Older people and the Tea Party movement

I can understand the frustration with our government. I agree that our government does some dumb things. Our biggest fiscal bomb is the rising Medicare/Medicaid, but from what I can tell with these Tea Party folks, they cheer when a politician says that Medicare is untouchable. How does that compute? Especially when a lot of the Tea Party leaders are baby boomers near retirement. They want those benefits that they claim are ruining the country and destroying liberty and all this. That doesn't make sense at all. To me, those folks just reinforce the idea of Baby boomers wanting it all for themselves. I understand the anger more when it comes from baby boomer children, because the children are currently paying for the benefits being paid out right now. What kind of answer is it to someone who gets sick or gets into a car accident and can't work for weeks at a time, like this example here. I don't hear any answers to this scenarios, accept a shrugging of shoulders and an 'oh well, too bad.' I reject that on moral grounds. That is my biggest frustration. Come to me with a plausible solution so that I can do a comparison between the two ideas. Don't just say that the liberal ideas suck and leave it at that. That doesn't SOLVE anything. We have problems. Conservatives: Provide choices with viable solutions. Anything other than that is lazy and is just playing politics.

Historical mandate watch: The Militia Act of 1792 mandated that all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 45 equip themselves with a musket and rifle.

I agree with post at Slate. If Republicans actually offered good ideas and compromise, they would have my vote:

...I am in favor of universal access to health care and also horrified by what President Barack Obama's bill is going to cost. So who should I be voting for? If congressional Republicans are determined to fix this bill by, say, reforming the medical malpractice laws that drive up costs and put doctors out of business, they've got my vote. If, instead, they are going to scream "Communist" and "fascist" at our democratically elected president—thereby achieving nothing at all—then I want nothing to do with them.

I'm also getting a lot of enjoyment out of Conservatives crying out about Americans being against the health care bill. For one, its simply not true. Second, public opinion polls never stopped Republicans from doing things, like pulling out of Iraq when nearly 2/3 of Americans were against that war. Third, Democrats won the election in 2008, with large majorities in both Houses. They said they would change health care, and we voted them in. That's American Democracy. If it sucks for the opposition, then they can overturn the law when they get control if that is what the People vote for.

Finally, Bruce Bartlett (fellow Conservative castout like David Frum) has a thoughtful article talking about who the Democrats should thank for getting health care through Congress and then he talks about how similar the law is to Republican proposals from the past 20 years.