that agriculture and far lower paying service jobs are still the primary employers in that nation of billions.

What does all this mean in terms of an economic war?  Well, it means that China has a strong foundation and room to falter.  These are luxuries that we can only make dubious claims to at the moment, given the skyrocketing cost of servicing our national debt, our yearly deficits, and the fact that Obama has spiked our national debt by over $3 trillion since taking office.  China is a third largest economy in the world and a leader in manufacturing.  They have extensive shipyards and a strong rail system, and though development has outpaced proven growth in many parts of China, this will not always be the case.  Though in a pure trade conflict, the US has the capability to hurt China badly, given our status as their primary exporter, it is unlikely that this advantage alone would be enough to secure a true victory for America - and in a wider trade war involving currencies and exchanges, this picture becomes grim.  Help from the Japanese and the South Koreans would be essential in this type of conflict.

So what is a "true victory" in a trade war?  Is such a thing even possible?  How would an economic war affect my life?  I'll save those answers for a later installment, but for now, try out a little thought experiment: Imagine your life without anything stamped or stickered "Made in China".  What do you think the shelves of most megastores would look like if such a world came about?  And where does the money go from those products after you take them home and put them to use?

That's my piece.

Kyzernick