Will tea-party activists go back to the couch?

Three things certain in this life are death, taxes and liberals continuing their long march to socialist tyranny regardless of what mainstream Americans do at the polls.

As voters kicked the liberals out of office in the 2010 election, the message was loud and unmistakable: Lower taxes, less government, control our borders and get back to the Constitution.

So what message did the liberals hear? They heard the voters saying that both parties should "work together to get things done."

The idea that voters want both parties to work together makes as much sense as thinking that a homeowner calls the police upon discovering a burglar in hopes that the police will come and work with the burglar to get things done. Normal Americans could be forgiven for thinking, to put it bluntly, that liberals are dumb as gift-wrapped dirt.

But that would be a fatal misperception. The history of the long march of the radical left reveals not denseness but determination.

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Democrats could do the honorable thing and treat the "lame duck" session of Congress as a care-taking session. Honor the clear wishes of the voters, do the minimal business needed to keep things running, and leave quietly so that the ship of state can be turned away from the approaching waterfall.

But the Democrats are behaving far less like a lame duck and more like a wounded bear. And they are determined to exact revenge on those who wounded them.

The left has so far demanded yet another extension of unemployment benefits, tax increases on small businesses and passage of the Dream Act as a first step toward replacing the American votes they have lost with those of illegal aliens. Obama's strategic compromise on the tax cuts and unemployment benefits has only further angered the wounded bear, resulting in the bizarre spectacle of Obama being criticized from his left.

Never mind that the unemployment rate hovers near 10 percent in large part because millions of illegal aliens are in jobs that legal Americans desperately need. The liberal strategy has not changed in decades: higher taxes, more regulation, more transfer of earnings, more government and the erosion of the cultural foundations of liberty. We have no reason to expect them to change course now.

Add to this the printing of billions in new fiat money, the inevitable devaluation of the dollar and the resulting nervousness of the Chinese who are propping up Obama's Potemkin economy, and we see what Obama meant by "fundamentally transforming America." We see our future in the economic ruin and riots brought about by socialism in Europe.

And that is where working with the left to "get things done" will take us.

No one could be so stupid as to think that a country can borrow its way out of debt, or that we can create jobs by punishing job creation. No one could be so stupid as to think that millions of people who broke our laws to come here will vote to uphold our Constitution.

This is not stupidity; this is strategy. The so-called progressive movement has dominated our politics because they occupied the cultural institutions of the news, education and entertainment that frame the political narrative. Even if the Republicans win overwhelming victories in 2012, they will be painted in the cultural institutions as the xenophobic, heartless party of the rich. Republican history tells us that their response will be, eventually, to break under the pressure and compromise with the left.

And what is the strategy of the mainstream? We do not have one. Being good citizens is not a political strategy, and it does not yield political power. Where has there been an organized and focused effort over the last century to make the benefits of liberty and constitutional government major themes in the political narrative? There hasn't been one.

But the tea-party movement has given mainstream Americans a new vehicle for political involvement that has not existed before. Furthermore, we now have talk radio, the Internet and social networking media that are not yet under the control of the far left.

For the first time, mainstream America can do an end-run around the left's institutions. We can tell the Democrats to move to the center or face defeat. We can tell the Republicans that we have their backs when they are under attack and that we will have their political butts if they betray our trust.

But we cannot do that if the tea party fizzles, and that is the hope inside the Beltway.

I have suggested tea-party rallies all around the country on Jan. 3 when the new Congress is sworn in as a way of telling both parties that we are not going away. We have the vehicle and the network to make this happen.

Let's take our new vehicle out on the road on Jan. 3 and see what it will do.

Tim Daughtry is a conservative writer, speaker and political consultant with Concord Bridge Consulting in Greensboro, N.C.