263 comments on “This guy said it way better than I could”
Want to bet there aren’t some Tea Party types who’d gladly take those pesky problems (no polio vaccine, etc) if it gave them what they wanted? Fanatical extremism comes in many packages.
Only until they themselves get polio. Then they’ll scream “why didn’t the government DO something?”
Y’know…kinda like they did with the oil spill. They wanted deregulation, then blamed the Obama administration for not making sure things like that didn’t happen.
“America doesn’t go back. America goes forward.”
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this.
Why must every critic ALWAYS focus on the extremists? I, personally, identify greatly with the Tea Party. My wife feels she helped create it, having used the tea party references to friends and others during the last presidential election cycle.
What do we have now? A congress and government that seems intent solely to bribe Americans with their own money. An America where the secure jobs all seem to be in government service, not industry. In California, we find that our state is going bankrupt not because we don’t have enough taxes going in, but because we owe more in pensions to former workers than we are paying to our present workers. Cities are laying off employees, and then hiring back the same workings to do the same job as outside contractors because then they don’t have the pension and other benefit obligations required for public employees.
We have teachers starting to think about undoing their unions, because those unions are now more concerned about political power and control than about getting kids educated. PAD, have you ever considered volunteering at a local high school, say with a weekly class on creative writing, or Kath teaching a class on art or puppets? Forget about it, unless you have also taken the time to get an advanced degree in education or a teaching certificate. The last thing the teacher’s unions want is competition from the truly talented!
I could go on for a while like this, but you probably get the idea… 😉
Charlie
Charlie,
I do a lot at Caroline’s elementary school every week. I give an afternoon of my time to the library and help with the puppet club that is there. I don’t get paid for this but I do have the satisfaction of helping making her school a better place. Our PTA is very active in the school and the teachers (who are union) are very grateful for the help we give.
It is different elsewhere but that’s how it is in our neck of the woods.
Kath “the wife” David
PAD and Kath,
It’s not that way in California either. Southern California at least, where I was born and have lived my entire life. Our budget issues are not a direct result of state pensions. Since Prop 13 gutted the property tax revenue going to the counties, the state has been burdened with almost all of the funding for education, infrastructure and public safety. None of which are easy to cut, although all three have been underfunded for years. This burden, combined with our historically boom or bust economy and the state, by law, unable to bank or invest budget surpluses, when they happen, is the source of our budget woes.
As someone who was at my son’s school so much they offered me a job, I applaud you.
You are the kind of parent that every school hopes for and every child needs. If we could simply double the number of parents like you, our educational crisis would almost cease to exist.
“PAD, have you ever considered volunteering at a local high school, say with a weekly class on creative writing, or Kath teaching a class on art or puppets? Forget about it, unless you have also taken the time to get an advanced degree in education or a teaching certificate. The last thing the teacher’s unions want is competition from the truly talented!”
A a union teacher, I’d like to point this out as a complete load of BS.
As someone who has guest lectured in all kinds of school settings, ranging from creative writing classes to kindergartens, I would agree.
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PAD
As another union teacher, I second that.
Another union teacher here. Thirded.
Charlie,
why do you think that teachers being required to learn about education is a bad thing? They definitely need to be very qualified in their subject as well, but that alone does not make them good teachers – they have to be able to communicate their subject to their students, to motivate them, and ideally to make learning their subject fun. And these are all hopefully things they learn when getting their teaching certificate, or at least techniques to help them with it.
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I do not know how it works in the US, but in Germany, teacher trainees have to take classes on general concepts of education, on concepts specific to their subject (If you are teaching a language, what are specific problems non-native speakers have, and how do you best address them? How do you best design work sheets, and how do you use media like newspapers or films in your classroom effectively?), and they have to teach classes under supervision so they can be told what to improve (first a single period, then three weeks, then a whole semester). All this is to ensure that when they finally teach a class of their own, not only do the confidence to do so, but they won’t just stand there in the front, read their script, give the children their homework and then vanish.
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Being a good teacher is lot of work, and requires a specific skill set that you do not acquire simply because you are good at maths, or physics, or French, or what have you.
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I am sorry for just taking one point out of your longer post, but I study with a lot of teacher trainees, and to be honest I found the implication that teaching is something anybody can do somewhat irritating.
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Benjamin
Oh yes. I can think of several cases where people were hired as teachers who knew the subject in its smallest detail … but were useless at actually teaching it. One was so bad I left her class partway through the year, tired of wasting time having her explain the jargon she was using to explain the jargon she’s just used. Can you say “circular definition”? The moment which killed it for me was when she did the equivalent of saying “white is a colour we call ‘white'”. A ‘Human Resources Management” class as I recall. Fortunately another teacher was available for the same subject and I wound up in his class, only to learn they were two chapters ahead because he used plain English tailored for the level of knowledge of his class. Unfortunately, at the last class he announced he was retiring. World needs more teachers such as he.
It’s not the unions, Charlie. It’s the massive, unrelenting burden of governmental red tape. Everything we do now must be documented duplicate or triplicate. We have to have hundreds of hours of continuing education at our own expense (many districts themselves pick up at least a chunk of the expense, but it’s still an unfunded mandate) and on our own time or risk losing our certification. This is regardless of whether we already have a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Doctoral degree.
I’m not sure what “advanced degrees” you’re talking about. Things vary from state to state, but here you can become a guest teacher (a paid substitute) with a bachelor’s degree. No teaching certification required. The only other stipulation being they pass their safety clearances so we don’t end up with some “truly talented” pedophiles.
Speaking of the “truly talented,” I’ve had several students return to school in their senior year after being home-schooled all their lives that couldn’t string five words together to create a grammatically correct sentence, and the home schooling lobby is constantly screaming that their rights are being violated when they are asked for even a fraction of the accountability that teachers are.
That being said, my school has numerous volunteer parents and other community members who put in hours and hours of service to make our schools great.
The maker of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH has a new documentary out called WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”, about the education system, and it portrays the teacher’s unions in a very negative light. In fact, they come off as being the most reprehensible element of the whole system.
Okay. Good for them.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t speak to its points. Do the unions have problems? Absolutely. No doubt about it. There’s a number of things I’d like to change about them if I were in charge, and I might agree with some or all of the flick’s points. Dyslexic dog knows I’ve bìŧçhëd about their practices numerous times in the past. I won’t know until I see it.
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I WILL say that if the movie makes the points that the unions require all kinds of rules that prevent all these wonderful laypeople from showing those elitist teachers how to *really* get the job of education done. It’s full of šhìŧ. That is the point that was made above, and that was what I was refuting. As I said, people without a teaching degree are allowed in numerous places to get involved in a variety of ways in public education.
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Hëll, when I was living in New Mexico twenty-plus years ago, all you needed to be a substitute teacher was a GED. If that’s an example of the evil union throwing its weight around, then I’d have to say you’ve got nothing to worry about.
here in NC I can vouch for the fact that people who want to help out would be most welcome.
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On the other hand, I can also vouch for the fact that the state makes people who want to become teachers jump through hoops that are illogical and have driven away a few good people. that’s not a union thing though, our union is virtually powerless. We are State Employees so we can’t strike which kind of limits what kind of influence you can have.
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I suspect that’s one reason I make a lot less than some of my relatives who are teachers in New York. However, if the cost of that was to put up with the union politics that I have personally witnessed there, I will gladly make do with what I have. It’s dreadful and they clearly don’t give a rat’s ášš about the kids or the teachers, it’s all about the power of the people in the union bureaucracy. Absolutely dreadful situation.
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I have no idea if that particular situation is unique or typical.
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I’d like to see the WAITING FOR SUPERMAN movie–I’ve been kind of surprised to see some folks who have seen it and are usually staunch liberals literally shaking with rage at the union people in that movie.
On thing people don’t realize about teacher’s unions is that they are not equally powerful in every state. While perhaps they may be a problem in states with a strong history of workers’ rights and unions such as New York, they are barely effectual in other places. .
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Florida’s problem is not the unions, but the FCAT, and I’ve yet to find one teacher who doesn’t curse No Child Left Behind.
It was obviously written by someone who has never attended a Tea Party gathering. I’ve been to a few in various places in the country, and I have yet to encounter racists or Luddites.
Malcolm, there’s somewhat of a problem in that there’s not *A* Tea Party, but many disparate groups with a small handful of shared views and buckets of views that differ from group to group all operating under that one banner of “Tea Party.”
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Even so-called Tea Party “officials,” when interviewed about some of the more, shall we say, “controversial” views espoused supposedly under that Tea Party banner are quick to point that out.
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So, while your local “Tea Party” might be fine and dandy, another areas might be quite the hate mongers. And, since the movement seems reluctant to form a centralized leadership to weed out the nutjobs, those nutjobs have just as big a hand in shaping the public’s perception of all those who identify themselves with the Tea Party.
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–Daryl
It is an inherent characteristic of groups with no real membership control and no centralised authority and which rely on volunteers to do the work to drift to the extremes, because rational people get bored with the grind and fall aside, or have other, more important things to do (like lives), but the fanatics hang in there.
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Here in Atlanta we had an “underground” newspaper called “The Great Speckled Bird.” It was an all-volunteer operation. Even before someone fire-bombed its original office, the more moderate types were falling away … but the Trotskyites (no, i’m not kidding – this was the Seventies, remember) hung in there, and by the time it died a merciful death, it was limping along totally under their control.
Holy friggin’ šhìŧ. That’s an awesome piece. I wish Democrats like Obama would go on the offensive with stuff like this.
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Seriously, though, Peter, I think you could’ve said it yourself. You’ve done so before. 🙂
Or maybe, just maybe, what they mean by “we want our country back” is that they want the portion *THEY* paid for, instead of said money being taxed and given to the more than 50% of the population that doesn’t *PAY* any taxes. Maybe they want some of these functions taken *AWAY* from the Federal Government, and given back to the *STATE* governments, where it can be applied more effectively.
…and what colour of paisley is the sky in your world, dear?
The color of understanding *WHY* the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was a bad idea – what balancing mechanism in the original document it completely removed.
I’m rather glad, actually, to see Congress deadlocked, not getting anything done. That’s that much less they’re screwing up worse.
So, Tara, are you actually saying you want to have LESS say in who represents YOU in the Senate? The 17th Amendment allowed YOU and your fellow citizens the opportunity to decide who represents their interests in the Senate, INSTEAD of a handful of legislators. I have no idea in what state you live. but let’s look at California (the most populous state in the country). In 2006 (the last year that Cali had an election for the US Senate), just over 8.5 MILLION valid ballots were cast. Now, California’s State Senate consists of a mere 40 members and the Assembly consists of a mere 80 members, for a combined total of 120 people. In case your math is seriously impaired, the OLD system would allow as few as 61 people to “elect” a US Senator; in other terms, that’s 7/10,000ths of 1 percent.
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By comparison, in New York with 212 legislators, as few as 107 people would determine the Senator compared to the nearly 4.5 million people who voted in 2006.
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What you fail to understand, Tara, is that there was NO “balancing mechanism” in the original document. All the early system did was to have Senators beholden to the small handful of people who gave them their jobs. (Some people MIGHT describe that as a “special interest.”) The ONLY type of “balance” that existed was to prevent small states like Delaware from being overwhelmed by the large states like Virginia. The Great Compromise that resulted in the state legislatures’ selecting the Senators was done SOLELY to ease the smaller states’ concerns. The ORIGINAL plan (the “Virginia Plan”) would’ve had Senatorial candidates selected by the State Legislatures but then have the US House actually decide which candidate won; additionally, the Plan recommended that BOTH Houses of Congress be based on population (not 2 Senators per state, but maybe as few as 1 or as many as 5 or 10). Beyond that, there was no real “balance” in the Founders’ final plans for representation in Congress. Both Houses shared power. Exactly HOW the Senate was to be elected wasn’t really considered all that important, merely that each state be equal in its representation as the others.
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Furthermore, what MIGHT interest you is that the 17th Amendment came to be because of STATE pressure on the Congress. The states have a power (granted them by Article V) to amend the Constitution. In 1910, nearly 2/3 of the states had applied to call for a convention to adopt an amendment requiring the direct election of Senators, and 2/3 is the “magic number” for this.
Or maybe, just maybe, what they mean by “we want our country back” is that they want the portion *THEY* paid for, instead of said money being taxed and given to the more than 50% of the population that doesn’t *PAY* any taxes
PLEASE. Do not reply this inaccuracy. It’s simply not correct.
(Rather, it’s woefully incomplete; most of the country most certainly DO pay their Social Security, Medicare and sales tax)
I’m not sure most people can chart exactly where what taxes go (for example, I really don’t think you want national defense functions given to the states).
Also, I thought the precise statement was that 47 percent of households had no tax liability on April 15, and that they owned no taxes on April 15. That’s different from paying 0 taxes. (though I’m a bit fuzzy on this….)
Exactly WHAT functions do you mean? Let’s get SPECIFIC with that claim. Most state governments don’t seem to function very well without massive federal assistance. How many states are currently operating on a budget surplus? (And, let’s exclude Alaska, shall we? Alaskans benefit from a slight touch of socialism–I mean, very little oil is being drilled in downtown Anchorage or Wasilla, yet residents of both of those cities get to share in the state’s oil wealth.)
To be fair, I think most nostalgics just don’t think through the consequences of literally “turning the clock back.” Nostalgia is pure feeling, not reason. It’s rose-colored glasses and all that and people just gloss over the hideous stuff in the past.
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It’s not very different from people who dream of an age of chivalry long past, while the real Middle Ages was a brutal, dirty, senseless, illiterate, un-hygienic period.
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In any case, I loved the piece.
