NY Times casts doubt on Tea Party’s future
From the Times:
The Tea Party might not be over, but it is increasingly clear that the election last month significantly weakened the once-surging movement, which nearly captured control of the through a potent combination of populism and fury.
Leading Congressional Republicans, though they remain far apart from President Obama, have embraced raising tax revenues in budget negotiations, repudiating a central tenet of the Tea Party. Even more telling, Tea Party activists in the middle of the country are skirting the fiscal showdown in Congress and turning to narrower issues, raising questions about whether the movement still represents a citizen groundswell to which attention must be paid.
Grass-roots leaders said this month that after losing any chance of repealing the national health care law, they would press states to “nullify” or ignore it. They also plan to focus on a two-decade-old United Nations resolution that they call a plot against property rights, and on “fraud” by local election boards that, some believe, let the Democrats steal the November vote.
But unlike the broader, galvanizing issues of health care and the size of the federal government that ignited the Tea Party, the new topics seem likely to bolster critics who portray the movement as a distraction to the Republican Party.
* * * *
Distractions indeed. When a movement starts focusing on nullification, United Nations resolutions, and “stolen” elections, it is finished. That is what has happened to the Tea Party. They have made themselves irrelevant by their own extremism, and by the kind of internal disputes that tore apart Freedom Works. The Tea Party will be able to disrupt Republican primaries with extremist candidates, and they will undermine the GOP’s ability to win seats–and this goes for Texas too–but they will not be able to impact legislation. They’re done.
Tagged: tea party
John Johnson says:
Totally agree. They’re done. The real question now is how Texans will treat pols with high expectations like Greg Abbott who prostituted themselves by pandering to these extremists.
It seems to me that Patterson is the only high ranking state official who follows his own convictions unwaveringly, meets his critics head-on, gives straightforward answers, and does not seem to be catering to special interests.
If he runs for Gov, he’s got my vote.
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nympho Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 12:12 pm
patterson has wayyyyyy too many skirts, i mean skeletons in his closet too beat a good man like abbott.
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John Johnson Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 1:20 pm
What comprises a “good man” in your opinion, nympho? Even if true, what would Patterson’s dalliances have cost the citizens of Texas? Nada.
I would suggest that Abbott has cost us a bunch…and more so since he succumbed to the crazies.
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Distinguished Gentleman Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:43 am
Didn’t Abbott screw up the redistricting process with some mis-steps?
Blue Dogs Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 9:31 am
Johnson, Patterson is running for Lieutenant Governor in 2014, look at his campaign website and check it out.
Abbott is already campaigning for Governor to succeed Perry, who will retire and I’m standing by this.
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R. says:
Rick Perlstein (author of ‘Before the Storm,’ a really great look at movement conservatism through the lens of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign) had a prescient take on the Tea Party back in 2010 in an article for the New York Times. For all the hullaballoo, it was just another fringey right wing response to the election of a Democratic president that has accompanied the election of every Democratic president for the past fifty years. Here’s his article:
Watching the rise of the Tea Party movement has been a frustration to me, and not just because it is ugly and seeks to traduce so many of the values I hold dear.
“I just don’t have time for anything,” a housewife told a news magazine in 1961. “I’m fighting Communism three nights a week.”
Even worse has been the overwhelming historical myopia. As the Times’s new poll numbers amply confirm — especially the ones establishing that the Tea Partiers are overwhelming Republican or right-of-Republican — they are the same angry, ill-informed, overwhelmingly white, crypto-corporate paranoiacs that accompany every ascendancy of liberalism within U.S. government.
“When was the last time you saw such a spontaneous eruption of conservative grass-roots anger, coast to coast?” asked the professional conservative L. Brent Bozell III recently. The answer, of course, is: in 1993. And 1977. And 1961. And so on.
And so yet much of the commentariat takes Bozell at his word, reading what is happening as striking and new.
I’ve studied the reactionary florescence of 1961-1962 most closely (I wrote about it in “Before the Storm”), and the parallels are uncanny.
The same “spontaneous eruption” of folks never before engaged in politics. (“I just don’t have time for anything,” a housewife told a news magazine. “I’m fighting Communism three nights a week.”) The same blithely narcissistic presumption that the vast majority of Americans (or, at least, “ordinary Americans”) must already agree with them, and incredulity that anyone might not grasp the depth of the peril.
