Are We All Tea Partiers Now?

From the moment the movement started in 2009, the left has looked askance at the tea party movement. We were astroturfing dupes doing what the Republican party told us at best and extremist, racist, anti-government fanatics bent on violence at worst. Our skepticism of the government is the stuff of paranoid delusion, we’re told.

But in an ironic twist of fate, the Obama administration seems to be making the case that the tea party was right all along.

News broke yesterday that Obama administration Justice Department had requested months worth of phone records for Associated Press reporters.

That came on top of revelations that the Obama administration EPA has charged information access fees to conservative groups, but not left-wing environmental groups.

Which, in turn, comes on top of the IRS admitting to targeting conservative groups for audits since 2010.

Even Health and Human Serivces is under investigation for trying to shake down insurers for donations to fund Obamacare.

And prior to all this, it took nothing short of a filibuster in the United States Senate to get the Obama administration to admit that they don’t think it’s legal to launch a drone strike on a US citizen inside the United States.

I don’t think it’s extremism to think that the IRS ought not be targeting the President’s political enemies, that EPA fees ought to be applied without ideological bias, that reporters shouldn’t be spied on and that the government can’t just assassinate US citizens in America with drone strikes.

Maybe, just maybe, this whole “let’s be skeptical of the government” thing isn’t extremism after all.