Mark Evanier linked to this 4 page article on the tea party by Matt Taibbi. I loved it:
For a sizable percentage of the self-proclaimed Tea Partiers, I suspect the country they want back is the CSA.
That was hillarious, Jonathan.
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Best line:
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“The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.”
I believe it was Mark Twain that said, “The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can usually count upon the support of Paul.
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My attribution may be off, but it goes hand in hand with Rene’s favorite line.
Yup. Being against wastefull spending is the same as being against all spending (cause you know, it’s all black and white, with no shades in the middle). Yup, all tea partiers are racists. I’m sure there’s a nazi thing there. Yup, all tea partiers hate old people, women, and children, and want segreated schools and buses. Yup, every piece of unsubstantiated retoric I’ve heard over the past two years, repeated in one article. Nothing new here.
Just over a month.
I think the problem with the (reasonable elements of the) Tea Party isn’t what they say they want per se (controlled spending and responsible government aren’t bad things) but that they don’t seem to have any idea how to implement them. Lower taxes? Fine — but the deficit goes up, and there’s not a 1-1 correlation between lowering taxes and economic stimulus. Cutting spending? Fine — who wants to cut military spending, or school funding, or health care? (Actually, a lot are saying they’ll actively dismantle Obama’s health care — then listing the things they would keep from it.) Smaller government? Awesome — say goodbye to infrastructure, or security, or any job creation.
There are a lot of very smart comedians who do a great job pointing out the problems in government (often both sides) but are adamant that they won’t join because while they know the problems, they don’t have solutions. The Tea Party pretends to have the solutions when they are only offering platitudes about the problems.
(And the fringe elements embody some of the worst parts of America: racist, homophobic, mob mentality, and absolutely opposed to any bipartisan work whatsoever — being branded as “RINOs.”)
Nope, those branded as RINOs are those George W. Bush republicans, who claimed to be conservative, but wasted money, and offered no control on spending or the deficit.
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There’s a reason folks like Karl Rove hate the tea party movement. But hey, all of you so ready to attack the tea party now have something in common with Karl Rove and much of the old school establishment GOP. Congrats!
Nope, those branded as RINOs are those George W. Bush republicans, who claimed to be conservative, but wasted money, and offered no control on spending or the deficit.
Examples? Because I don’t think that’s true.
Though I do think it’s ironic that it’s George W. Bush is being branded a RINO….
Seriously, if that’s the case, RINOs make up the bulk of the party. It’s not like the 2004 election saw a huge upswing in support for the libertarian candidate or anything.
Well, the 2008 primary did show significant support for the libertarian Republican candidate, but not nearly enough support.
Jeebus, am I the only one who remembers when the term RINO was coined, during the run-up to the 2000 election? (Yes, Virginia, there was a Republican party before 9/11.)
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RINOs were people who weren’t as ideologically pure as Bush and Rove, people who were willing to compromise with dem EEE-vill Democrats to get things done. You know, like Reagan.
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So, now even Bush and Rove aren’t pure enough? What, to avoid the dreaded “RINO” tag, you can’t even talk to a Democrat? Or does it require denouncing anyone who’s not in the lunatic fringe of the Right as a traitor deserving a stay at Gitmo?
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Maybe I will work harder to make it to the local Rally To Restore Sanity, on the 30th. Lord knows we need more people in politics who believe that screaming at your opponents is pointless, annoying, and terrible for your throat…
RINO is whatever a person thinks it is. I’d limit it to those people who, if they donpt get the nomination or a posh chairmanship position was waved in front of their face, will happily switch parties to keep their grasp on power.
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There are some DINOs as well. A few might show themselves after this election.
Pshaw. The old “let’s take back our country” bit was quite popular among democrats when it was the Republicans in charge and, if the GOP wins big in a few months, they will dust it off and use it again. Heck, Howard Dean even wrote a book: “You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America” which sounds like a it could be a poster at a tea party rally, if you put in a few misspellings (rimshot! I know my audience.)
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If–and I am still sticking with my prediction that this won’t happen because I’ve been predicting it for some time and there’s no glory in changing your mind at the last minute to agree with what everyone else is thinking–the GOP wins massively the blame can be in large part laid at the incredible tone deafness so many Democrats showed when the tea Party thing began. They could have co-opted some of it. Obama, smarter than most in his party, has made some comments to that effect, that the passions of the TPers mirrors the desire for hope and change that swept him into office. But no, to many of the Democrats could not stand to see anyone question them and they simply treated the movement with first contempt, then mockery, then with slander, now with fear. All of which just made these folks all the more eager to get their shot at the polls. John Sterwards observation that conservatives are lining up at the polls like the new harry Potter novel is coming out while democrats sit in front of the TV watching tapes of old Obama speeches and picking funyun dust out of their navels is only a slight exaggeration.
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I still highly doubt the GOP can take the senate and if they fail by just a seat or two many will lay the blame at the TP folks for pushing idiots like Angle and O’Donnell but at the same time it is the energy of those folks that are making once safe seats like Feingold’s up for grabs. But the real problem for the Republicans will be when these folks see that once elected the people they supported go right back to being the power grubbing hacks they were trying to replace.
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And it will be best for Obama if the GOP takes both the senate and the house. If things get better, he gets reelected. If things stay lousy or get worse he blames them. Of course, if the Democrats win big in 2010 and things get better in the next two years he wins huge but I would not bet money on that scenario.
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But anyway, back to the tea Party–laugh all you want but if the Democrats thought for even a microsecond that the left could and would mount primary battles against entrenched senators and congressmen to replace them with committed idealists, you’d see a lot more action on things near and dear to your heart. As opposed to now where it’s like “Gay rights? Why should we risk political capital on a bunch of people who are going to vote for us and give us money anyway?”
Bill, you and I have disagreed in the past on politics, interested in your take on the following.:
I don’t really know for sure what will happen in November. Historically, If I can remember correctly, the Incumbent party usually loses a number of seats in the midterm elections. How much of if can be attributed to supporters of the incumbent party feeling disillusioned with the party, or complacent (having “Their Guy” in the White House) and less likely to go to the polls, or how much of it is the supporters of the defeated party being motivated to organize, get to the polls, push to get heard and make a change etc. I don’t know. This also leaves out things such as the specific personalities running, being replaced, who the president is, the conditions of the country etc.
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It’s a big mess and really hard to say (with any justification) *this* specific reason is why x and y got elected, defeated, replaced, whatever. And who doesn’t want to take credit. Some have pointed out that Fox News acts as though it calls the shots for the Republican party (and Michael Steele was quick to kiss Limbaugh’s ášš when it was brought up) and that the party acts the same. however, Fox News wanted anyone other than McCain elected, and didn’t get their way. They still pulled off a huge campaing for McCain and the Repubs, and didn’t get their way. There was a huge hue and cry against health care, and they didn’t get their way. (David Frum was one of the few conservatives to write in articles, “Our methods aren’t working; perhaps we should look again at our methods and maybe change them. Maybe we should stop looking like a bunch of rabid nutcases who screm that Obama is the Anti-Christ.” (Obviously, I’m paraphrasing.) He just *happened* to lose his job thereafter.
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The long-belaboured point I am trying to make, is that certain people and groups can make a lot of noise-Sarah palin, Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes, Fox News “pundits” in general- and *look* like they have a huge wave of support, but not have that translate into political muscle, support, and numbers. Is the Tea Party in that category? If there is an upset in November, they’ll take the credit, (Hëll, who on the right *won’t* take credit?) How can we figure out what really caused it? I don’t claim to have an answer, and I’m not seeing any reliable commentators that do. What do you think?
Ack, that should have been, “Bill, you and I have disagreed in the past on politics, but I am interested in your take on the following” Ðámņ typos
Well, unlike Allan keyes, who I must confess I have not heard from in years, the tea party people can certainly claim some success already this cycle. And the democrats have named them front and center as the Scare Du Jour so if their side pulls off a victory they will have some justification in claiming a good portion of credit. But you’re correct, it may be that in this environment just about any Republican has a shot at winning and the TP was just in the right place at the right time.
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If–and again, this is a big if–the GOP does stupendously well, 1994 style, the more interesting thing for me will be who gets the blame. Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan. I sense a hint of preemptive blame casting in Obama’s recent speeches where he said that if progressives sit on their áššëš and don’t go out and vote then they weren’t serious in the first place or whatever. meanwhile I have heard some mutterings from liberals disappointed in some aspect of Obama about sitting this one out as a protest. The wisdom of that would be if the party is going down you might want to take credit for it as a warning that next time they’d better listen to you. Of course, this can also snatch defeat from victory so it may not be a smart thing to do. You never know for sure until te votes are cast and counted.
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So it will be interesting if the Democrats take a shellacking. What does Obama do? Take the GOP strategy of waiting for your opposition to overreach? tack to the center and try to recapture the independents? Tack left and try to electrify the base? Play golf for 2 years and decline to even run for re-election? (for most people I would discount the last as nearly zero likelihood but I could see Obama foregoing the need for a second term. I have my doubts as to how much he is enjoying being president but I am certain he will have great time as a young, historic ex-president and all the better if he goes out on his own volition.)
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Thoughts?
I don’t know. My two questions are:
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1.What happens if the Republicans do very poorly? Does the Tea Party (and their supporters) spin it as “better luck next time, our guys weren’t right-wing enough, let’s do more of this” (the reaction to the 2008 election) or does the GOP really change? I don’t see the Libertarians getting a huge swell of support (which is what I really think would happen if the people were sick and tired of overreaching government.)
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2. If there are no major upsets, and we get more or less a status quo with few seats changing, what then? The Tea Party would claim credit for the primaries, but there wouldn’t be evidence of a national shift, just one within the GOP. Who knows what the fallout would be. (Though I’m sure that lots of journalists desperate for news and political fanatics would claim that the few seats that changed were “Proof of a major change within the Nation!”)The next GOP presidential primary would have a bunch of the candidates running far-raight, but primaries are usually about running to the extreme, then trying to run to the center for the national election. McCain may have been the exception for the GOP (though not for lack of trying) and there were a few ways to see his defeat:
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1. He almost got it, and running towards the center was the way to go. Just do more of it.
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2. Moderation fails, screw the center, completely pander to the right wing (which seems to be the GOP position.)
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3. He was screwed because of W’s terms no matter what. No real lesson.
If the republicans do poorly the GOP establishment will blame the TP and try to marginalize them out of the movement. I would expect the TP to deflate from the disappointment.
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Converesely, if the GOP does meh, no big gains, no big losses, the TP will blame the GOP mainstream for their lack of support and try even harder to take them over.
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If the Democrats do poorly they will form a circular firing squad. As usual.
Yeahhhh, I’d give it a lot more credibility if it wasn’t from ‘the Huffington Post.’ God, Arianna’s the most annoying woman since Rosie Perez.
With Palin, O’Donnell, and Angle out there, I cannot imagine anyone typing the above with a straight face.
Dismissing an argument because it appears at the Huffington Post is not much of an argument. Anyway, Arianna didn’t write it.
My standard response to “I want my country back” is, “It’s right where you left it on the coast of Africa, with no government interfering with your kind of rugged individualists. It’s called Somalia. Take it back, go, enjoy!”
Something tells me to disagree…I think you would have stated as well as Ellsberg did
I think all Tea Party candidates are kind of like a dog chasing a bus or Benjamin and Elaine at the end of “The Graduate:’ “OK, we have it. Now what do we do?”
I’m a little reluctant to comment here, since I’m going against the views of people I respect on here, but I really detest this sort of caricaturing of the Tea Party movement. To me, this seems such an obvious simple-minded straw man type of attack. Is this Elisberg really so naive as to believe that anyone who talks of ‘taking the country back’ or ‘returning to original principles’ really wants to literally turn back the clock? Has anyone pining for the good-old-days ever truly wanted that? The Tea Partyers don’t want everything to be the way is was at some earlier point of time– like everybody else, they want to keep the changes they like and get rid of the changes they hate.
But so many critics prefer to simply label them as ignorant redneck reactionaries, and I can’t help but believe they do that solely to place them beyond the pale, so that nobody need to take anything they might say seriously. This is not legitimate political argument, it’s a belittling of one’s opponent to avoid debate entirely. And it makes Elisberg and those like him appear to be elitist bigots.
I know there are a lot of nutcases and extremists within the Tea Parties, but dismissing the whole movement as nothing else is no different from the Right-Wing critics who use the looniest Hollywood airheads to represent all Liberal or Progressive types.
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I don’t mind that PAD dislikes the Tea Parties. There is plenty of legitimate criticism to be used against them. But I am disappointed that he considers this sort of simplistic prejudicial attack to be a valid criticism of the movement.
(Sorry, Peter.)
Show me the careful, nuanced arguments of the Tea Party, and I’ll listen.
Show me the “solutions” provided (well, sloganed, really) that don’t end in shafting the general public, and I’ll listen.
Show me the principled stance that isn’t simply reactionary (and too often racist or genuinely elitist (i.e. in the service of or to the substantive benefit of the (economically) elite), and I’ll listen.
Until then, all the “Tea Party” is doing is tea bagging. When all they have are ad hominem attacks and empty jingoism, it’s appropriate to be characterized as such.
AD
I never said I was a Tea Party supporter. I agree that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticise them. I was simply saying that this sort of patronising straw-man attack is not the way to do it.
It doesn’t have to be nuanced at all. That’s the problem — the motivating factors behind the vast majority of Tea Party Americans are remarkably simple and clear. Here’s a little quiz I’m whipping up on the fly here:
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1) Government spending. Do you believe the federal government…
a) Spends much money overall?
b) Needs to spend even more money?
c) Spends just enough?
