March of the Wooden TEA Party

How many TEA Party Senators does it take to kill a disability treaty?

 

Thirty-eight, apparently.

Today, as former Senator Bob Dole sat at the entrance to the Senate chamber in his wheel chair, in a silent plea to the Senators of the party that once nominated him to the presidency to vote to ratify the United Nations’ Rights of People with Disabilities treaty, 38 Republicans filed past him with no intention of voting for the treaty.

Thirty-eight Republicans of the TEA Party persuasion, or those who are either beholden to TEA Party interests or afraid of them, voted NO to the ratification of this honorable treaty, one that was negotiated by the previous Republican administration no less.

And the measure, which needed a 2/3ds vote, failed.

One hundred and twenty-eight countries have ratified this treaty, including countries that treat their citizens far worse than this one does.

But America voted no.

And why was that?

Get ready…they were concerned that the UN treaty would infringe on the national sovereignty.

You know, like what we do all the time to other countries?

When Barack Hussein Obama was elected president, I felt very proud of my country, and the world viewed it with an eye that hadn’t regarded it that way since the Marshall Plan saved Europe from decades of poverty.

But now, with the TEA Party being the ugly thing that it is, we have swung back the other way.

The TEA Party is something that some senators want to live up to. To the rest of us, the TEA Party is something we have to live down.