After more than 20 years in South Carolina-one of the reddest of the red states, I should have known better. I should have realized the futility of attempting to engage conservative Republicans in a political dialog based on fact not fear.

 I went to Tommy’s Ham House in Greenville this morning, fully prepared with facts and a well thought out question to pose to Bob Inglis’s replacement in congress, former Spartanburg County prosecutor Trey Gowdy. He arrived ten minutes late and launched into his GOP prepared and approved power point presentation on the federal budget. He focused like a laser beam on entitlement spending calling it unsustainable and insisted that “in order to balance the budget we have to have a conversation about entitlements. Congressman Gowdy ridiculed the idea of raising marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, calling the revenue that would result a drop in the bucket in the ocean of debt. (The Tax Policy Center estimates that a 50% tax rate on income over $1 million would raise $48 billion over the next decade, restoring capital gains and divident rates to the levels before the Bush tax cuts would bring the Treasury an additional $340 billion over the next ten years.) He told the supportive crowd that if “Warren Buffett wanted to pay more in taxes he should just make a donation to the federal government.” Since my question concerned raising tax rates on the wealthy, I had to switch gears and instead posed this question; “You say in order to balance the budget we have to have a conversation about entitlements but entitlement spending isn’t why we got into this debacle. Two wars and no tax increase to pay for them and the lowest tax rates in 50 years are the major reasons why the deficit has climbed so high so fast. So…if you aren’t willing to raise taxes on millionaires, are you willing to stop the war in Afghanistan rather than further impact senior citizens, the poor and the unemployed?” His response was less than satisfying, he sort of admitted that defense spending was a problem but claimed his concern for radical Islamic terrorists over rode concerns about military spending. He said we shouldn’t be funding the excursion into Libya, (apparently only GOP led military actions are acceptable) but said he would be glad to have the conversation about cutting defense spending. I replied than let’s have the conversation, pointing out that he hadn’t mentioned the war or defense spending issues in his presentation.

It went rapidly down hill from there. The low point for me was when an older man got up and thanked Gowdy for voting against raising the debt ceiling. His voice broke with emotion as he expressed his admiration for this position he then spoke admiringly of Michele Bachman and asked the congressman to provide some words of encouragement for the Tea Party members in the trenches. Honestly it was like the guy was a cult member meeting his guru.I began looking for the door.

I’m still glad I went. A small but mighty contingent of Democrats and political activists were in the room and I think we stirred things up and made the event more of a discussion instead of a cheer leading session for the GOP. We all have to do what we can do but an hour later when I felt a wave of nausea and developed a halo effect in my left eye, I still wondered if standing up and shouting into the abyss that is the Tea Party movement was worth the pain in my head.

As usual, my hero Jon Stewart provided funny and biting commentary on the GOP’s ongoing class warfare. Enjoy!

 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare—-warren-buffett-vs—wealthy-conservatives?xrs=share_copy