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2) Taxes. Do you believe the federal government…
a) Takes too much money from individuals and organizations?
b) Needs to take even more money from individuals and organizations?
c) Takes just enough?
3) Government officials. Should government officials — especially those empowered to write and enforce the laws — be obeying those laws they expect us to follow?
a) Absolutely, if not held to an even higher standard.
b) Of course not. They’re too busy and too important to bother with such trivial concerns.
c) Geithner? Rangel? Dodd? Never heard of ’em.
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If you answered “a” to two or more questions, you’d fit in just fine at a Tea Party rally.
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If you answered “b” or “c” to two or more questions, you’re the kind of voter the Democrats are depending on.
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Yes, it’s just that simple.
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J.
Jay, I found none of the answers provided on your little quiz sufficient.
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“Does the government spend too much (or too little) money?” On what? By whose standards?
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“Does the government take too much/too little in taxes?” Answer the first conundrum, and you may find an answer to the second. Remember that taxation is the only way the government is permitted to make money – NASA, for instance, could have made a killing on selling satellite-launch facilities, except they weren’t legally permitted to do so. Cut the taxes, and you’d best lower the spending, because otherwise you guarantee deficits. (This was my biggest problem with the Bush-era cuts – made at the same time as increased Medicare-D spending, and two wars…)
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As for 3, that’s a bit of a straw man – find me a public official who has been caught committing a crime, and gone with absolutely no punishment specifically because he/she is a public official. Not someone you think probably committed a crime – someone who definitely did so. Not sure what you believe Dodd did (I don’t recall seeing the name in the news lately), but Geithner and Rangel are currently under investigation (because a lot of us like to, you know, prove the charges before convicting and punishing…).
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Simplistic world-views may make your life easier, but they don’t provide complete answers in a complex world.
. “Show me the careful, nuanced arguments of the Tea Party, and I’ll listen.”
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Hey, they were very nuanced back during the healthcare debate. They made it very clear that the government paying for health care was wrong, evil and communism and that Obama and the Democrats better dámņëd well not touch their Medicare.
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It would be funny enough if it had been just the various Tea Party groups putting out mixed messages, but what made it hilarious was that 9 times out of 10 those two statements came out of the same mouth.
I don’t dislike the Tea Party per se; I dislike extremists in general. There are plenty of people in the extreme fringes of the Democratic party as well; they’re as quick to censor, for example, as anyone on the right. The difference is that the right tries to censor because it offends their sensibilities while the left tries to censor because they’re concerned it’s going to offend someone else’s sensibilities. Either way they try to shut down free speech.
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The Tea Party is simply the latest iteration of the Know-Nothing Party from the mid-nineteenth century. The only difference is that the TP’s fifteen minutes of fame may be extended because televisions exists now.
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PAD
So are tea party people extremists? The know-nothings were a party that was limited to a specific ethnic group–and despite claims to the contrary, I have seen no evidence that the Tea party people do likewise. It was limited to one religion- and I see no evidence of that. It was a secret organization (ergo the name)–ditto. they resorted to violence that killed at least dozens of people–ditto again.
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One could argue that the decentralized organizational structure is analogous in both but given the unsavory nature of the Know-Nothings, comparing the two is just another attack against them. And I really believe that this is something the Democrats will come to regret. Most of the tea party people I have talked to have little love for the republicans but they see the Democrats as people who genuinely hate and slander them and would do them harm if they could get away with it. So naturally when given a choice they will go for the party that probably hates them just as much but is smart enough to not make that obvious!
“Know-Nothings?” In Arizona, there’s a Tea Party candidate for Congress who is a literal rocket scientist. Look her up — Ruth McClung.
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Violence? So far, the only violence involving Tea Partiers have featured the Tea Partiers as the victims.
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The core issues of the Tea Party boil down to holding the government accountable — control spending, control taxation, and demanding that elected officials honor their allegiance to the law and the Constitution.
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Yes, there are some nuts and extremists. But they’re usually isolated and pushed out. (I particularly like the Tea Partiers who deploy their “We’re Not With Stupid” signs.) Or they’re “plants” — Democrats and union officials out to discredit the Tea Party movement. (It’s pretty well documented.)
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On the other hand, there’s an upcoming anti-war rally where the organizers are explicitly inviting Marxists, Communists, Socialists, and the whole host of leftist extremists.
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That’s what drives the organized left (and, to an extent, the institutional right) about the Tea Party. The message is simple. The movement has no recognized leaders. It literally is a populist movement, and they have no idea how to deal with it.
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J.
. In ref to the “the institutional right” example- “The movement has no recognized leaders. It literally is a populist movement, and they have no idea how to deal with it.”
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Sure they do. They’ve worked to usurp it. The same hardcore, militant Right in the Republican Party that thought that purity oaths were a pretty good idea not too long ago and that sees compromise with Democrats as weakness have grabbed the movement and begun to try to reshape the party in their image.
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When we had special elections right after the Tea Party started making some noise we saw the Tea Party support the only Republican candidates that they had the option to vote for. This year we got to see the Tea Party make an impact in the Republican primaries. The results have been interesting.
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Anti-abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
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Pro-Creationism and anti-evolution.
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Abolish the EPA.
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Abolish the Department of Education.
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Not just anti-gay rights, but in a few cases backgrounds that are just plain full on anti-gay.
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When people peek behind the curtain and see who is actually funding and organizing the biggest Tea Party events we see the names of long time hard Conservative (and in a few cases Evangelical) Republican players and supporters. While many of the regular people who show up at events may well be less than extreme or idiotic; the power players in the group and the results of their actions are nothing new in the Republican Party.
I don’t think there are many true Libertarians among them, sadly.
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To me, it’s the same old, same old Conservative politics. Stern Daddy politics that want their kids to be tough individualists regarding their money, yet are controlling as hëll of their social lives.
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I don’t think the Nurtining Mommy politics of the Democrats are such hot stuff either, but it’s the lesser of two evils, IMO.
Heh, I meant NURTURING mommy.
All extremists should be shot.
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What?
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Why are you looking at me that way?
I don’t know if the TeaParty knows nothing, but with a spokesperson like Sarah Palin I would lean toward agreeing with you.
But I’m 99% sure that the Dems and Repubs don’t know much about living in the real taxpaying world.
They have had it with uncontrolled spending, they see this for what it is, a massive takeover of the economy from private hands to public.
Thats it.
Racism? Really?
Pathetic.
They are just a symptom of a larger truth–we are in real trouble. We cannot tax enough to get out of this debt. We cannot cut enough to get out of this debt. Our only hope is to grow out of it and we may be in a position where that can no longer realistically happen. Or suffer some catastrophic economic “fix’ like a bout of hyperinflation. Lovely.
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I almost can’t blame either the tea party people or their critics for making this a strictly personal thing–it beats the alternative which is facing a problem that may no good solution. Easier to just attack “those people”, whoever you think they may be.
I think it’s wise to be suspicious of simple solutions. The devil is always in the details.
That said, I’m a little disheartened by the number of sacred cows on both spending and taxing. Why is the military (which makes up one of the two largest segments of spending) not examined for more savings? Why isn’t Social Security not means tested at some level? Why aren’t capital gains taxes (lower than regular taxes) being adjusted to be in line with other taxes?
“I think it’s wise to be suspicious of simple solutions. The devil is always in the details.”
This reminded me of the TNG episode where Q looses his powers and a moon was in a decaying orbit and crash in a planet. The crew of the enterprise was trying to save the planet and Q states that the solution was simple: just change the gravitational constant of the universe.
Edit
I shoud have said: a moon was in a decaying orbit and ABOUT TO crash in a planet.
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Sorry
Roger, slate.com had an article awhile back about once unthinkable cuts in military spending. I caught a link to it from Mark Evanier’s page some time ago, not sure where the links are a this moment. But some of these changes are happening.
One could argue that the decentralized organizational structure is analogous in both but given the unsavory nature of the Know-Nothings, comparing the two is just another attack against them. And I really believe that this is something the Democrats will come to regret. Most of the tea party people I have talked to have little love for the republicans but they see the Democrats as people who genuinely hate and slander them and would do them harm if they could get away with it
Well, as long they understand that a lot of Democrats also see elements on the right that they feel hate and slander them and would do them harm if they could get away with it, as well. (For gays, that’s certainly not been unfounded)
If they don’t recognize it, aren’t they part of the problem?
The difference is, those elements on the right were never going to vote for Democrats. The tea party people were up for grabs, to a degree.
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They were always going to tilt to the republicans, if only because they are against the status quo and the Democrats control both houses of congress and the presidency. But the Democrats have made sure that the tea partiers regard them as people who hate them and think they are all violent racists. Way to win those hearts and minds!
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I mean, is there anyone who disagrees with me that the attacks on the tea party people have failed to shut them up or make them unlikely to vote? Those attacks energized them. Looking at the advertisements currently being run by many democrats, they sound a lot like what the tea party people have been saying (some even go out of their way to slam Pelosi and Obama!). Should have done that from the beginning, it just looks sad and desperate now.
“The tea party people were up for grabs, to a degree.”
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At the very begining, when it was still trying to find it’s voice, the Tea Party did in fact include true Libertarians, and even some Progressives unhappy with how moderate the Democrats had become. But a year later, even Rand Paul is towing the Republican party line: “Drugs are bad, War is good, and, oh, yeah, Domestic spending is downright EVIL!!! (But *we* won’t touch your Medicare, don’t worry.)”
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The constant Liberal sniping at the Tea Party isn’t going to win any friends. But the Liberals were pushed out of the Tea Tent long before the Democrats made them the Enemy.
Bill Mulligan: “The difference is, those elements on the right were never going to vote for Democrats. The tea party people were up for grabs, to a degree.”
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I would tend to disagree with that assessment with the vast majority of Tea Party groups. There may well be a small group of truly independent voters in the tea Party, but the vast majority of the Tea Party backers, the people that fund them, the organizers and members are people who would not vote for the Democrats.
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I know for example, either personally or professionally, a huge number of people in the Tea Party movement in Virginia. Long before there was ever a Tea Party these most of people were voting Republican. Long before there was ever a Tea Party most of these people were part of PACs for the Republican Party. Long before there was a Tea Party, and still today even as the donate small amounts to Tea Party events, these people pump money into the Republican Party. And far more often than not I see the same thing when I look up Tea Party groups in other states.
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They started out from day one not fighting for a third party or by supporting centrist Democrats and Republicans, but rather pushing for hard Right Conservatives. And they’ve seemingly only gotten more extreme in their push for this as the Republican Primaries worked through their process and as the midterm elections approach.
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The Tea Party, or at least those who actually have the power in the Tea Party, are nothing more than the newest version, the newest mask, of the extreme Right.
Obviously the situation may vary from one place to another–all can say is that here in NC the people I have talked to have been almost entirely right of center but by no means extremely so. The impetus has been pretty much 100% economic (a few were also into the immigration debate. Nobody ever mentioned the war on drugs) and the only thing that they seemed to have in common, the part that really struck me, was that they are all people who have had little to no real political involvement before.
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If indeed the tea party people are just the same old extreme right wing Republican voters we had before it’s surprising that the republicans are polling so well. My sense is that a goodly number of them are formerly apathetic independent voters who are having a great time being involved in a new social activity.
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But even if I’m wrong and they are exactly as you say they are, I would suggest that the actions of the Democrats when the Tea Parties first sprang up have all but ensured that the passions they displayed over a year ago will be maintained right up through voting day. heir best hope at this point is that the TP gang will suffer the same sort of post election let down that a lot of us expecting hope and change after the last election are feeling now.
“Obviously the situation may vary from one place to another–all can say is that here in NC the people I have talked to have been almost entirely right of center but by no means extremely so. “
. “My sense is that a goodly number of them are formerly apathetic independent voters who are having a great time being involved in a new social activity.”
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And a number of the “common people” in the Tea Party may well be what you describe. But a number of the people who are now in positions of power in the Tea Party and are essentially controlling the direction of the movement are anything but. They’re likely thrilled beyond words with the movement picking up the formerly apathetic as well. It certainly works in their favor since the formally apathetic weren’t really paying attention to what was going on in any real detail and likely still are only paying attention to the surface gloss of this new pastime they’re having so much fun with.
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Right now there is no real system for creating candidates from the ground up in the Tea Party and what may well represent what Tea Party defenders claim is the majority of regular people who support the idea of a Tea Party is not what seems to be the results of their recent electoral support.
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And when you dig behind the scenes of the Tea Party and the backers of its biggest events and organizers it’s easy to see why. The list of names reads likes a who’s who of the same old hardcore conservative names. And to some degree they’re controlling the focus and the choices of the Tea Party.
. “If indeed the tea party people are just the same old extreme right wing Republican voters we had before it’s surprising that the republicans are polling so well. “
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Depends on what you consider good polling. Republicans are polling better than Democrats now in election run ups, but other polls show an interesting contradiction in logic. A number of polls actually show that many people trust the Democrats more with things like the economy but then flip on who is the most likely to get a November vote. It’s almost like an odd reverse of the 2008 POTUS election. Some people are voting for change above and beyond anything else.
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I’m even in an interesting place right now as to what I would like to see as the best outcome. I tend to like seeing different parties in control of the White House and the Congress. It tends to lead to some policies being more mainstream in their final passing form. We also seem to do best when we have a D POTUS and an R Congress pulling each other to the center.
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I’m not happy at all with Obama and the Democrats controlling everything. They’re actions have been a bit too far over to one side and their actions haven’t been as focused economic issues as they should have been sine they most wanted to push social issues out of the gate. I want to see a change in November.
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But the catch is that the Republicans and the Tea Party seem hellbent on putting candidates on the ballot who range from only borderline qualified options who are arch conservatives to outright nutjobs who are arch conservatives.
