The Tea Party Caucus - Jim DeMint

Continuing on from our fairish profile of Michele Bachmann we shall investigate another member of the Tea Party Caucus. Mr. DeMint is the senator from South Carolina and a leading voice in the Tea Party movement.

Without delving deep into a history of the Tea Party, which one can do simply by turning on the news everyday. Turn on FOX to get a positive spin and everyone else to get a negative outlook. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

However, we need not delve deep into every issue of the Tea Party to get a general understanding of what it is and who is leaders are. We can simply touch base on an issue or two per senator/representative and have a clearer picture at the end of the series. On Michele's post we defended her against some unfair criticisms, tried to understand a few of her strange utterances and justified much of the criticism about her. But, with Mr. DeMint we will touch on one of his last acts of 2011 to get a fuller understanding of what he is all about.

One of the things that many people have railed against since the morning after the collapse of the financial markets is deregulation. The rhetoric has been so loud the word 'deregulation' carries an instantly recognizable negative connotation. But, the philosophical underpinnings of DeMint's idea of American exceptionalism are interwoven with deregulation. American exceptionalism is something of a huge topic that we cannot begin to touch on a single blog entry, suffice it to say that it does seem to come from a rugged individualism that has characterized Americans for centuries. But, this idea has come under fire because of what critics call its innate lack of fairness. The merits of American exceptionalism can be debated over and over again, but the fact that he continues to push this agenda in a time when the word that underpins his big picture philosophy has become a pariah shows Mr. DeMint to be a man of courage and/or recklessness.

To that final act of 2011 though, Mr. DeMint was again pushing legislation that deregulates. The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act was introduced on December 15th and would, if passed, repeal compulsory licenses and relax local ownership restrictions for television media. Big media companies like DirectTV and Comcast are for it so they can buy up local stations to garner better advertising revenue. The National Association of Broadcasters are "respectfully" against the bills passage, fearing that by not mandating local news to be aired by major for-pay TV providers means that local news would not be aired. But many commentators and industry insiders see the act as a good step in tackling a quickly shifting technology that is still governed by laws passed over 20 years ago. Regardless of this outcome, the fact that Mr. DeMint is not afraid push hard with deregulation statutes deep into 2011 shows a ballsy attitude. If the Republicans could ever couple a deeply principled approach with the eloquence of some notable democrats, the Republicans would prove very hard to beat.