Much of the animosity we’ve witnessed directed at the Tea Party over the last year has come from political and cultural elites who find regular people disturbing, if not downright disgusting. The peasants, according to elites, are prone to temper tantrums and just don’t get how things work in the sophisticated political world. That same attitude was on display this weekend following the primary defeat of Sen. Bob Bennett.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, David Brooks described Bennett’s defeat as a “damn outrage.” Liberal E.J. Dionne went a step further and called it “a nonviolent coup” because the Utah voters dared “deny the sitting Republican senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot.” Why, it’s almost like these voters think they’re allowed to choose their own representatives or something!
Brooks insists that Bennett is a “good senator” just “trying to get things done.” Unfortunately, what he was trying to get done was not what his electorate wanted him to get done. While he was busy supporting TARP and advocating an individual mandate for health care, the people of Utah wanted spending restraint and less intrusive government. On the most important votes regarding these issues, Bennett was too often on the wrong side for their taste.
It’s no damn outrage that voters would send a senator packing after serving three terms when he promised to serve only two. It’s no damn outrage that a Washington insider be sent on his following the mess Washington has created. The real damn outrage is the disdain with which elitists like David Brooks treat voters who don’t share their sophisticated policy preferences.
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