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Disgruntled conservatives are thrilled with this. All they’re looking at is the fact that the candidates are promising to be arch conservatives.
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A lot of other people just don’t seem to be bothering to look beyond the surface gloss. In person and on blogs I’m seeing the same thing I commented on about Obama supporters back in 2008. I’ll ask people why they support specific candidates or I’ll look at the comments of the enthusiastic online posters and see people parroting hallow talking points and talking in generalities. Most people have no idea about what these people they support actually say they stand for or what they say they want to do once in beyond “stopping the Obama machine.”
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A lot of people want change. But a lot of these people just seem to be unable to really hold more than three thoughts right now.
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1) Republicans are not Democrats.
2) Obama is a Democrat.
3) Vote Republican for change.
I think if the usual movers and shakers were really behind the tea party we would have seen much much better candidates emerge than Angle or O’Donnel.
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In fact the stuff I have seen indicates that the candidates supported by the tea party people who got won the nomination over the establishment Republicans are not getting the kind of support from the party apparatchiks that the mainstream ones are.
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And as someone else pointed out, it doesn’t take much to “fund’ these rallies–facebook, construction paper and some magic markers and a mic setup.
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really, the left ought to quit griping about the tea party and try to emulate their success–unless they are afraid that they will fail (the “coffee party” was a flop) which they probably will unless they do more than just imitate them.
Way to win those hearts and minds!
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And yet, this equally applies to GOP politics in the last couple of election cycles, and how they reacted toward Obama in particular.
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Screaming about Obama being a Muslim terrorist? That really didn’t win the hearts and minds of independents.
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In the end, I just flat out find the Tea Party laughable. They scream about small government and lower taxes, yet the party most of them will vote for – Republican – has had quite the hand in creating bigger government in recent years, and taxes are generally lower than they were decades ago.
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How much lower do these people want their own taxes to go when most of them aren’t in the group that actually pays the most taxes, ie, the rich?
I think if the usual movers and shakers were really behind the tea party we would have seen much much better candidates emerge than Angle or O’Donnel.
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Well, this would be some of the same group who let Palin get on the ballot with McCain.
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As I pointed out with the special election in Massachusetts earlier this year to replace Kennedy: they (the GOP) just want the seat; they really don’t care who sits in it right now.
. “really, the left ought to quit griping about the tea party and try to emulate their success–unless they are afraid that they will fail (the “coffee party” was a flop) which they probably will unless they do more than just imitate them.”
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Oh come on… They’re not organized enough or smart enough. The best movement they had going in the last 20 years was the Obama campaign and the sizzle in that steak went poof when they had to actually had to watch POTUS Obama rather than campaigner Obama and realized that they should have read more of Obama’s platform than the first three lines.
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It’s also never gonna happen with the modern Democratic Party for the simple reason that it’s actually rather harder to distill the social issues that Democrats seem to do best with into easy rally bullet points. You can’t even unify the party on many social issues that Obama campaigned on.
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Candidate Obama actually ran on, amongst other things, changing healthcare to something closer to universal healthcare. He said it at several stump speeches and it got loud cheers. President Obama went to start working on it and there was almost no support by many of the elected and unelected who called themselves Democrats.
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Republicans and their causes make easier bullet points even if they don’t intend to follow through on them. They’re simple and don’t require any explanation to have an impact on the masses.
. “Lower Taxes!”
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Works great and you don’t even need to explain much about it. You want to lower taxes or are for lower taxes. When pressed for details you only have to answer in generalities about businesses, job creation, class warfare and mom & pop and you’ve get huge applause at the rally.
. “Equal Rights for Homosexuals!”
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Doesn’t work as well. Define “equal rights” for this guy over here and that guy over there thinks it’s too much. He might agree with it, but it’s just not a good time to do it just now. That guy in the back thinks it’s a good idea, but then it shouldn’t actually be called marriage when they get together while this guy up here wants to know why the homophobe in the back wants to deny people their equal rights to marriage. And that guy over in the corner wants to know what this will do to the children.
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The Republicans have cornered the market on pushing an easy to parrot agenda based on economic ideas. Democrats, even when they can do better on some financial matters, just cannot get very much traction on those issues. But those are the easiest bullet points to build a movement around; especially in times like this.
. “In fact the stuff I have seen indicates that the candidates supported by the tea party people who got won the nomination over the establishment Republicans are not getting the kind of support from the party apparatchiks that the mainstream ones are.”
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It depends on where you look. The mainstream establishment that values actually getting elected and having good odds of doing so certainly aren’t happy with some of these people. But they might not be the driving force here.
. “I think if the usual movers and shakers were really behind the tea party we would have seen much much better candidates emerge than Angle or O’Donnel.”
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With most political movements I would agree with you. Most political movements are in fact geared to getting their people elected in large numbers and that’s the way most people think about such matters. I’m not sure that’s 100% the desired goal of some of the people sending their money to the Tea Party or being the most vocal national advocates of people like Angle and O’Donnel.
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Look at the people on the national stage who are the biggest supporters of the Tea Party. They seem to fall into predominately two groups. There are people like Sarah Palin who are cash in types. There’s money for their pockets in courting the Tea Party, greater celebrity status in “the movement” and maybe a little bit of shoring up their power base.
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Then there’s the purity crowd. There are a lot of power players in the conservative movement who have long been vocal about “RINOs” and traitors in the movement. “Traitors” being defined by some of them as being a moderate Republican who meets a moderate Democrat halfway on an issue. Doesn’t matter if it was for a good cause with a good outcome or not. They compromised conservative principles and are RINOs.
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I am in a position to tell you that there are members of the Republican Party, elected and unelected and some with a national profile, who are actually happy with the results they’re seeing with the elections of people like Angle and O’Donnel in the primaries. They’re worried that they might not get elected, but they’re looking at the message that these primary results are sending to some elected Republicans.
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There’s a purity test. There’s a purity level set by the most conservative parts of the party. Don’t tow the line and you’re gone in the next primary.
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It’s insane, but there’s a core group in the conservative movement who honestly think that it’s a better long term strategy to have an uncompromising core unit running the party and this will bring the party back to glory. It’s something akin to the evangelical religious movement that tried to gain power in the party in the late 80s.
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And then there’s a group in every faction across the board and in both parties that believe that people like Angle and O’Donnel (or fill in the blank on the other side of the isle) will be easy to control and manipulate if they get in office. Who cares if they’re insane? We can control them.
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Now I don’t think that most of the Tea Partiers on the ground are thinking on that level. Most of the ones I’ve met certainly aren’t. But I’m not sure the same can be said for the people who are trying to join, usurp and control the focus of much of the Tea Party from behind the scenes. It’s a bit like some of the groups that sprang up under Bush that lasted about as long as a cup of coffee before power players grabbed them and shifted their effort to something that was less independent and more Democrat friendly.
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Again, the Tea Party followers claim that they’re for certain things that have been listed by several here. Fine. But the results of many of this year’s primaries do not fall in line with those espoused beliefs. We’re seeing Tea Party candidates who hold many social and fiscal beliefs that are far more in common with the hardcore fringe of the Republican Party and those of many of their most vocal and most moneyed backers.
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I could be wrong. This may not be by design. But if it’s purely by accident that this is happening; the Tea Party voters are making themselves out to be bigger idiots than the people who voted for Obama while only being able to claim “Change!” as their knowledge of what was in his platform because they’re shooting their own cause in the foot and making themselves look like loons based on who they want to put in power.
Know-Nothings?” In Arizona, there’s a Tea Party candidate for Congress who is a literal rocket scientist. Look her up — Ruth McClung.
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SER: Jay, PAD is not maligning the Tea Party by making the historical comparison to the Know Nothing Party. The two groups do share some positions. Also, the name did not refer to intellectual capacity but to the secretive nature of the group (members — when asked about it — would say they “know nothing.”
SER, I was pretty much in tune with that, but I was adding to the “stupid rubes” theme usually laid on Tea Party people.
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And even the secrecy doesn’t fit — the Tea Party completely open. No secrets, no nothing.
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What’s really scary about the Tea Party is their openly-stated strategy for enacting their agenda (which is also an open book). They aren’t a subset or an element of the Republican Party. They’re the Republicans’ Mongol hordes.
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They’re not the tools of the party leaders. They intend to use the party as its tool. What they’re doing is best described as a hostile takeover. They’re planning on taking out enough establishment Republicans in primaries, “pour encourager les autres,” to make certain that the survivors get the message.
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Then, come November, they’re going to take out enough Democrats to at least put the brakes on the Obama/Reed/Pelosi agenda — and reverse as much of it as they can.
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No secret plans. No denials. No covert agendas.
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And no secret puppet masters pulling the strings and funding the whole thing. Just the power of individuals uniting.
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Some of you find it scary? I find it positively refreshing.
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J.
I find aggressive social conservatism scary instead of refreshing, no matter who is pushing it, be they “puppet masters” or “regular people.”
“No secret plans. No denials. No covert agendas.
. And no secret puppet masters pulling the strings and funding the whole thing. Just the power of individuals uniting.”
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And one day (like, say, when you actually bother to start fact checking what you say and believe) you’re going to get as big a surprise about this as you did when you finally saw that sea front property in Topeka, Kansas you picked up for such a bargain price.
Jerry, I’ve been to some Tea Party events, and paid close attention to the whole movement. Can you say the same?
. Anti-abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
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Pro-Creationism and anti-evolution.
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Abolish the EPA.
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Abolish the Department of Education.
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Not just anti-gay rights, but in a few cases backgrounds that are just plain full on anti-gay.
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What you’re doing is projecting your stereotype of the social conservative movement on to the Tea Party, and it just doesn’t fit. Yes, there are some who feel that way, but there are plenty who disagree — and they are more concerned with the actual issues they put forward.
. When people peek behind the curtain and see who is actually funding and organizing the biggest Tea Party events we see the names of long time hard Conservative (and in a few cases Evangelical) Republican players and supporters. While many of the regular people who show up at events may well be less than extreme or idiotic; the power players in the group and the results of their actions are nothing new in the Republican Party.
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Oh, horse hockey. LOOK at a Tea Party rally. How much funding does it take to put one together? Everyone brings their own signs; there are no mass-produced signs and banners and T-Shirts (like you’ll see at any good liberal rally) handed out. And organizing one isn’t tough; there’s this thing called “the internet” that lets people communicate incredibly quickly and cheaply.
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So, Jerry, you obviously know who’s behind the curtain, pulling the puppet strings. (No offense, Mrs. PAD. He started the metaphor.) Enlighten us. Give us names of individuals and organizations that are secretly running things.
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Ðìçk Armey? He wishes. He’s an opportunist who sees which way the crowd is running, and is trying to run ahead of it to look like a leader.
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The Koch family? Please. They mainly work through institutions and funding, and the Tea Party has no use for either.
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On the flip side, I can give you chapter and verse of the left’s institutionalized rallying. I know that that’s the paradigm you’re more familiar with, but it just doesn’t apply here. And you can’t make it fit.
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The best precedent is the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60’s. Yes, there are leaders, but the cause is bigger than them. Take out a leader, the cause will shrug and move on. Accuse them of being the pawns of some grand conspiracy (Communists then, Klansmen or racists or fascists or whatever now), and they’ll just laugh at you and keep going.
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Jerry, you’re a prisoner of your own prejudices and preconceptions and bigotries. That’s your right, and you’re entitled to your own opinions. But you’re not entitled to your own facts.
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Now scamper off to the Kossacks or the DUmmies or Puffington Host or whoever supplies you with your latest talking points and conspiracy theories, and bring ’em on back. I could use some more laughs.
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J.
. “Jerry, I’ve been to some Tea Party events, and paid close attention to the whole movement. Can you say the same?”
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Yes, I can. I’ve even had the joy of arresting a few of them and a few counter-protesters.
. “What you’re doing is projecting your stereotype of the social conservative movement on to the Tea Party, and it just doesn’t fit. Yes, there are some who feel that way, but there are plenty who disagree — and they are more concerned with the actual issues they put forward.”
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No, what I’m doing is pointing out what the Tea Party candidates that the Tea Party supported in this year’s primaries have actually stated as views and beliefs themselves and partly campaigned on. So, yeah, those are the actual issues some of them are and have been putting forward.
. “Oh, horse hockey. LOOK at a Tea Party rally. How much funding does it take to put one together? Everyone brings their own signs; there are no mass-produced signs and banners and T-Shirts (like you’ll see at any good liberal rally) handed out. And organizing one isn’t tough; there’s this thing called “the internet” that lets people communicate incredibly quickly and cheaply.”
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I like the way you changed the argument of both of these points from what I actually said to what you wished I had said so that you could then address the wrongness of them. First you slightly twist what I said about the people the Tea Party has been getting elected in the primaries and argue as if I was addressing the majority of the regular folks in the Tea Party and here you simply drop the part where I said, “funding and organizing the biggest Tea Party events,” in forming your response and simply reply as if I had said any old, little neighborhood Tea Party.
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I pointed out that I was talking about the biggest events for a reason. The biggest events, the ones that draw the A-List Tea Party rock stars, get a week’s worth of run up coverage and promotion on Fox News and set some of the Tea Party’s public tone and agenda have a lot of astroturf fingers in the mix. That astroturf traces back to the same old Republican players more often than not and, surprise, surprise, the end result of these events is a rah-rah-rah vote Republican event.
. “Everyone brings their own signs; there are no mass-produced signs and banners and T-Shirts (like you’ll see at any good liberal rally) handed out.”
