Frank Rich on Obama, BP, and Tea Partiers

The title of this post is only a slight variation on another recent post here. Which tells you something kind of sad about how things are going in the world. In any event, Frank Rich as usual has something to say which seems pretty obvious when you think about it but which no one else is quite saying.

While the greatest environmental disaster in our history is a trying juncture for Obama, it also provides him with a nearly unparalleled opening to make his and government’s case. The spill’s sole positive benefit has been to unambiguously expose the hard right, for all its populist pandering to the Tea Partiers, as a stalking horse for its most rapacious corporate patrons. If this president can speak lucidly of race to America, he can certainly explain how the antigovernment crusaders are often the paid toadies of bad actors like BP. Such big corporations are only too glad to replace big government with governance of their own, by their own, and for their own profit — while the "small people" are left to eat cake at their tea parties.