You may want to make a case that the Tea Party idea of much smaller, much less expensive government is an easy sell along these lines:
1. Nobody likes paying taxes, so telling people you are for low taxes or no taxes is an easy sell — everybody will go along with that — down with taxes.
2. The government actually never delivers anything of value to you or anybody you have ever known. Nobody on your block, nobody in your city has ever gotten anything of value from the Federal government. So, the massive failure of government programs to innovate value is a basis for called the Federal government an economic black hole and paring it down to 10% or 20% of its present size. If it doesn’t work, toss it, or sell it on Ebay, or give it to charity.
3. 2. Right now the top 1% of rich people own almost half of the wealth in USA. But that’s because the country is full of socialism and communism — if there were any real fairness, the top 1% would own 85% of the wealth, like they do on Hong Kong Luna. That would be true capitalism — and people will see how well it will work — how stable the country will be. 15% of the national wealth would be left for the bottom 99% to divide among themselves — if they want more they should just work harder, like the hedge fund traders did to get their wealth, and the oil company executives, and the payday lenders, and the mortgage derivatives securitizers. Day old bread and government cheese is perfectly good after all. So let’s have unfettered capitalism for the first time — let’s really give the free market a chance. Not peace though, we need those wars to sell more services and weapons to the government.
These are just three possibilities — I want your ideas, I know my own ideas, yours are the one’s I’m asking for here.
Or, on the hard sell side, you might say:
1. This is not the right time, when 100 million Americans are living in the Great Recession, and about to lose their homes, or their jobs, or their health insurance to tell people that the government is doing far too much for them, it’s Nannying them too much, they would be better off if the safety nets were removed, so they could experience even harder times, less food, less shelter, less medical care, less social services, they could enjoy the wonderful experience of dying in pain, which might really teach them a lesson and improve their characters, they would be such lazy slugs after they were dead.
2. The Federalists won their debate with the Anti-Federalists, so we have a Federal government. It’s too late to re-visit that issue after 240 years. Also, the New Deal did occur, so it’s too late to re-litigate whether or not there should be a plethora of agencies in Washington — they have existed since the 1930′s — about 80 years, it’s just too late to try to dial the country back to the Hoover Era, or the Robber Baron Age, or the Gilded Age, even though one might pine for those days and want to be a Throwback, maybe a re-enacter.
Again, these are just two suggested approaches — maybe you could quote from Milton Friedman, or Ayn Rand, or Robert Anson Heinlein, or any number of scholars at the CATO Institute, or from the Koch Brothers.
Anyhow, you know what to say to make your own case for the Tea Party as an easy sell, or as a hard sell.
How do you feel? Is it an easy sell or a hard sell?
Do you have any reasons for your position?
They don’t have to be proof, just your reasons why you think it’s an easy sell, or a hard sell.