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Okay, that’s a lie and a documented one. At the largest rallies and at the DC events there were identical signs being handed out and mass produced t-shirts. This practice was nixed in part because it made it easy to point out the fact that things weren’t as grass roots and they were trying to sell these events. But, again, I did use the example of the largest events. I can understand you having to change what I said a bit and argue your point as if I was talking about every little neighborhood rally though. It’s easier for you that way.
. “Ðìçk Armey? He wishes. He’s an opportunist who sees which way the crowd is running, and is trying to run ahead of it to look like a leader.
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$250,000 was has been pledged to TV and radio ad campaigning for Christine O’Donnell’s campaign by The Tea Party Express (made famous just a while back for their racism problem created by TPE leader Mark Williams and his wonderful sense of humor.) TPE gets a lot of funding and support from several “grass roots” groups that are in fact created and run by Ðìçk Army.
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The Koch family? Please. They mainly work through institutions and funding, and the Tea Party has no use for either.”
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Yeah. I know the tired routine. The Tea Party is all grassroots and never takes money from people like the Koch Brothers even when they in fact do. What really helps the Tea Party maintain this illusion is that they don’t legally have to reveal who their donors are.
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And, of course, it was just a mom and pop Tea Party member who was the single person who donated $1 million to Tea Party Patriots back around the 21st of September.
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The simple fact with the Koch Brothers is that they are a major funder of Americans for Prosperity and AfP is a major funder for the Tea Party. Koch industries also helps to fund Ðìçk Army’s Freedom works which helps fund various Tea Party groups.
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But, of course, the Tea Party “has no use for” either “institutions and funding” in your world so it must be true in the real one.
. “Jerry, you’re a prisoner of your own prejudices and preconceptions and bigotries. That’s your right, and you’re entitled to your own opinions. But you’re not entitled to your own facts.
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Now scamper off to the Kossacks or the DUmmies or Puffington Host or whoever supplies you with your latest talking points and conspiracy theories, and bring ‘em on back. I could use some more laughs.”
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If you want a good laugh there’s this political blog called Wixbang. Funny as hëll. Especially when some of the writers flog as facts things debunked months earlier. From time to time I drop in and read it for a giggle. You should try it some time.
“Jerry, you’re a prisoner of your own prejudices and preconceptions and bigotries.”
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Jay Tea, Jerry is a personal friend of mine and I can tell you that the truth about him is exactly the opposite of your perception. He’s one of the most well-informed and fair-minded people I know. He’s as likely to bìŧçh about liberals as he is about conservatives, and as quick to call “bûllšhìŧ” on Democrats as he is on Republicans. Need I point out that in this very thread he criticized a certain percentage of Obama supporters?
ditto to what Bill said. Mega dittos!
The Bills know of what they speak. I have proof.
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Okay… The Tea Party or anybody else with pull needs to back this guy. I have no idea what he stands for, but I will pay good money to see the news media and cable talk guys try to say his name on screen with a straight face.
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John Assalone, Candidate for State Senate RI 21st District. (Independent) http://www.congress.org/election/candidate/id/182117
A candidate you can get behind?
An asset to the party?
I’ve noticed odd named for people in politics for some time now. My favorite was Ross Perot’s campaign manager: Orson Swindle.
I can see the news spots now–When Rhode Island tries to get a little cheeky, Assalone Has A Sit In….
I’m gonna sum this up pretty simply.
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Modern Political Discourse:
Category 1: Far Left Nut Jobs
Category 2: Reasonable Left Leaning Individuals
Category 3: Reasonable Right Leaning Individuals
Category 4: Far Right Nut Jobs
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People in categories 1 and 2 have an easier time arguing against and critiquing category 4. People in categories 3 and 4 have an easier time arguing against and critiquing category 1. It’s much easier, and more emotionally empowering, to fight against horrific racists/communists/eldritch rather than reasoned people who disagree with you.
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This was an obnoxious article. What did it accomplish? What details did it bring to light? It was cute, that’s all. Don’t, for the love of god, say “Well, what has the opposing side published recently?” That’s a schoolyard argument and I can’t stand it. They should both be chastised for their lack of quality and substance.
When I say I want my country back, for me it means I’m sick of the government, all parties, telling me how bad and racist I am because I want to keep most of what I work for and continue to work for.
I’m tired of supporting crack heads and prisoners, I’m tired of reading stories about people who have cell phones, cable television, newer than five year old cars, saying they can’t afford healthcare, oh and they are saying this while outside movie theaters or restaurants.
I’m tired of the government putting police, fire and teachers first on the cut list, how about cutting the things that are really draining the money.
I’m tired of hearing how great unions are while all the union type jobs head overseas, I’m tired of being considered a racist because I think you should speak understandable English if you live and work here. I’m tired of being considered uncharitable because I don’t want to give half or more of my earnings to the government.
So maybe saying I want my country back is the wrong thing to say, so I’ll start saying the government has stopped representing me and I want new attitudes there and won’t vote for anyone in office regardless of party till it changes.
It sounds as though you’d mostly make common cause witht the Libertarians. I’m not a Libertarian (The Green Party mostly represents me) but I respect that they mean what they say about supporting smaller government (which the Republicans claim to, and then get into office and disprove while still claiming to support it) and personal freedoms.
Everything we claim ownership of outside of our own bodies is only ours by the grace of fortune and the social contract. Take a moment to consider this before you get overly possessive of anything you imagine to be ‘yours’.
There is no them, there is only us.
If I have a tumor I have it removed, a pimple I pop it, when the nails get too long they are clipped and discarded.
Can I apply these principals to ‘us’? Or is the survival of ‘us” not important?
There is another serious problem I have with Tea Party. And that is some of the individuals involved that they have not distanced themselves from, but in fact have embraced.
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Such as Glenn Beck, who has a far greater disrespect of Godwin’s Law than I ever realized: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093005267.html
To Steve H I must point out that if we keep on imprisoning more inmates than any other First World country it is absolutely necessary to pay for the prisons, staffing and services. We can assume the large majority of inmates would be very happy to leave, but something (walls, guards, machine guns) keeps stopping them.
The right is fond of sending offenders to prison.
The left is fond of treating prisoners humanely (and conforming to state, federal and international law, which seems like a good thing).
Weariness of paying for prisons and prisoners is a non-argument. Let moderate Democrats and Republicans hash out appropriate taxes and outlays, rather than pining for the incoherent.
The last estimate i read, we are paying about 38k per year per prisoner. I think less tv, workout equipment etc., you know quit making them comfortable would cost less. But maybe not.
It just doesn’t seem reasonable to me to pay more for prisoners than say toll booth employees, not even to mention many teachers and policeman in my county.
But hey its more humane to treat the bad well, and make the honest hard working struggle.
isn’t that the way of the left?
Well, for starters, we could stop sending drug addicts to jail. Spending 38K to stop someone from killing themselves with a choice to use drugs by, instead, sending them to a place where they can be beaten and raped…doesn’t make sense to me from either a financial or moral standpoint.
No, but it’s the way of the right to paint the left that way. The left instituted most of the programs designed to ease the struggle of the hard working that the right wants to do away with.
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PAD
Which program targets the working? Don’t most target the non-working, can’t work, won’t work group of people?
Ah ah ah. It’s tricky to shift the goal posts when the stuff you just said is still on display. You split the population into two convenient groups: “Bad” and “honest hard working.” That’s what I responded to. Now suddenly you’re expanding “bad” to people who have, for instance, worked their whole lives through to retirement and now need assistance (Social Security, Medicare). Or people who are laid off or unemployed and, while looking for jobs, could use assistance (Food stamps). Or groups who don’t want to be discriminated against in their job search because of the color of their skin (the Civil Rights Act). Or people who are gainfully employed, but between jobs, and don’t have medical coverage (Obamacare).
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That’s the standard definition of being humane: Helping people when they need help.
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Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…
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PAD
This started with talk about prisoners, but you’re right bad is too general a term and each circumstance should be judged on its own.
I would put retired persons and unemployeed who are really tiring to get jobs in the hard working group. And yes anyone down on their luck deserves to be helped.
And maybe I am a terrible person, or just live in a worst place than most, but I am tired of helping the non disabled on disability people, the drug addicts that never have worked people etc.. Because I meet and know alot them.
And as I said in another reply I think Palin is a loon or whatever is a popular Alaskan bird.
Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.
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PAD
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Good old Glenn. The same idiot who thinks the Liberty Dime is a socialist symbol.
O sorry I should have known good ole sarah hated slavery.
What the heck is a liberty dime?
Watching House on the dvr, its pretty dang fine show.
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The Liberty Dime was a dime first introduced back in 1916 as a companion piece to the Liberty quarters and half dollars. It was so named because the dime had the head of Lady Liberty on it. The back side of the dime has a fasces wrapped with an olive branch to represent America’s readiness for war in those times and its desire for peace. Sculptor Adolph A. Weinman won a 1915 competition to create the image for the new dime with this design. He did tweak Liberty’s helmet by adding small wings to, in his words, represent liberty and freedom of thought.
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An important note here is that the fasces is a symbol that was altered quite a bit and then adopted/hijacked by the fascist movement some years after this dime was first minted. But prior to that, and still today in some places, it was used for any reason but fascism. The fasces appears on such things as the American flag that flies in the U.S. House, the National Guard Bureau insignia, on the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building, the Mace of the House of Representatives, the seal of the U.S. Senate, on a frieze on the facade of the United States Supreme Court building and was even incorporated into, of all things, the Lincoln Memorial.
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It was a symbol of freedom.
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So, of course, Glenn Beck, master of blithering ignorance and fact free lectures on history for the gullible and stupid, spent an entire show one day “teaching” his audience what this thing really was. It was the “Mercury Dime” and the image on the front of it was the god Mercury. The fasces, again, a symbol not hijacked by the fascist movement until much later, was proof of the dime’s true meaning. It was to show solidary with the political Fascist movements in Europe. The architect of this nefarious scheme to undermine freedom and the true American way of life? Why, according to Glenn’s fact free history of the US, that notorious progress communist and Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
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The “Mercury Dime” was, in Glenn’s alternate reality, the American Fascist’s who then controlled much of out government sending a message to the fascists in Europe that we were on their side. Not sure how even Glenn works that one into history very easily since we entered into WWI in 1917 and, to the best of the reality based community’s knowledge, fought against the fascists. Oh, and it was Wilson who was one of the voices pushing for war and called it “an act of high principle and idealism” and “a crusade to make the world safe for democracy.”
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But by the end of Glenn’s show, and with several million drooling idiots watching from their sofas and hanging on his every word, Glenn has turned a symbol of liberty and of the US’s resolve to fight if necessary even while desiring peace into proof that the Progressives have been fighting to shape this country into a fascist-socialist dreamland for at least a century and has had the power of the White House behind it when Democracy hating, fascist friendly guys like Woodrow Wilson were in charge.
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It also doesn’t help Glenn’s case much that his explanation of fascism as a movement is usually wrong to a large degree. But then Glenn and his fans and followers never seem to care much for facts so that shouldn’t be too surprising.
Thanks Jerry, Glenn does put a lot of square pegs in round holes doesn’t he?
The fasces is a symbol used in the Roman republic, and since many political systems were inspired by the Roman Republic, that symbol got around. The Fascists in Italy were inspired by the Romans, but so were the Americans (Republic, Senate, Eagle, Capitol Building and most of the Architecture in DC), and the French, and many others.
Fascism only started in Italy during WWI as a marginal party, and only took over in 1922, and only in the 30s became common in other places.
A small correction: in WWI the US fought the German Empire and not fascists. In WWII the US fought the Fascists in Italy, and Japan and Germany who were also inspire by Italian fascism + some other stuff.
Fascism and Communism are not the same thing. Fascism split from communism during and after WWI.
The label fascist is extremely overused.
I think Jerry is substantially correct in his assessment, though I think the fasces is more accurately a symbol of power, not freedom. On the Liberty Dime the fasces has an olive branch wrapped around it, which some have interpreted as symbolizing that the United States was ready for war or peace, whichever may come.
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It’s a lovely design. Been a long time since one showed up in my change…come to think of it, with a bank card it’s been a long time since I had change.
. “A small correction: in WWI the US fought the German Empire and not fascists. In WWII the US fought the Fascists in Italy, and Japan and Germany who were also inspire by Italian fascism + some other stuff.”
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I know. Fascism as an organized movement didn’t really start until 1919 or 1920. There were early signs and aspects in various groups before then, but the declared movement with major symbols, platforms, etc didn’t start until then.
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I should have made the one line more clear and I alluded to it by pointing out that Glenn’s definitions of Fascism as a movement are largely wrong, but I was writing that bit from the POV of Glenn’s error ridden commentaries about who was what in Europe back then.
. “I think Jerry is substantially correct in his assessment, though I think the fasces is more accurately a symbol of power, not freedom.”
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True. However I was speaking as to what the overall symbol of the dime was meant to represent as per the description by the designer in the contest. The combination of power (willingness to go to war if forced) and the desire for peace combined with the Lady was meant to be a symbol of freedom.
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Sorry I wasn’t as clear on some points as I could have been. Long night on patrol last night and I was a bit fried.
The important thing is that Glenn Beck is a nut promoting ignorance.
The funny thing is, with all the perfectly legitimate reasons to dislike Wilson–he was an awful racist, he was dismissive of free speech, he began the war on drugs that has been such a (snark) great success, his refusal to compromise effectively destroyed any chance of the league of nations to succeed, he wielded a heavy hand in his dealings with Latin America, and even after a stroke left him seriously incapacitated, he refused to step down or even let the public or congress know the full extent of his condition.
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For his hard-line segregationist, pro-KKK positions alone he does not deserve his unfathomably high rankings. Bottom tier president, in my book.
Bill M
I’ve seen some pretty old addicts, so its a slow kill at best. Anywho whom would you put in jail and what would you do to penalize the addicts?
