Monday, August 23, 2010

Predictions: Will St. Louis Tea Party Have Intellectual Honesty to Criticize Ed Martin?

Apparently, Ed Martin's strategy of being a full-blown insane right-winger is not working very well in Missouri's 3rd District. So he's now decided to completely shift positions against everything he's ever claimed to stand for by saying that he's now in favor of reviving a massive government jobs program known as the Works Progress Administration (which, by the way, I wholeheartedly support):
MARTIN: I live in South City, and you drive down on River Des Peres and you'll see in the bricks the WPA symbol. And what we didn't do -- we took $1.2 trillion in the stimulus -- we didn't do shovel ready jobs.

JACO: Would you have been in favor of those kind of things -- maybe a son of the WPA -- to put people to work immediately on public-sector construction jobs.

MARTIN: Emphatically yes. I mean, emphatically yes. And I think places like Highway 21 in Jefferson County, they're desperate to finish the roads. The federal government has a role to play, and I think you and I can talk about how big or small the role is. But public level infrastructure, I think we should have done that. We would have put, put people together. I mean, we built the Zoo, we built the memorials. We should have said -- and even during the WPA, we sometimes said -- if workers need 20 hours each to build a 40 hour because we have two men that need a job, in this case two men and women, we'll split it up. You get 20 each. I'm emphatically for that.
Martin, if you recall, has been a huge critic of the stimulus program, and not because he thought it was too small. In fact, Martin previously (and hilariously) claimed that when you increase the size of the government, you're taking away people's freedom, which in turn takes away their ability to "find salvation."

But my question is whether the St. Louis Tea Party leadership, who also has stated that using the government to create jobs in times of economic hardship is always a bad idea, will have the intellectual honesty to criticize Ed Martin. Clark at Show Me Progress is predicting crickets, and I pretty much concer. Here are my predictions, with some explanation:

  • Dana Loesch's husband's business got $2,500 from Ed Martin, so we know she won't say anything.
  • Bill Hennessy didn't have the guts to criticize Roy Bank Bailout Blunt, and has shown no interest in doing anything other than electing the same old Republicans to office, so he's unlikely to say anything.
  • Jim Durbin at 24thstate.com was explicitly a Roy Blunt supporter, so I expect crickets from him.
  • Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft is a total hack; no way he criticizes Martin.
  • However, Darin Morley at Reboot Congress might have the guts to criticize Martin, since he stands on his principles more than the others. But still, he's an ardent Ed Martin supporter, so I doubt it.

  • If the St. Louis Tea Party actually stands for anything other than trying to get speaking gigs for their leaders, they will surely not let this pass by without comment. Nevertheless, I doubt they'll say anything. Anyone else have predictions about what will happen?

    h/t FiredUp Missouri

    No comments:

    Post a Comment