The same establishment conservative opportunists taking advantage, setting up front groups (it’s one of the reasons so many people in such movements report they’re in politics for the first time; they soon find themselves so ill-used that they never get involved in politics again). The same lunatic persecution fantasies. (In Robert Welch’s 1961 it was probable internment camps for conservatives. In Glenn Beck’s 2009 it was … probable internment camps for conservatives.)
The only thing that changes is the name of the enemy within. And sometimes not even that: “They’re not 90 miles away. They’re already here,” was a slogan in 1961, referring to the twin socialists Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy; only now the socialist is also a Muslim.
Three things, however, are different. The first is that nearly 50 years ago, there were, if anything, more reactionaries: rallies of the National Indignation Convention, the 1962 version of the Tea Parties, drew thousands of people, not merely today’s hundreds, in cities as diverse as Odessa, Tex., and Miami.
The second? The media. Though wing nuts will always be with us — that’s America; love it or leave it — back then, they covered the story with much more moral courage and civic wisdom.
“Whenever the ultras arise,” Time magazine observed in 1961, “they cause domestic acrimony”: simple truth. The goal — not a bad one for movements whose fringes, then and now, conspicuously stockpile weapons — must be for them to be “wooed back into normal channels of political expression.”
The same magazine, in 2009, anointed Glenn Beck on its cover as, well, the new normal: “the hottest thing in the political-rant racket … tireless, funny, self-deprecating … at once powerful, spellbinding, and uncontrolled … a huge bestseller … has lit up the 5 pm slot in a way never thought possible by industry watchers.”
The third, and most crucial difference: back then, when it was Medicare, the center-left much more firmly understood the concept of the reactionary — that this small and predictable minority of obdurate Americans would automatically fight any serious social reform as harbinger of the apocalypse.
Politicians had the moral confidence to push it through nonetheless, past the shrieks of the scared extremists and their corporate ideological partners. Meanwhile, they rhetorically stigmatized the shriekers — confident that wise and enlightened legislation would before long establish cherished social rights (keep the government out of my Medicare!).
With Obama care, however, too many Democrats proceeded from the suspicion that the shriekers might just have something important and useful to say about the broader judgment of of the electorate. And so ultimately, too much political energy and capital was expended trying to achieve an impossible bipartisan consensus on too little reform. Luckily — with financial reform and energy policy — Democrats will have two more bites at the apple.
There will be shrieking. It will be the shrieking of a small minority. Democrats stand nothing to gain by paying overmuch attention.
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The Mustache That Dare Not Speak Its Name says:
R, thanks for posting that. As long as there are ignorant, resentful and angry right-wing populists, theTea Party will always be with us in some fashion, just with a different name. The Liberty League and the John Birch Society had their moments in the sun, then faded and returned in different guises that fit their era. The cycle comes and goes.
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Indiana Pearl Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 8:02 am
The nativist movement in the 1800′s (see “Gangs of NY), internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, McCarthyism . . . it never ends.
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Anon Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 9:14 am
‘stach, you are making some sense here. Since Texas and Arizona seem to be the home to more angry wingers, they will still have soem statwide sway. But I’m optimistic the teabaggers will lose seriously in the next election.
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anonymouse2 says:
i always wonder if predictions of the tea party’s demise are grounded not so much in genuine understanding and knowledge of politics and its movements as they are in the hope that the predictions will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. traditionalists’ surprise in the emergence of the tea party may be matched by its fear, unspoken as it logically would be, in the possibility that the tea party philosophies are shared more deeply and more widely by america than the traditionalists want.
if it’s truly now just a gnat on society’s butt and it’s drying up, why care?
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Anonymous says:
Nationally the Tea Party is doomed, but it is alive and well in Texas. Like Mustache noted: “As long as there are ignorant, resentful and angry right-wing populists, the Tea Party will always be with us in some fashion,” and Texas has more than its share of those. I’ll leave it to the pundits to decide what that means for Texas and her politicians when it comes to how we will be viewed and fit in or not in a modern America that is more and more leaving us in the dust.
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Dave Shapiro says:
Please allow me to suggest that the tea party traces its historical linage to the Know Nothing
Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing_Party
Likewise, the John Birch Society and each election cycle’s latest outcropping of similar obscurantist
organizations remind us of the Know Nothing origins of similar impulses.