The fact that you’re more interested in penalizing addicts than, say, treating and curing them, says plenty about how callous you’ve become right there.
Nice quick judgment Sheilaleft, first off I’m sure you know there is no ‘cure’ for addiction there are no cured addicts just non-using addicts.
I was just wanting to know if Bill Mulligan would penalize them since he said to quit putting them in jail.
If you want to pay to treat them you are more than welcome to do so.
“Penalizing” drug addicts fits right in with certain kinds of Christianity-inspired conservatism. After all, surrendering to baser physical pleasures while not living productive lives is the sort of sin that they hate the most, and they hunger to punish people for it.
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Obviously, I’m not defending what drug addicts do to themselves and their families. My brother is one of them. And the hëll he’s put us through in the last years, before seeking treatment, is far, far worse than any “afterschool special” you care to watch.
Sheilaleft,
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And this says a lot about the conversation we shouldn’t waste our time having with Steve H.
So sorry kneejerk reaction to being called callous.
Nothing I could do would be much worse than what they do to themselves. But it’s their choice. Get them therapy if they want it, still cheaper than jail.
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If they are feeding their addiction without robbing me why should I care? People make lots of destructive decisions in their lives and while I may weep for the people they were and the potential they waste, by what right do I force a change on them–particularly when that change involves incarcerating them with killers and rapists?
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I’ve toyed with the idea of actually letting people register as drug addicts and have the drugs provided to them. Of course, they would have to surrender certain rights, like the right to vote or own a gun. Maybe give them a nice little room in exchange for sterilization. Anyone who thinks that’s a great deal is not likely to be a good candidate for rehab anyway so we might as well make their remaining years comfortable. And still, wayyyyyyyy cheaper than jail.
If its cheaper then I’m for it, though I don’t know why we need to make them comfortable.
Surrendering rights would never pass the left, even if it’s reasonable.
As far as the right to vote, I would not let anyone vote who didn’t pay taxes for the level they are voting for, i.e. no federal tax paid no voting for president. Since we all pay local sales tax they could vote for local issues.
lest I seem tender hearted, keep in mind that one reason I would like to free up all that jail space is so that the real criminals can be kept there forever. You get 30 years to life you stay in for at least 30 years and unless you are some kind of mother@#$%ing class A cancer curing model prisoner you can expect your sorry ášš to be buried there. None of this get 50 years and get out in 7 with “good behavior”. You’re in jail. You’d better</i. have good behavior. Want a reward for it? Here's a cookie.
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I will happily pay more taxes if they are 100% guaranteed to go to the building of new prisons for murderers and rapists and people who cannot go 2 weeks without an arrest. I'll organize a bake sale. few things make life better than the removal of criminal elements from it.
I would prefer to just legalise all drugs completely, and don’t waste any tax money trying to discourage drug use in any way. Just let people live their own lives the way they want.
How was Rush Limbaugh penalized for his addiction?
He was sentenced to life…being Rush Limbaugh. Hëll, that has to count as some kind of punishment. The question is: for whom?
I do pay to treat them. It’s called paying my taxes. I’m kind of okay with that.
O thats nice, sat ya back a lot did it?
I thought Elisberg’s commentary was too glib. I’m not a fan of the Tea Party by any means, but I think Elisberg was more interested in caricaturing teabaggers than in finding meaning in what many members of the Tea Party are saying. I believe the Tea Party is wrongheaded and misguided, but nevertheless are worth understanding.
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Despite many teabaggers’ claims of perfect unity, there are some potential schisms within the movement. Part of the movement is made up of libertarians who believe the Tea Party should stay out of social issues, while another wing of the movement is both fiscally and socially conservative. It’s not possible, nor is it useful, to tar them all with one brush.
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My real issue with the Tea Party isn’t the racist wingnuts at its fringes, because every large movement has a lunatic fringe. What’s truly ironic about the Tea Party is the movement’s claim that it wants to “restore” a Constitutional government that matches the founding fathers’ intent. What they’re trying to “restore” is something that never quite existed. David Brooks wrote an excellent editorial in a recent edition of the New York Times in which he pointed out that presidents as far back as George Washington found ways to leverage the power of government to create social and economic change. If many members of the Tea Party truly knew and understood history, they might be suprised at just how “liberal” the Founding Fathers were in some cases.
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(Mind you, Brooks is quite a critic of Obama and Congressional Democrats, and he believes Obama’s economic stimulus package and health care reform were overreaches on the part of liberals. He believes more targeted and limited bills would have served us better in both cases.)
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What bothers me about the Tea Party is what bothers me about the electorate in general right now. The national mood is ultimately being driven by an emotional, knee-jerk reaction to some really thorny and complex problems that won’t lend themselves to a national temper-tantrum. As Bill Mulligan pointed out, the only way out of this wilderness we’re in right now is to restore robust growth to our economy. Unfortunately, our economy is suffering from structural problems created by policies from both Democrats and Republicans going back decades. There’s no easy, painless way out of this, despite what many would have us believe.
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What really concerns me is what will happen if the Republicans sweep back into power and, as I believe is likely, fail just as miserably as the Democrats at making a dent in the nation’s economic woes. I think a lot of people will become disillusioned with the whole system and rather than forming a third party will simply tune out of politics again. That would be rather sad… and dangerous.
I believe that what has been happening for a while is that more and more people are leaving the big 2 parties and putting “Decline to state” on their ballot. I don’t have the numbers on hand, but I believe that 3rd parties are growing in numbers and movements. As someone who’d like to see more variety in govenrment, I’m for it. My biggest problem with the Tea Party is that they seem to have exchanged their Libertarian elements for GOP ones. I don’t see that as a step towards variety.
Excellent post Bill.
It seems that while the world becomes more complicated and needs complex understanding and complex solutions, public discourse is becoming very simplistic, shallow, shrill and vicious.
I hoped that Obama had the intellectual ability to deal with this complex world, but I don’t know how well he’s doing in that regard.
I agree with micha–great points, Bill.
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Victory in November could be the very definition of the double edged sword. People will expect results. Do these folks have the courage to make the tough choices? Or, having tasted power, will they do anything it takes to avoid risking its loss?
I hoped that Obama had the intellectual ability to deal with this complex world, but I don’t know how well he’s doing in that regard.
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It takes two to tango. Which isn’t to say I’m simply blaming ‘the other side’, but I’m not sure many want to deal with the complex world regardless.
When I said I don’t know how well he’s doing I wasn’t being sarcastic. I really don’t know. I haven’t been following his successes, failures and public perception close enough to say either way. I know he’s having a difficult time, but I don’t know to what degree.
Thomas Friedman’s makes a case that there will be a serious third party challenge in 2012. Can’t say that I see the evidence of that yet. Personally, I think that party changes require two things: people really pìššëd øff about the way things are, and just the right personality. (to which some people will probably say, well *duh*) Historically, I’d say that Lincoln counted, Maybe Nixon (for bad reasons) Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.
Public discourse has always been simplistic, shallow, shrill and vicious. In America, we’ve had now 6 decades of polarization, of people demonizing their adversaries, of arguments based on emotion and which “team” you root for. I’m not sure the Tea Party changed things that much.
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Perhaps the real change is that before those arguments were more across generations. The young and cool and rebellious that were more liberal, the old and settled that were more conservative. It sounded a little like a family fight writ large
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I’ve been saying that a big change in the 2000s was that it became possible to be cool and conservative, and for people not to think you’re a white suburban aged mother for being conservative. And the Tea Party may be just this trend taken to the next logical level. Get together with your buddies and shout to the heavens that you’re a conservative.
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The dude that said the Tea Party was like the Civil Rights Movement was not so wrong (even though I think the Civil Rights crusade was a lot nobler than some comfortably middle-class folks being selfish). People get emotional, shout some slogans, feel like they’re committed and make a difference.
Jerry said, “The Liberty Dime was a dime first introduced back in 1916 as a companion piece to the Liberty quarters and half dollars.”
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I think I have a few of those. They look kind of cool.
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Bill Mulligan, talking about the liberty dime, said: “It’s a lovely design. Been a long time since one showed up in my change.”.
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A few years ago, I got a roll of 50 cent pieces from the bank, and mixed in with the Kennedy coins was an old Franklin 50 cent piece (from 1946, if memory serves).
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And speaking of coins, has anyone seen the new penny? I came across one the other day, and when I saw the reverse, these words sprang immediately to mind: “when Abraham Lincoln throws his mighty shield…”
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Jerry also said, “Good old Glenn. The same idiot who thinks the Liberty Dime is a socialist symbol.”.
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Can’t speak to that specific statement, since I neither watch nor listen to Glenn Beck, but it’s sad– almost depressing– how much wholesale ignorance is out there. You know the statement the Doctor made in “The Face of Evil”, “You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.”? I personally know people like that.
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Rick
“Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…”
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Really? Putting aside the fact you’re taking a cheap shot at Beck without a quote or anything to back it up:
1.) What exactly makes Back a “standard bearer”? This just shows the Republicans have truly been so powerless recently that you can’t even pick an officeholder to demonize. Boehner is no Gingrich after all. And yet the Dems still struggled to get things done. So you focus your energies on a TV commentator. Okay
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2.) You have an ex-president who feels that, darn it, if we had just been a bit more reasonable, slavery would have ended peacefully and therefore the Civil War was unnecessary.
. http://www.3nailsministries.org/2009/03/24/jimmy-carter-supports-american-slavery/
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I mean, sure, who knows how long it would have taken and how many blacks would have been victimized in the meantime? That’s the opinion of the sainted Jimmy Carter, who was merely the most powerful man on the planet at one time. And you want to make snide remarks abut a successful pundit? When this is one of the “elder statesmen” of your party? One who you helped grant extraordinary power? Have fun with that.
Are you under the impression that the Democratic Party has a “standard-bearer”? It is to laugh.
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Will Rogers said it best, back in the day: “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
But Republicans are constantly told that they DO have one…it’s just that who that person is seems to change depending on what conservative did or said something bad that day.
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I thought Rush Limbaugh was the boogeyman du jour but lately it’s been Beck or Palin…Gingridge gets trotted out now and again. If Angle or O’Donnel pull off an unlikely victory i suppose they will be the official Standard bearers. Whatever. So far the attacks do not seem to be greatly harming the party’s chances, which is a little alarming in that some of these folks are really pretty sub par. In a normal election cycle they would be non-entities but this time they are in the thick of the fight.
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I wish I could be as enthusiastic about a republican sweep as some of my friends are but I don’t see any great likelihood that it will make the needed difference.
“The sainted Jimmy Carter?”
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Are you high?
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PAD
Hey, you know he’s a jáçkášš, I know he’s a jáçkášš, Bill Clinton would probably like to stake him to an ant hill for a few hours…but he’s at least as popular among liberals as Glen Beck is among conservatives. More so, I would guess, but I don’t know if there are any poll numbers that would answer that.
Bill said: Hey, you know he’s a jáçkášš, I know he’s a jáçkášš, Bill Clinton would probably like to stake him to an ant hill for a few hours…but he’s at least as popular among liberals as Glen Beck is among conservatives. More so, I would guess, but I don’t know if there are any poll numbers that would answer that.
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I know people who respect his charity work (as do I), but I don’t know anyone who takes his political opinions seriously.
but he’s at least as popular among liberals as Glen Beck is among conservatives. More so, I would guess, but I don’t know if there are any poll numbers that would answer that.
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Do people, in looking back on his presidency, have a higher opinion on him now than they did then? Sure. That’s meaningless. Most presidents benefit from a nostalgic haze of forgetfulness, none more so than Ronald Reagan. So holding up after-the-fact opinion on his presidency hardly qualifies him as “sainted,” but just means that he gets the same post-presidency bump as most presidents (aside from Herbert Hoover,I suppose) receive.
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As for his humanitarian works, well, I found this from an ABC poll:
. (Carter) wins approval
for his post-presidency labors from large and roughly equal numbers of Democrats (79
percent) and Republicans (77 percent) alike.
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So there’s some basis for the claim that liberals approve of him…but, hey, so do conservatives. So it’s meaningless in terms of trying to ascribe him any sort of elevated influence or being of particular meaning to one side or the other.
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PAD
Really? Putting aside the fact you’re taking a cheap shot at Beck without a quote or anything to back it up:
If it bothers you that poor Glenn is being unfairly maligned, here’s a link to the audio of him actually saying that slavery was great at one point in time: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201010010026.
“If it bothers you that poor Glenn is being unfairly maligned, here’s a link to the audio of him actually saying that slavery was great at one point in time:”
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Yeah, I was out and about and channel surfed into that bit of his show. I actually paused for a minute thinking that he couldn’t possibly be saying what it sounded like he was saying. A few minutes later it became clear that, no, he was actually saying something even more mind bogglingly stupid. Slavery, on Planet Beck, wasn’t so bad a thing, innocent actually, and wasn’t even really evil when they were first bringing the slaves here. No it wasn’t evil until the government stepped in to regulate it. That’s when it became evil.
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This guy gets so much wrong, in both facts and simple concepts, about history that it’s absolutely amazing that anyone with over a 6th grade education takes anything he says about the subject seriously.
וֹYou are being unfair toward Beck. Based on what I heard (which is not much) it seems to me that he’s like a jazz musician. He has a theme: government is bad, it is responsible for anything bad. Given power it is going to ruin your life. That’s the beginning and end of everything he says. As a great jazz musician, he can take any subject or even any random word you can think of and start riffing with it and improvising around the same theme as the mood takes him. Whatever happens he gets exactly to the same point regardless of the actual subject or whatever things he said while he was talking. Now, you can’t hold him responsible for what he actually says while he gets there, it’s not like he’s actually thinking about it.
