'Compassionate' nonsense aimed at the Tea Party

By Mark J. Fitzgibbons

Michael Gerson, the "compassionate" George W. Bush speechwriter and advisor, cautions that the Tea Party is toxic for the GOP.

Gersen thinks concentrating on actually abiding by the Constitution may be pushing things too far. Why does it seem to bother some people that government should abide by the Constitution?

Mr. Gerson, having shifted from the ruling class at the White House to the more prestigious ruling class at The Washington Post, frets in a Nancy Pelosi-like sort of way that the Tea Party will dismantle Social Security.

Hold on seniors. Vote for establishment Republicans or those radical Tea Partiers will steal your Social Security. What? You seniors are Tea Partiers?

Given how far the federal government has strayed from the textual limits, forcing the government to abide by the Constitution going forward will be enough of a Herculean task. Correcting past constitutional mistakes -- whatever they may be -- that have been ingrained in our culture won't occur for years, decades -- or ever.

Even if Congress never had the constitutional authority to create Social Security, it would be years before that debate would ever amount to any substantive challenge legislatively or judicially. And, even before a theoretical Supreme Court of nine Antonin Scalias, the court would not disrupt a decades-old program on which people depend.

Maybe, just maybe, someone might come up with a free market alternative, or a constitutionally acceptable state-created system, to Social Security before Tea Partiers insist on depriving themselves and their children of it.

It is far more likely that Americans won't receive Social Security checks because the system goes bankrupt than because it was derailed by the Tea Party insistent on following our paramount law, the Constitution.

But, what can we expect from a top advisor to the president who said, "There is no [conservative] movement."