The seminal work in this areas was done by the late historian Richard Hofstadter and published by Harper’s Magazine in 1964. You can refresh your memory about it at the Wikipedia and/or Amazon.com Websites.
While the essence of politics is conflict over
the allocation or power and resources between
interest groups, it behooves us all to keep in mind James Madison’s eloquent description in Number 10 of The Federalist Papers, seventh paragraph below the salutation. That’s the paragraph which begins with these words, “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man…” The best way to bring it up is at the Website of Yale Law Library’s splendid Avalon Project. Just Google: Avalon Project The
Federalist Number 10.
Happy New Year, everybody.
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Dave Shapiro Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 12:14 pm
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
Please forgive my failure to provide this URL that links to the 1964 Harper’s Magazine article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” I think some of you will find that it still resonates.
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Indiana Pearl Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 8:15 am
Great read! Thanks for the link.
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Anonymous says:
The problem has never been the wingnuts, or the hillbillies, or the angry old white people; whatever you want to call them. They are always lurking, waiting to have a tantrum if society does anything for anyone else but them. The real problem rests with those Quislings, those vichy french, those “moderate” Republican collaboratuers who court their votes, place them on committees, and cash their checks, only to pull their hair out when the frankenstein monster they empower starts to destroy the village.
I read today in the DMN that Texas has a much higher poverty rate than the national average, to go with its lower unemployment. So… more of us are poor, and working. Brilliant. Thanks Hillbillies, look out Malaysia, once we get rid of those child labor laws we’ll be a corporate paradise.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
The newly elected “tea party reps” in the House of Reps are the only thing standing between more out of control spending and massive tax hikes.
Thank God for the tea party.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
The tea party reps in the US House are filling the current “leadership deficit” in Washington DC.
Will the tea party take over the republican party? That does not worry me in the least however it does worry the left.
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Donald Dickson says:
It’s hard for me to join in declaring the Tea Party dead at the same time that its minions are holding the nation’s economy hostage.
Certainly it’s alive and well here in Texas.
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Anonymous Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 11:29 am
I’ll wait and see what happens on the debt ceiling before agreeing the tea party is finished.
If he federal House of Representatives gambles with the full faith and credit of the United States and large portions of the media and the electorate consider that acceptable or blame Obama, so much for the death of the tea party.
If a strong majority of the media and the electorate make it clear that such a tactic is far out of bounds, then maybe we’ll have turned the page.
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Another Wilco Voter says:
All of this makes me wonder why Texans allow ourselves and our government to be held hostage by these Tea Party hooligans. People like Rick Perry, David Dewhurst and Dan Patrick are opportunists, nothing more, using the Tea Party to ensure that they have a “political” job. Though Dewhurst is looking more and more like a patsy
It’s time for true Republicans like Straus to ignore the TP tantrums and start dealing with the real problems we have in Texas: water, education, infrastructure.
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Dallas says:
My neighborhood tea party, the 75248 Tea Party, just released results of a survey of their members to determine their agenda for 2013.
Number 1 is True the Vote–what, Dallas county is Democratic? That can’t be.
Number 2 is nullification–Federal laws? That can’t be.
Number 3 is Speaker of the House–Not a gentile? that can’t be. And why waste a good conspiracy theory? Who cares what right wing legislation he allowed to pass last session?
They are also concerned about Agenda 21 and hope to partner with Jeanine Turner or another celeb to “teach kids about the constitution.”
They meet in our police station’s free socialist community room.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 2:23 pm
“They meet in our police station’s free socialist community room.”
the one paid for with their tax dollars?
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Dallas Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Exactly–socialism!
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 3:09 pm
exactly
JohnBernardBooks says:
The progressive elites continue to tell their base the low information voter the tea party is finished.
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Anonymous says:
Wrong again, super JBB! I want the Tea Party to engulf the Republican party in its entirety. Every time I see Congressman Tinfoil Hat (T) – Hillbillyville, spouting the same hi-larious nonsense you blather on about, my little liberal heart swells ten sizes too big. Your brand of super-nonsense was purchased just enough by little Mittens so that the President would get reelected by five MILLION (notice the emphasis again) votes. Triple down on that far right extreme. No compromise. Go Tea Party Go!