Sure, there’s only one straight line between point A and point B. But where’s the fun with that. There are infinite amount of crooked lines. Beck shouldn’t be held responsible for which one he happened to stumble on as he made his way to point B. For his fans what’s important is probably that he got to point B and that he did it very creatively.
After listening to as much of the Glenn beck passage as I could I think that A- that’s a few minutes of my life I’ll never have back and B- I’m not sure there are enough complete sentences and coherent thoughts to be able to fairly say he is claiming that slavery was great at one point until government screwed it up, as claimed.
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It’s possible he is trying, albeit in a really haphazard fashion, to make a valid point–there is reason to believe that slavery as it was practiced in the United States was pretty much a government created problem. The practice got it’s start here as indentured sevitude, a race neutral practice but bit by bit the governing bodies made it worse and worse until we ended up with the horrible conditions we had pre-civil war. Not that indentured servitude was any day at Disneyland but it was a lot better than slavery. At least it had an end point. But then they began to pass laws that made it permanent for blacks and then they passed laws that made the children of a slave also slaves, no matter the status of the father and then they passed laws that actually punished slave owners for not punishing their slaves if they made certain transgressions, etc etc…Slavery, by the time it ended, was an institution that could only survive here with direct enforcement by the government.
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Of course, one must also acknowledge that it was government edict that ended it as well, so Becks point, if that’s what it is, that government can only make things worse does not hold.
. “I’m not sure there are enough complete sentences and coherent thoughts to be able to fairly say he is claiming that slavery was great at one point until government screwed it up, as claimed.”
. Beck: “The President is exactly right when he said ’slaves sitting around the campfire didn’t know when slavery was going to end, but they knew that it would. And it took a long time to end slavery.’ yes it did. But it also took a long time to start slavery.
. And it started small, and it started with seemingly innocent ideas. And then a little court order here, and a court order there and a little regulation here and a little more regulation there. And before we knew it, America had slavery.
. It didn’t come over in a ship to begin with, as an evil slave trade. The government began to regulate things because the people needed answers and needed solutions. It started in a court room then it went to the legislatures. That’s how slavery began. And it took a long time to enslave an entire race of people, and convince another race of people that they were somehow or another, less than them. But it can be done.”
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Well, “it started with seemingly innocent ideas” and it “didn’t come over in a ship to begin with, as an evil slave trade” according to Beck. And the above bit that’s the easy to find on the web part wasn’t his only reference to the idea. I heard a chunk of it while out running errands last week. Beck and Beck fans can claim that he was trying to say anything they want; what he said, and then reiterated, was insane and showed his typical absence of knowledge about history.
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Slavery wasn’t evil when it was first bringing slaves over here to America. It only became evil once regulations were put in place. Uhm… Yeah…
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Like I said, not only is Beck’s base point insane, but it once again showcases his towering ignorance of history in general and in the details.
Ugh, I really don’t want to be defending this guy, because it might mean I have to start listening to him and this is really not my thing–I respect that he must be connecting to someone but what I’ve seen is as unwatchable as Olberman and most of these other popular pundits.
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But again, if you look at how bit by bit indentured servitude, a temporary race neutral situation that was entered into voluntarily, became slavery, a race based permanent institution that one was born into and lasted forever, one can see “And then a little court order here, and a court order there and a little regulation here and a little more regulation there. And before we knew it, America had slavery.” as not inaccurate.
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Was indentured servitude “innocent”? Not to my way of thinking but it was evidently preferable to whatever hellish life those who chose it were escaping from. It was better than slavery, that much must be granted.
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If beck is saying that slavery, when it first came over in a ship, wasn’t so bad, yeah, that’s insane. If he is saying that it id NOT first show up as a slave ship but instead was a legislative mutation of an existing institution (indentured servants) and from that change we soon went to slave ships and all the other horrors–that’s dependable, though I don’t think he articulated as well as I could, for a considerably smaller yearly income, I might add. based just on this quote i couldn’t honestly take the latter interpretation as a legit one but there could well be more.
Bill, if Beck was talking about slavery and indentured servitude were related and how government regulations made… Well, he’d still be somewhat off the mark since slavery existed alongside indentured servitude and was bad/evil before there was even an America.
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But the totality of what Beck said is what made it both insane and staggeringly wrong. Beck was doing his usual bit about hating Obama and hating Obama’s healthcare plan. Fine. But he then started discussing how things like healthcare, health insurance and other such things are all well and good and not in the least bit bad things until the government gets into the act of regulating them; just like slavery.
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This is not me or some liberal leaning site putting words into Beck’s mouth. This is what he said and this is the analogy he used on the air last week. Healthcare, health insurance and other things like it are all good things until the government get involved with regulating them just like slavery was. That was Beck’s big historical analogy and point and there isn’t really much that can be said to defend the mind numbing stupidity of it.
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And best of all is that Beck didn’t even walk it back after saying it. It would be one thing if he came back from the next break and said that he was a bit tired that day and that he didn’t use the best analogy but his point was [blank] and it still stood. No, he actually made at least one more reference to reinforce the rightness of his slavery point before I switched to another station.
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Beck’s towering stupidity here would be like someone who is against the death penalty saying that healthcare and health insurance was , you know, like murder in that it wasn’t really all that bad, rather innocent really, until the state started regulating the practice of executing people convicted of crimes and only then did murder really become wrong.
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You’re debating the point by discussing the role the various governing bodies got involved with slavery and made it worse. That’s fine. Perfectly valid discussion. But that, for full context of why Beck’s point and yours are different, is not what Beck did. He started out on healthcare, explained that it was actually a good thing, stated that it was a bad thing if the government got in on regulating or providing it and then said that this was just like how slavery became evil.
. Planet Beck – Healthcare is like slavery in America. Healthcare, like slavery, isn’t a bad thing. Healthcare with government intervention, like slavery with government intervention, is bad/evil.
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Now I’m sure Beck isn’t a pro-slavery racist and probably doesn’t feel that slavery was actually a good thing, but this isn’t the first time he’s constructed an argument that hinged on slavery related historical facts where he’s 1- gotten facts wrong and 2- made an argument that comes across as saying that slavery wasn’t all that bad or that the abolition of slavery was bad.
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Again, my point isn’t that I think Beck really is a pro-slavery racist. My point is, as I pointed out above, that I’m just amazed that someone who makes as many factual errors about the past and the present that he makes daily as well as basing his nutty conspiracies that are swallowed by gullible idiots as truth is taken seriously by anyone with higher than a 6th grade education. Yet somehow, as evidenced by his audience demos and breakdowns, a large number of the beck faithful have indeed received more than a 6th grade education.
And somewhere right now Rick Sanchez is saying, “This idiot still has a gig and I’m unemployed?”
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PAD
Well, if conceding the point means I never have to listen to this Glenn beck again I’ll cheerfully do so!
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All signs are pointing toward the fact that in just a few short years the democrats have managed to so poison their brand that amazing opportunities for the GOP and conservatives are there for the taking…and, sadly, those who are taking it are not really the best of the breed. Though I guess one has to give credit to those who are able to take advantage of life’s opportunities. Sure would be nice if someone with the media savvy of Rush Limbaugh, the wit of William Buckley and the, I don’t know, pact with Satan that makes them inexplicably popular of Glenn Beck was able to take the reins.
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We are entering one f those times when we really need a leader. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Reagan, these were men who showed up at very bad times for the country and changed the course for the better. You don’t have to agree with everything they did and each made some undeniable errors, some of them almost unforgivable, but they were leaders. Some think that we are now in a position where such a leader can show up and thrive but it’s foolish to assume that this is something that will happen just because we desperately need it to. I hoped Obama would be like that but I’ve long since given up on that one. Can’t say I really see anyone on either side that seems a likely candidate for greatness. Some nice folks, some competent folks, but we may need something considerably more than that.
Well, I looked up slavery on Wikipedia and it turns out that in America, or at least in Virginia, slavery did evolve from indentured servitude. Or rather, that for a short while Virginians treated African slaves as indentured servants. But this is a unique American anomaly. It also doesn’t seem to be a case of government intervening as much as government reflecting different social norms at different times in America.
Glen Beck still sounds like an idiot.
Jerome, Carter isn’t exactly a greatly beloved or sainted figure to many Democrats these days. While few will find fault with his work with Habitat for Humanity, he’s not much of a poster boy for the modern Democrats. Now, if you want to play comparisons you need look little farther than here in Virginia.
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Governor Bob McDonnell decided that Virginia needed to return to observing Confederate History Month here in Virginia after it had been long ago left behind. Not an all together stupid thing by itself, but it gets better. He released a proclamation that discussed the Confederacy and the Civil War but failed to make any mention of slavery. Not an all together stupid thing by itself, but it gets better. He created a huge flap in the press because he was asked about the omission and declared that slavery wasn’t that big of a deal when it came to matters of the Confederacy or reasons for the Civil War.
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He quickly amended his proclamation after the press dust up to address slavery and state that it was a major evil that led to that war. McDonnell and Virginia A.G. Cuccinelli have also been less than admirable in their political attitudes towards gays and less than honorable or honest with some of their proposed schemes to implement new laws to get around the legality of abortion.
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It should also be noted that the last Governor Virginia had prior to McDonnell who pushed for this kind of thing was George Allen. George Allen, the guy who started his TV ad campaign for Governor of Virginia with an ad that had the Confederate flag displayed prominently in the background. George Allen, the guy who sometimes wore a Confederate flag lapel pin as Governor. George Allen, the guy who kept a mock up noose (and sometimes a small Confederate flag near it) in his home office and his official Governor’s office. George Allen, the guy who directed a racial slur for blacks that was common in his mother’s native country as a guy with a little more melanin in his skin than the average white guy.
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Unlike Carter, McDonnell is a guy that Republicans look at as a rising star in the party. There’s talk in the party of him being an excellent VP or P nomination for 2012. Allan was a guy that a lot of Republicans wanted to see run in 2008 and is still discussed fondly from time to time as a wildcard option for the national stage.
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Carter is a fading politician who is less and less popular amongst the base and mainstream Democrats each and every year. Allan was a guy who the Republicans talked about as their future a short while ago while McDonnell’s name is bandied about now as the possible future of the party.
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I know people who respect his charity work (as do I), but I don’t know anyone who takes his political opinions seriously.
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That makes me happy!
Jerry,
“Carter is a fading politician who is less and less popular amongst the base and mainstream Democrats each and every year.”
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That’s great that you think so. But the point still remains that PAD took it upon himself to call Beck a standard bearer for the Republican party, despite the fact that Beck bashes both parties equally and that, last I checked, he held no office nor desired to. And the others you mentioned – Allen, etc. are not anywhere on anyone’s radar as far as having “standard bearer” status either.
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The fact remains there is NO ONE in office to serve as a true political foil for Obama the way Gingrich was to Clinton. Hëll,the man he beat ran as sclerotic, limp campaign as anyone has seen. Except for a few jabs by Palin late, McCain hardly let Obama have it with both barrels. he was a as moderate a “standard bearer” as you are likely to get and he got trounced by an inexperienced candidate with an empty resume and shallow “Yes we can!” slogans.
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For all the talk of what Obama “inherited” someone should have the balls to tell him, “Yes. And you also as a result inherited a dispirited opposition party with no true foil and overwhelming majorities in both houses. So what he did he has had to struggle to do and he was unable to do a lot of what he wanted? That means he was unable to win over members of his own party. Pretty rich from a guy who said he was going to reach across the aisle and in his “I won” arrogance decided to do whatever he dámņ well pleased. So much for olive branches to moderates like McCain and Graham or even Collins at times. Now things are rough, it’s getting harder to blame Bush and there is no one Republican to point at. So the Left, from Obama to PAD, want to blame anyone who doesn’t think the way they do – from Tea Partiers, you know, “extremists” who want us to live withing our means” – to a political commentator because it’s so much easier to mock or look down on the other side than to actually listen to what they have to say. So much easier to try to marginalize them and demonize a guy on TV than it is to rethink your ideas or that others may have valid reasons for rejecting them so vehemently.
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Much easier for Obama and everyone else down the food chain to simply chalk up others’ opposition to gullibility, stupidity and ignorance. which coming from a bunch of people who were swooning at such nuanced, brilliant phrases like “We are the ones we have been waiting for” is pretty rich.
No reason to get angry about it–it isn’t working! Obama’s collapse in popularity is fueling the resurgence of the GOP–far more than anything the GOP has done, sorry to say–and the Democratic response has been weak. I just wish a better crop of conservatives had run this year.
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Which may be the great lesson of the tea party. The fact that these folks got off their áššëš, quit just complaining and ran! They were laughed at. Didn’t matter. And now you even have Barney Frank looking nervous. Imagine of the party had the foresight and confidence to have spent the last 2 years really nurturing a solid group of candidates, pulling businessmen and women, medical workers, ex military people, etc. yeah, there is some of that, but not enough.
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Maybe the parties have this but I have never heard about it. They need to recruit people who can serve as talent scouts, looking for talented local pols or other charismatic leaders, people to nurture and see if their promise can bear some fruit. It’s not something the seasoned politicians will do–that would be growing their own competition. if anything, they probably do all they can to discourage that kind of talent.
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(for that matter, why don’t the national parties pay people to do nothing but cruise the web and look for good ad ideas? I’ve seen stuff on blogs that are about 400 times more clever and effective than what the professionals come up with. But maybe that’s the problem–the pros probably have a lot of friends in the right places.)
“Yes. And you also as a result inherited a dispirited opposition party with no true foil and overwhelming majorities in both houses.
To an extent, your point that Obama has no Lex Luthor/Joker/Doctor Doom as his foil is correct.
