Weak tea

13 January 2010

Hall’s Third Rule of Politics states: “Constituency always outweighs consistency.” Thus, activists who fly the banner of the “Tea Party” have been eager to condemn “socialist” government spending. But the tea-partiers in Michigan have found one government spending program they like: the auto-industry bailout.

Joan Fabiano, a tea-partier and former GM employee, justified her non-protest by saying: “Would you like to see yourself out of a job if your company’s leadership made the errors and you had NOTHING to do with it?”

Ma’am, we have this word for economies where company leaders, no matter how incompetent, end up choosing which employees keep their jobs. The word is “capitalism”.

• Later: Dances With Monotheism
• Earlier: Robes in the ’hood