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 1:13 pm
exactly you cannot negotiate with terrorists or democrats.
Once again the elites have the low information voter believing the tea partiers are hillbillies.
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Anonymous Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 3:54 pm
If it picks its teeth like a hillbilly and its fixin to talk like a hillbilly and it discriminates like a hillbilly…
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 1st, 2013 at 7:00 am
“If it picks its teeth like a hillbilly and its fixin to talk like a hillbilly and it discriminates like a hillbilly…”
exactly most college educated low information voters can repeat the DNC talking points word for word….
Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 10:31 am
“most college educated low information voters can repeat the DNC talking points word for word”
Didn’t go to college JBB? Go figure.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:12 pm
apparently you missed the most important part “the low information voter” go figure
Brown Bess says:
“…but they will not be able to impact legislation.” Except of course here in Texas, where every low-information elected official from Governor Perry on down to the House majority are still kowtowing to the Tea Baggers, and the demographics they represent.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
How many times have you seen a democrat official say if you don’t vote for the school bond or a democrat for president you could all lose your jobs or even worse yet your entitlements?
ie last election and the low information voters fall for it every time.
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Anonymous Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Do you consider social security, medicare, and medicaid to be legitimate federal programs that are good ideas and should be continued?
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Do you consider programs that have been funded by tax payers like SS an entitlement like welfare? When taxpayer pay taxes for roads is that also considered an entitlement? Most taxpayers see entitlements as getting something for free so the low information voter will vote democrat.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 1st, 2013 at 5:23 pm
I consider programs funded by taxpayers like social security and Medicare to be social insurance programs. They need to be well-designed and adequately funded and transparent and we should speak honestly about them.
I consider roads funded by my taxes to generally be good value for my money.
And I note that you did not answer my question.
Indiana Pearl Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 8:22 am
We have paid for our SS and Medicare while we worked. Although SS about breaks even, Medicare does not. For every dollar we paid in, we receive $3 in care. That’s unsustainable.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:13 pm
“And I note that you did not answer my question.”
actually I did it just went over your head
Reagan Republican says:
Some candidates, at the highest level and down the ballot, told the TEA Party what they wanted to hear to get elected. And now those elected have to deal with the reality of a budget that includes education, water, transportation, health care, parks and wildlife, CJS, and others. There is nothing worse in politics than unmet expectations by people who think they elected you and whose expectations are at best unrealistic if not absurd. “Cut the Budget?”
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 7:41 pm
Democrats think that out of control spending will never catch up with them. They often make wild promises to the low information voter and it usually works. ie the 2012 elections.
The Tea Party, the responsible informed voters have said no to out of control spending and the growing federal deficit and that makes democrats angry. The fact that the Tea Party will not be intimidated or go away infuriates the democrats and their low information voters.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 9:09 am
How specifically would you cut spending?
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Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 10:38 am
JBB would suggest any government hand out of money to help a student, or a poor person, or someone disabled, as socialism. Any
Multi-billion dollar hand out by the government for formula one racing, or tax loopholes for big oil, or Rick Perry’s contributors, as necessary employment growing investments. Its all in who you look like, and like, to him. But consistency is absent in anything he writes.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 11:14 am
from the Texas HHS website:
“Eligibility Requirements
Live in Texas. WIC clients usually receive services in the county where they live. U.S. citizenship is not a requirement for eligibility”
The low information voter thinks this is socialism and not corruption ie vote buying
Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 3:14 pm
There it is. Confirmation from ole mister JBB inconsistent himself. That is why Your own GOP leaders like King and Christie are turning cannibal on the GOP. King says anyone giving to the GOP in the
Northeast would be insane. Christie says boehner wouldn’t take his calls. Just like the GOP to go after each other after LOSING a national election so horribly. Go JBB go. I hope you take over the GOP here in Texas and immediately exile all non pure GOPers. Bring the party down to about 10% of the vote.
Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 3:33 pm
From MSNBC
Rep. Michael Grimm, a Republican who represents parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn, called the delay “a personal betrayal.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand dared Boehner to visit Staten Island, then added that she doubts “he has the dignity nor the guts to do it.”
First Read: ‘Betrayal’: Congress punts on Sandy recovery funding, infuriating local lawmakers
“They’re a bunch of idiots,” Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, a Conservative, said of House Republicans. “There’s no other logical reason they’d be doing this.”
