Where Are They?

Last week I traveled with my correspondent to Orlando Florida to do a story on the Tea Party Movement that is growing in that area. When we arrived we immediately went to a chain restaurant outside Orlando. About 60 self-titled Tea Party members had gathered to meet about a half dozen candidates running for local office. Although their numbers are small, the Tea Party Movement has shaken up politics. The candidates in the room were on a kind of Speed Dating circuit around the room. They seemed in a desperate rush to prove how "down home" they all were. Who was more country. I over heard two of the candidates boosting about their pickup truck ownership. They were not just trying to generate votes, they knew they needed these votes to have any chance to be elected.

Which brings me to the estimated 30 million Americans without health insurance or the self-employed person or the one's that have insurance but the deductible is so high that it renders the policy next to useless or the small business owner that has to lay someone off or not hire someone because of the cost of health insurance. Where are these people? Why don't we see them? Why are so many politicians finding it so easy to ignore them?

It would seem that these merging constituencies would be much larger than a group of Libertarians and disgruntled conservative, mostly white, voters. Yet say what you will about loonies in the Tea Party membership, they are passionate, vocal and for a while, omnipresent in the media. Republicans, like a kid trying to jump into a game of Double Dutch, are trying to figure out how to get in on the action.

President Obama was quoted as saying to a group of reluctant Democratic Congressmen, that the "strength of his presidency" depended on the passing of health care reform. The fact that this president who campaigned on health care reform has to convince large portions of his own party to follow him is shameful. Shameful because its political. Elected officials who are more concerned about the next election cycle than doing what is right for their constituents. Wrapping it in the guise of principle. The fact that the barely and uninsured don't have a louder voice is quizzical