Beitzel: Behold the political morass of 2010

Now that 2009 has ended, politicians can finally stop worrying about governing and get back to… Now that 2009 has ended, politicians can finally stop worrying about governing and get back to their forte: making impossible promises. The 2010 campaign season is afoot.

The gold watches begin flowing like wine with all the Senate retirements. Currently, the focus is on Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. — typical cut-and-run Democrats: blue on the ticket, yellow on the belly.

Among the other tail-turners is Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., who got the “f*cking golden” ticket to the Senate from Rod Blagojevich’s Corruption Factory. Before serving as the statesman who replaced President Obama’s Senate position, Burris was most reputable for his 2-second appearance during a parade scene in “The Fugitive.”

During his Congressional tenure, Burris used his clout for such bold action as rewriting “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to describe health care legislation.

“And then, in a twinkling, under the dome. The roll call was closed! It was time to go home!” Indeed, old chap.

Yet, for all the Democratic retirements, more Republicans will leave. Of 37 Senate seats, five incumbent Democrats and six incumbent Republicans will not run for re-election.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., is among them. Stories about him involve Opus Dei, disbelief in evolution and according to a Rolling Stone article that dubbed him “God’s Senator,” an attempt to eliminate the federal departments of education, energy and commerce.

Instead, he’s running for governor. Given a win, look for him in a future presidential race near you.

Aside from vacancies, some congressmen scramble to survive. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently apologized for ham-handed praise he offered Obama during the 2008 presidential race. Reid regaled Obama as “light-skinned” and “with no Negro dialect.”

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, everybody! The dream lives on!

With leaders like these, it’s a wonder why citizens have no trust in government. Public approval of Congress sits at about 25 percent, according to Gallup.

Americans have such a dislike for politicians, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll recently found that Tea Partiers garnered more favorability than the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. According to the poll, 41 percent of respondents had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of the Tea Party, versus 35 percent and 28 percent for Democrats and Republicans, respectively.

How does a Republican sincerely enter the political debate when his party supports Medicare spending simply because the opposing party proposed cutting it? How does a Democrat promise anything at all when controlling filibuster-proof majorities and the White House still seem impotent?

They pander and make promises with no intention of delivery, which only increases public distrust. This fuels temporal fringe movements like Tea Partiers.

Tea Partiers charge bus tickets to travel to a protest of the national debt. On Jan. 20, the Tea Party Patriots website is calling for a strike of corporations that are “funding socialism” and “backing the leftist agenda” of President Obama, according to CBS News. Like a Flintstones vitamin commercial, the site claims the Tea Partiers are “15 million strong and growing.”

Their anger is akin to the rage that fueled Ross Perot’s third-party presidential run, which ironically helped elect Bill Clinton much like Ralph Nader helped elect George W. Bush. The Tea Party hopes to occupy some of the newly vacant congressional seats, as it is a grassroots movement quickly coalescing into a formal political party.

At its heart, the Tea Party does have a point: Taxes suck, and the deficits in this country are getting dangerous. Also, the Tea Baggers’ disdain for elected officials, while gross and often uninformed, is the result of feeling unrepresented.

Therefore, along with the old guard retiring, new politicians are trying to lead this larval movement. Ex-Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., will speak at the first National Tea Party Convention Feb. 4-6.

For anyone unfamiliar, last August, Bachmann spoke about health care reform during an address at the Independence Institute in Denver, saying, “This will not pass … What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass.”

It’s unclear if Bachmann thought she was battling a Balrog.

If you would like to watch Palin and Bachmann rant against Hollywood elites and the bourgeois, tickets cost only $549 for the convention and banquet. The reigning parties struggle with weak candidates and daft ideas, but avarice and opportunism have already started corrupting this third party. It’s leaderless and just asking for a good panderin’ this campaign season.

In the meantime, the Tea Party is actually counterproductive to its goals. If it runs a candidate, it splits voting with Republicans. If Republican candidates cater to the Tea Party, they lose any illusion of moderation and thus make Democrats more appealing by default.

Third-party emergence is difficult. Just ask Teddy “The Beast Master” Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party.

Emergence takes more thoughtful representatives than someone proposing a blood pact, like Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” — though I’d vote for Alan Garner before Michele Bachmann.

If they want their representatives to gain majority trust from the rest of the public, Tea Partiers need to stand for something positive, rather than just raving about phantom socialism and comparing Obama to Hitler.

Though they have sincere intent, that behavior portrays them as lunatics. Yet, maybe no more ridiculous than what we’ve seen from the other parties.

These are our options. Welcome to politics in 2010.

E-mail Dave at drb34@pitt.edu.