In a joint statement, Christie and New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, accused the house of a “dereliction of duty.”
“When American citizens are in need we come to their aid,” they said. “That tradition was abandoned in the House last night.”
But it was King who really let his Republican colleagues have it.
“The fact is that the dismissive attitude that was shown last night toward New York, New Jersey and Connecticut typifies, I believe, a strain in the Republican Party,” he said on the House floor.
“I can’t imagine that type of indifference, that cavalier attitude being shown to any other part of the country,” he added.
“We cannot believe this cruel knife in the back was delivered to our region… This is not the United States of America! This should not be the Republican Party. This should not be the Republican leadership.”
Although he said he is not thinking of switching parties, King suggested New Yorkers should hit House Republicans who don’t support the bill where it hurts – in the campaign coffer.
You see, JBB, thats what happens when you put a bunch of Tea Partiers in charge of anything. dericliction of duty, and their own party leaders rightly call them out for incompetence. Cats and dogs and JBB living together, mass hysteria!
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 4:35 pm
hehehe I think someone forgots to take their meds….
Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 6:21 pm
Yep, extremist Republicans, and their blogging lackeys in the Mother’s basements.
JohnBernardBooks says:
Happy New Year thanks to democrats your taxes just went up, after all someone has to pay for entitlements….
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Vote Vermin Supreme! says:
Isn’t it time for TM to do a follow-up on their darling friend from True the Vote, Catherine Edelbrock (sp) and inquire as to exactly how many votes she has “Trued”? These Koch stooges are all hype, and our electeds buy into their BS.
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Anonymous says:
“Gun control is good” “Tea Party is dead”. The Mayan Calendar was apparently tracking Burka’s relevancy.
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Anon Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 10:35 am
He is right on both counts.
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Vote Vermin Supreme! says:
Looks like every R in the Texas delegation opposed the fiscal bill to stave off the fiscal cliff, but 3.
How childish. Kudos to Democrats and reasonable Republicans for passing the bill.
Folks like John Culberson need to grow up.
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Anon Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 10:36 am
Time to vote em out. The Bill Flores and Joe Bartons of the world need to go! Bring back Chet Edwards!
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 9:51 am
Culberson and others like him will continue to be re-elected as long as the voters keep voting for them.
It’s the Distinguished Gentleman Movie Part 2.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
absolutely taxes just went up on 77% of taxpayers….yeeeehaaaw!
another $4 trillion added in deficit spending….Yeeehaawwww!
the taxNspend dems are in charge.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 12:49 pm
So how do you suggest we cut spending?
I know some places where I would cut spending or raise the user fees.
For example I’m in favor of reforming the cost of living increase for social security, the chained CPI idea. I don’t think Medicare Part D was affordable but now that Bush and an R Congress have given us Part D, the rationale for an overly generous cost of living adjustment in social security went away.
I agree with Indiana Pearl that Medicare as currently designed and funded is unsustainable and changes are necessary. I’m against essentially abolishing Medicare by turning it into a voucher system because I think the government is dramatically more efficient than the private sector in this particular instance – Medicare has much lower administrative costs than private health insurance and I don’t see where it is efficient or wise to introduce a profit motive into the question whether to cover the medical costs faced by the elderly.
But I would look at a whole lot of procedures from a public health perspective, questions like whether it makes sense for the public to pay for certain diagnostic procedures for slow growing cancers for people over 70, and find a lot of savings in that way. If people want procedures that do not make sense from a public health perspective then they can pay for the procedures themselves, or buy a more expensive Medicare supplement policy that will cover the cost, and Democratic notions of fairness will have to be shelved in these cases so that the system as a whole is sustainable.
If Congress did that, would you embrace that or start talking about death panels?
I would also means test the amount of the premium Medicare recipients pay for the program. I’d rather pay more for Medicare if I can afford to do that than have to come hat in hand to a private insurer when I’m old hoping their private bureaucracy will honor the contract and pay for necessary care.
