From Stephanie Mencimer, on the bipartisan passage of the food safety bill yesterday despite tea party opposition:
Food safety may simply be an issue that doesn’t get tea party activists frothing the way, say, health care reform or auditing the Fed do. But what’s more likely is that the tea party is no more effective in fighting corporate interests than MoveOn.
Republican politicians care about the rich, not the tea partiers. As long as tea party interests align with the rich — or, at a minimum, don’t interfere with them — everything is fine. But meddling with the primal forces of nature is always a no-no.