Repsonse to Al Gore's Crashing the Tea Party Movement [Gore email in "USA Today, September 21, 2011]

"Single-minded proponents of a dangerous and extremist agenda are working feverishly to roll back every Democratic gain we've ever made." -- Al Gore

Gore's sloppy calumny of the Tea Party movement is both sad and misinformed.

Contrary to the statist fantastic monomania of state-sponsored control among the Democratic-liberal-Left, the Tea Party movements wants to move the Federal Government back to its respected, and respectable, constitutional limits. Not extreme in the least, this framework of checks and balances was drawn up by sober-minded patriots who wanted to safeguard the rights of all, not just their ilk of tidewater-plantation aristocracy.

When Al Gore fired off this statement in an email, he was unclear as to what Democratic gains that the Tea Party Movement threatened to undo.

Is he talking about Obamacare? This medical insurance mandate is one of the most unpopular pieces of federal legislation in modern history, and covered with the Democrats's interposing fingerprints. The last thing many Democrats will be campaigning on will be the "gain" of passing Obamacare.

Is he talking about Welfare Reform? Centrist Bill Clinton accomplished with the rough-hewn assistance of a staunch Republican Congress, much of the time contrary to initial partisan wishes.

Is he talking about the Balancing of the Federal Budget in 2000? Once again, it was a "New Democrat" President who veered to the right after reelection, who then cooperated with a more serious Republican Congress to effect some fiscal sanity at the federal level.

The first gain is Pyrrhic victory for the Democratic party, an encroachment of the state which wiped out their electoral gains from 2006 and 2008 in the House of Representatives. The other two accomplishments would never have happened without the prodding and directive of the Republican opposition in Congress.

Ironically, those "Democratic" gains which the former Vice President is presumably hoping to salvage are the core elements of the "extremist" Tea Party agenda which he insidiously denounces: fiscal responsibility at the federal level, and limited government respecing the spirit and letter of the United States Constitution.