So how would you cut spending? The voters deserve to know how people on the right would cut spending.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:16 pm
It was in the Paul Ryan budget, most low information voters didn’t read it, not because they couldn’t read but because they were spoon fed the democrats version by CNN
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Anonymous Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:51 pm
You’re saying you would cut spending the way the Ryan budget would have cut spending, including transforming Medicare into a voucher program? Just want to be clear about that.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Look I realize you’re a low information voter but its not my responsibility to educate you. But here’s a start:
“So we’ll focus on Ryan’s Medicare blueprint for now. It remains a work in progress, but with further tweaking has the potential to be truly transformative. It could begin to stop the growth of health-care costs, the U.S.’s toughest challenge in a generation. And it shows that the Wisconsin Republican continues to be his party’s boldest policy thinker.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-20/paul-ryan-s-medicare-voucher-plan-improves-with-each-pass.html
Anonymous says:
Sorry JBB, the Tea Party is self-destructing nationally. The Ryan Budget will never see the light of day. It will see your strained CFL light in your basement, you low information voter you. But the rest of us won’t waste our time on a document so dead on arrival. Start playing taps, JBB, the Tea Part is over.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 2nd, 2013 at 7:35 pm
Then why are the dems and their low information voters so worried about the Tea Party….what are you afraid of Wilma?
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anon Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 12:54 pm
You, JBB and your incredible intellect.
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Anonymous says:
We are
Not worried about the Tea Party. We’re so thrilled everytime one of them gets the nomination in a marginal state. Like Akin or Murdoch or Angle of O’Donnell, there would be no way the dems could have held on to the senate or the White House without the Tea Party. Thank you again JBB. You and all your extreme right wing buddies are doing all you can to make an otherwise weak Democratic party into a juggernaut.
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anony Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Some truth here. Younger voters are turned off by hard right rhetoric and the tea party, neocons and religious whackright. These folks have no idea that most folks see them as windbags.
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Vote Vermin Supreme! says:
Here’s how I understand JBB’s position, and it’s a position held by 80% of the Texas GOP delegation:
1) Create a number of false confrontational triggers to force legislative action (‘fiscal cliff’, debt ceiling, sequestration);
2) Take zero action to resolve the underlying issue between time created and selected date (meanwhile, hold 33 votes to repeal the same legislation, while knowing if has no chance of passing the Senate or avoiding veto);
3) Petulantly bitch about and vote against a basic avoidance of a self-created trigger, complaining that it’s not comprehensive or “was rushed” when you took no affirmative effort to resolve the issue in a manner acceptable to you.
This isn’t leadership. Americans deserve better than this.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 6:09 am
exactly, there is a leadership deficit in DC and its the Tea Party’s fault. I think I fully understand the position of the low information voter.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 9:53 am
The Tea Party will always be a factor in Texas politics, too bad it didn’t strike California during the early 1980s.
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anony Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Vermin, you have it dead solid perfect.
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Ana says:
I’ve never seen such a lying press and media or such a lying President. People I know who went to Tea Party events say that they want more control over their healthcare choices, less wasteful spending, more in depth understanding of the Constitution and a revival of independent thinking and values such as humility, charity and self determination. They are usually practical, well read people devoid of utopian fantasies who know how to run things efficiently.
I don’t understand the anger and name calling against these rugged individuals. Just bc some candidates were not good has nothing to do with popular sentiment against extremist pseudo intellectuals and tax cheats who kick the can down the road.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Ana, I want to respond to you substantively without name calling or condescension and hope you’ll show me the same courtesy.
First, I’m all for less wasteful spending and I applaud the tea party and their allies for bringing the practice of earmarks to a halt at the federal level for the time being. I understand the arguments on the other side that (1) sometimes an elected representative knows better than a bureaucrat professionally applying a legal spending formula what spending is most needed; and (2) sometimes politically the only way to get something done in Congress is to horse trade earmarked spending. But it sure seems that things got way out of hand, and I’m more than happy to reset at “no more earmarks” at least for awhile and see how that works out.
I’m also all for a better in depth understanding of the Constitution and for discussing constitutional matters openly and rationally without resorting to smugness and intellectual fashion to “settle” differences of opinion. Independent thinkers should be respected and persuaded. But I’ll tell you that these questions can get real complicated real quick and I’ll also say that (1) there are a whole lot of intellectually honest court opinions out there; and (2) while I certainly think there have been important cases that changed the country where the majority opinion did not really have the goods I also think both the political left and the political right have overreached. Let’s just say I hold Roe v Wade and Bush v Gore in equally low esteem as an intellectual matter, whatever I might think of the politics involved. I’ll also say that a lot of the liberal opinions from the forties and fifties and sixties based awkwardly on the 14th amendment’s due process clause can be in my opinion justified based on the 14th amendment’s privileges and immunities clause. Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in that second amendment gun control case out of the City of Chicago really impressed me in this regard.
