Tea Party Vision of Government Too Large and Intrusive

Are you wanting to vote for smaller government and fiscal conservatism this election? If so, you'll want to give the Tea Party and their candidates running on the Republican ticket a wide berth.

Tea Party candidates say they are for more personal freedom and small government which is less intrusive in our lives. They say they are for less government spending. But where they actually stand on issues necessitates larger, more intrusive government, less freedom and greatly increased government spending.

For example:

The Tea Party wants to make abortion illegal, even in the case of rape or incest. This would require the federal government to create a Pregnancy Monitoring Department. Agents from the Pregnancy Monitoring Department would have to keep tabs on every pregnancy in the country to make sure none were terminated. Rape victims, including girls who've been impregnated by their fathers, would have to report to their assigned Pregnancy Monitoring Department agent at regular intervals to prove they were still pregnant. If a woman or child miscarried her baby, she would presumably have to provide evidence that the miscarriage was not a result of any deliberate action on her part. This would obviously be a challenge in many cases. Women or female children unable to provide satisfactory evidence would perhaps have to appear before a judge in order to get a decision on the matter. The woman or female child might be forced to take the stand to detail the circumstances of her miscarriage. For the average woman, this would be harrowing. For a victim of rape or incest, this would perhaps be overwhelming.

The Tea Party says unmarried women who have sex are unfit to teach school. Same for members of the LGBT community. In order to ensure that the only teachers hired in our nation's school system are straight - and in the case of unmarried women, virgins - the government would need to create a sub-section of the Department of Education: The Teacher Orientation and Sexual Activity Verification Program. Teachers would have to submit to questioning and unmarried female teachers would presumably have to undergo pelvic exams performed by a stranger. The interviews may have to include the testimony of friends, co-workers and family members in order to verify orientation and sexual activity. To keep current, interviews and pelvic exams would need to be conducted annually. I can't imagine too many teachers being willing to submit to this kind of government intrusion. (As an aside, apparently it's A-OK for unmarried male teachers to have sex?)

A few additional examples of hypocrisy: Tea Party candidate Joe Miller says gay rights are a state issue while simultaneously stating he would vote for a Constitutional amendment denying the rights of gays to marry. Tea Party darling Jim DeMint had previously vowed he would "not take any PAC money and will fight for reforms that allow only individual contributions to campaigns." He now has his own PAC which has raked in more cash than any other PAC this election cycle. Outside a recent debate involving Tea Party candidate Rand Paul, a supporter wearing a Rand Paul sticker and a "Don't Tread on Me" button held down a woman with an opposing political view while a fellow Paul support literally tread on her head.

Who is going to pay for the federal Pregnancy Monitoring Department and the Teacher Orientation and Sexual Activity Verification Program - taxpayers? Can we afford to fund these types of large agencies and more importantly - is this who we are? Do we truly want to grow our government in this way, using these tactics, all based upon the hypocrisy of a small but vocal minority?

I'm voting for Democratic candidates on November 2 because I don't want to expand our federal government in these expensive and offensively intrusive ways. I support an individual's right to personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, I stand opposed to the GOP and its Tea Party hypocrites.