Love of Medicare chills tea party fever

Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
April 24, 2011

Surprise, surprise! Faced with the prospect of Medicare cuts, even tea party folks find griping about "big government" to be a lot more fun than actually shrinking it.

Seventy percent of those who identified themselves as supporters of the fiscally conservative movement in a new McClatchy-Marist poll oppose cuts to Medicaid and Medicare to solve the country's deficit woes.

Almost as many, 68 percent, of those who simply call themselves "conservatives" also oppose the cuts. A much larger portion, 88 percent of moderates and 91 percent of liberals, oppose laying a finger on the two health care programs.

But what about those tea partyers? What happened, I wonder, to all that budget-cutting, thrifty government zealotry and deficit hawkishness that spurred the tea party movement into existence?

(Original here.)