As for health care choices, how sure are you that it’s the President and the press telling you lies about the health care law? It’s a complicated law and I don’t independently know the details but my impression is this – many on the left were in fact designing a law that would have significantly restricted choices and had rationing characteristics; the President instead insisted on achieving near universal coverage with a model based on Republican efforts at health care reform and the president’s way, the bill that passed, does not significantly restrict choices or ration care; and for a variety of reasons the Democrats have done an awful job of explaining what the bill does. It’s really important to know just who is doing the lying here. I’m not completely sure but I don’t think it’s the president. If it is the President I think the burden is on you to show me exactly how since you’re making the accusation.
Finally, and I’m not being sarcastic, I want to know just what the tea party stands for. The original idea was supposed to be horror at out of control deficits and spending. I’m really worried about the long term deficit myself. But people elected in the tea party wave around the country spent a lot of energy passing socially as well as fiscally conservative legislation. And most importantly, I want to know whether you want to substantially kill social insurance programs like Medicare and social security and safety net programs like Medicaid. If you don’t, are you willing to work with the Democrats, if they’ll work with you, to reform the programs so that they re still recognizable but are on a sustainable path? If you do want to essentially kill any of those programs, do you think Tea Party candidates should campaign openly and honestly on that platform, and if the country disagrees with you at the ballot box, are you willing to work with the Democrats to restrain runaway costs and benefits as a back up option? I know you want less spending, but I need to know much more about what you have in mind as to how to achieve that.
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ANON says:
There you have it: exactly why the t-party is heding to extinction. Everybody but them is a liar. Everybody but them have no values. Everybody but them is in fantasy land. recent events prove this wrong-headed, and backwards.
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Vote Vermin Supreme! says:
And you forgot that anyone elected but them must have been the result of rampant voter fraud or “low info” voters.
Speaking of “low info” — Rep. Louie Gohmert cast his vote for House Speaker today, for a guy who lost his seat in the November election. I kid you not. Texans elected this dolt to Congress. What an embarrassment.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
Would the Gentlewoman from California Ms Pelosi, escort Speaker Boehner to his seat then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOCC1EKXRBc
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Vote Vermin Supreme! says:
Yes, congrats JBB, on the reelection of the most ineffective speaker of recent memory in the most despised congress in half a century. Impressive. Future looks bright.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 3rd, 2013 at 3:53 pm
“Yes, congrats JBB, on the reelection of the most ineffective speaker of recent memory in the most despised congress in half a century”
Wha…? I thought Ms Pelosi lost, isn’t that why she’s called ex-speaker?
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rw says:
The first set of beliefs are from teaparty.org. The ones after that are my interpretation of the Democrat response.
1. Illegal aliens are here illegally.
2. Pro-domestic employment is indispensable.
3. A strong military is essential.
4. Special interests must be eliminated.
5. Gun ownership is sacred.
6. Government must be downsized.
7. The national budget must be balanced.
8. Deficit spending must end.
9. Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal.
10. Reducing personal income taxes is a must.
11. Reducing business income taxes is mandatory.
12. Political offices must be available to average citizens.
13. Intrusive government must be stopped.
14. English as our core language is required.
15. Traditional family values are encouraged.
1. The word illegal does not apply to immigrants.
2. Union employment is indispensable.
3. ‘Military-industrial complex’.
4. What’s a special interest?
5. A gun is too dangerous for anyone to own.
6. We need a bigger Government to help solve the people’s problems.
7. We do not need a budget.
8. Deficits are necessary to provide services.
9. Bailouts and stimulus plans help the economy and help get you re-elected.
10. Everyone should pay their fair share – WTF that means.
11. Businesses get too many tax breaks.
12. Conservatives need not apply.
13. Our government is not intrusive.
14. Only children going to school need to learn English.
15. Homosexuality is encouraged.
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rw says:
regarding Social Security…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/social-security-its-worse-than-you-think.html?_r=1&
It will eventually kill itself. It’s underwater now, and no politician likes raising taxes for everyone. It’s easier to phase out.
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