Considering the way the GOP is in lockstep, I’d say it’s more apt to say he inherited the Borg.
“It’s not Obama’s fault that the other side, including McCain, chose not to take it and even abandoned things they themselves proposed when Obama accepted the ideas and said that they were good things to do.”
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Sorry, lost a bit of meaning when I editted. The “it” there is the olive branch.
Editted?
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&$%&&*%&%!!!!!!!
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“… when I edited.”
. Jerome: “That’s great that you think so. But the point still remains that PAD took it upon himself to call Beck a standard bearer for the Republican party,”
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Right now Beck might have more right to be called a standard bearer than Carter does. Carter was POTUS 40 years ago. He has since spent that time putting himself more and more on the outs with the mainstream and controlling powers of the party. He certainly didn’t do himself any favors by never letting go of his grudge with Kennedy, someone who could easily have been called a standard bearer right up until his death, and seemingly wanting to continue picking fights with the man even after his death. He’s a fading politician who has little or no real influence anymore.
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Beck, like it or not, has positioned himself as one of the two most prominent faces that get spoken of or referenced by both conservatives and liberals when talk of the Tea Party comes up. He jumped on the bandwagon early, promoted the hëll out of Tea Party events, coopted some events and gets featured as a Tea Party guest and speaker at their events with almost rock star status given to him by the movement. He’s used that status to promote and propel his other events such as the last one in DC as well. Even if he is not truly a “leader” of a Tea Party group he is seen as representing the Tea Party by many.
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Do note that the linked article that started the thread discusses the Tea Party.
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Since you and others have posted here that the Tea Party is basically what’s going to energize the Conservative movement and bring about the Republican sweep in November it can be argued that Glenn has certainly set himself up to be called a standard bearer for that movement and the party it chooses to support.
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Oh, and one screw up you made is that Peter never said that he was a Republican standard bearer. Peter’s quote-
. “Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…”
… “Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.”
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He said liberals. The opposite of that would be conservatives. And it’s not even like it’s something that Peter or the more left leaning out there came up with all by themselves. Pundits, regular people and talking heads on the Right have referred to Beck as a new standard bearer of the conservative movement.
. “despite the fact that Beck bashes both parties equally
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Yeah, and Matthews, Olbermann, Maddow and Schultz have all bashed both sides. They’ve all bashed Democrats right up to and including Obama. Hasn’t stopped many, included you, from calling one or all of them liberals and Democrat operatives on the TV. It shouldn’t either since other than with Matthews it’s 100% correct that they’re liberals. They often attack Democrats for not being “Democrat” or liberal enough. Likewise, Beck attacks Republicans when they fail to be “Republican” or conservative enough.
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Beck claims to be something other than a Republican, but he promotes and pushes for the election of Republicans and he basically made it clear at this years CPAC event and on the first show after that that he considered the Republicans his team. Saying he’s something other than a Republican just because he likes to claim he’s not even as he promotes them, speaks at their events and pushes for their election simply because he attacks them from time to time for not being conservative enough is as disingenuous in it’s way as saying a guy like Ed Shultz isn’t a Democrat.
. “and that, last I checked, he held no office nor desired to.”
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Doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to be an elected office holder to be the standard bearer for a movement or political idea.
. “And the others you mentioned – Allen, etc. are not anywhere on anyone’s radar as far as having “standard bearer” status either.”
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Nor did I say that they were. But they (well, more so McDonnell at this point) are rising stars in the party that get much buzz and discussion from time to time about their great future in the party. McDonnell is certainly someone who is more embraced by his party right now than Carter is by his.
. “Except for a few jabs by Palin late, McCain hardly let Obama have it with both barrels. he was a as moderate a “standard bearer” as you are likely to get and he got trounced by an inexperienced candidate with an empty resume and shallow “Yes we can!” slogans.”
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What actually hurt McCain more than anything was that he did run to the Right. He went back on some old stands and positions and played to his base on some matters where the base was previously not happy with his positions. He failed to win over some of that base and he lost a lot of moderates and middle of the road voters who may have helped put him over the top in a few key states.
. “For all the talk of what Obama “inherited” someone should have the balls to tell him, “Yes. And you also as a result inherited a dispirited opposition party with no true foil and overwhelming majorities in both houses. So what he did he has had to struggle to do and he was unable to do a lot of what he wanted? That means he was unable to win over members of his own party.”
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So you would be happier if the Democrats all group thinked and voted party line in favor of every Obama idea?
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Did Obama have issues with his own party? Yeah, because there are a lot of moderate Democrats in both houses. Both Senators from Virginia are are moderate to conservative Democrats depending on the issue. There are quite a few other Democrats who are the same. So, yeah, he actually had to fight to get some of his own party to agree with him on issues and to vote for certain things. I certainly prefer that to the rubberstamp majority that Bush had for a while and I would really hate the Democrats a lot right now if they acted like the congress that they replaced. I like the fact that there are dissenting voices in the Democratic Party and wish there had been more in the Republican Party form 2000 to 2006. The mess we’re in now might not be as bad if there had been some.
. “Pretty rich from a guy who said he was going to reach across the aisle and in his “I won” arrogance decided to do whatever he dámņ well pleased. So much for olive branches to moderates like McCain and Graham or even Collins at times.”
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Okay, that’s a wee bit disconnected from what actually happened. Obama did several things that he actually ran on as a candidate. Obama the candidate ran on, amongst other things, healthcare reform. He got elected so that’s one of the things he did. He also did offer the olive branch to the other side. He even used some of the ideas offered by Republicans. Yeah, they say that he didn’t when a national press camera is in front of them, but then they turn around and talk about what a great thing they did that made it into the fill-in-the-blank- bill when back in their home districts.
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Hëll, even here (and elsewhere with others Republicans) we have Obama critic Governor McDonnell talking about how bad Obama’s programs are while grabbing a ton of bailout cash to help balance the state’s budget with. Obama is bad and the programs are bad but he’ll still grab them and use them to balance his bad budget and then claim all the credit for himself and Team Republican afterwards.
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It’s not Obama’s fault that the other side, including McCain, chose not to take it and even abandoned things they themselves proposed when Obama accepted the ideas and said that they were good things to do. You can’t have only one side offer to work with the other side. It simply doesn’t work that way. If you and I had to work on something together and every single idea you presented I turned down or every idea of mine that you expressed interest in I suddenly turn on a dime on and did a 180 so that I now disliked it… Well, I don’t think you would find it fair or honest of people who said that whatever we were working on didn’t get done or didn’t get done well because Jerome wouldn’t work with Jerry and just couldn’t get it done. It really does take two to tango. One person doing the Tango and the other coming to box just doesn’t work too well.
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Plus. look at the recent Tea Party wins that we’ve been discussing. Tea Party candidates won in primaries in part by pointing out that the incumbent Republican voted at least once with Obama. The Tea Party wins boil down to this message; if you have ever compromised and worked with Obama then you’re ášš is out on the street. The party of “no” working hard to become the party of “hëll no and f#ck you too while we’re at it.”
. “Now things are rough, it’s getting harder to blame Bush and there is no one Republican to point at. So the Left, from Obama to PAD, want to blame anyone who doesn’t think the way they do – from Tea Partiers, you know, “extremists” who want us to live withing our means” – to a political commentator because it’s so much easier to mock or look down on the other side than to actually listen to what they have to say. So much easier to try to marginalize them and demonize a guy on TV than it is to rethink your ideas or that others may have valid reasons for rejecting them so vehemently.”
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Actually, the problem with that statement is that a number of people here, including a few moderate righties, have listened to Beck, have listened to Beck’s words and have thought about them only to find that beck is an idiot at best and a used car salesman peddling lies, hate and stupidity at worst. And it’s certainly untrue that most of the people here who have stated this about Glenn Beck haven’t thought about the reasons that Obama is failing and the reasons that some dislike where he’s going right now and are in fact people who have expressed concern themselves about Obama and where’s he’s taking us on certain things. Beck can be a lie peddling idiot and Obama can be a bad President in the same world. The two things can mutually exist and be true at the same time.
. “Much easier for Obama and everyone else down the food chain to simply chalk up others’ opposition to gullibility, stupidity and ignorance.”
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When as many people listen to Beck’s radio show and watch his TV show do so and then turn out for his rallies and talk about how insightful, honest and important what he has to say is… Yeah, it’s really easy because they make it easy.
. “which coming from a bunch of people who were swooning at such nuanced, brilliant phrases like “We are the ones we have been waiting for” is pretty rich.”
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Two things.
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1- There are a lot of people who don’t swoon over Obama who think Beck is a moron. Some of the post here.
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2- Pulling the odd badly worded line from an Obama speech and making out like he can’t talk at all or does not deserve some of the credit he’s given for being a gifted live speaker is dishonest. Reagan made so many stupid statements while President that you can, and some have, fill an entire book with them. It does not mean that the man wasn’t a gifted speaker or that he was unable to connect with a live audience when he was in a smaller venue. Likewise, Bill Clinton is such an electrifying and gifted speaker that even those who hated him spoke of how he would mesmerize you when you were in the room and he was speaking. I can pull out a ton of Clinton’s verbal gaffes.
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That’s a weak attack line and it gets weaker the more it’s over used.
. Bill: “Obama’s collapse in popularity is fueling the resurgence of the GOP–far more than anything the GOP has done, sorry to say”
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Thus the great problem with the Tea Party and the elections this year. We’re not seeing a third party or even an attempt by a fallen party to get back on track. We’re seeing basically a lot of people stating that they don’t like “A” and they hate “B” so they’ll just pick “C” because “C” must be better than “A” and has to be so much better than “B.”
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The problem is that, as we learn more about so many of the “C” picks, they’re the same old same old with a new coat of paint or they’re like something out of a dark satire about what a failed political system would ultimately produce as winning candidates.
. “Which may be the great lesson of the tea party. The fact that these folks got off their áššëš, quit just complaining and ran! They were laughed at. Didn’t matter.”
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Yeah, but look at how and where they ran. Many of them ran to the hardest Right they could go. Not a great choice for moderates of any stripe to vote for.
. “(for that matter, why don’t the national parties pay people to do nothing but cruise the web and look for good ad ideas? I’ve seen stuff on blogs that are about 400 times more clever and effective than what the professionals come up with. But maybe that’s the problem–the pros probably have a lot of friends in the right places.)”
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They have done that. The Republicans just did that to get the basis for their new contract with America thing. How’d it turn out? They junked and chose not to use several things in their top ten things regular Americans told them they wanted on the website and wrote up the usual Republican playbook, bumper sticker sloganeering. It’s no use to have the idea or the mechanism in place to do that if the powers that be will ultimately just decide that the playbook they like is better than what the people say they want.
My point is that if moderates don’t like the positions of the tea party people, fine–but learn from what they managed to do! It’s easy to bìŧçh about politics but our system makes it surprisingly easy to actually have an effect on it. Takes dedication, takes work, takes organization…but it can be done.
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I mean, if the tea party people are as bone, stone, stick, stupid as their critics make them out to be it should be easy for others to do what they did. One wonders why the geniuses in, say, the anti-war movement did not try the same thing.
. “My point is that if moderates don’t like the positions of the tea party people, fine–but learn from what they managed to do! It’s easy to bìŧçh about politics but our system makes it surprisingly easy to actually have an effect on it. Takes dedication, takes work, takes organization…but it can be done.”
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Well, it takes another thing as well. It takes anger. A lot of the Tea Party people are angry at the republicans for working with Obama and/or for their fiscal irresponsibility when they were last the majority and they are extremely angry with Obama and the Democrats. A lot of the moderates and middle-ground folks are frustrated with some of what’s happened, but they’re not full on angry yet.
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It’s also easier to get people angry with the system to focus more on an extreme point of view than it is a moderate point of view. That’s a problem because once you get out of your little group you have nothing to appeal to the people that aren’t in love with the extreme.
. “I mean, if the tea party people are as bone, stone, stick, stupid as their critics make them out to be it should be easy for others to do what they did.”
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Not all of the Tea Party supporters are stupid. It just seems like most of the results and chosen figures of worship are. Not a phenomena unique to the Tea Party, but they certainly seem to be wanting to make up for lost time in that department by amping up the magnitude of the stupid.
. “One wonders why the geniuses in, say, the anti-war movement did not try the same thing.”
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They did. They even went the Tea Party route and picked the dumbest person possible to run for office. Or have you forgotten that they drafted Cindy Sheehan to run against Nancy Pelosi for Pelosi’s seat in Congress? The extreme left picked a fringe idiot to run for office and the results were that a lot of the left and moderates giggled their coffee out through their noses at the prospect of Sheehan in office and basically put the final nail in Cindy’s 15 minutes of fame.
“Piece of scum and an idiot” is blatantly unfair.
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I find it to be quite a generous description, actually.
“But the point still remains that PAD took it upon himself to call Beck a standard bearer for the Republican party
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That is a bald-faced lie. I said no such thing, and you KNOW I said no such thing because you quoted me in an earlier post.
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PAD
Okay, I’m a bit confused, PAD. I think the quote in question is this one.
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PAD: “Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.”
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I can see how someone could take that to mean that you think of Beck as a standard bearer for the Republican Party. Could you clarify who you think he’s a standard bearer for?
I agree with Jerry that it seems PAD was refereing to Liberals not the Republican Party.
PAD:
“Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…”
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“Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.”
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Jerry:
“He said liberals. The opposite of that would be conservatives. And it’s not even like it’s something that Peter or the more left leaning out there came up with all by themselves. Pundits, regular people and talking heads on the Right have referred to Beck as a new standard bearer of the conservative movement.”
I meant to say it seems PAD is refering to conservatives.
See what you did Jason? Now you have me confused. 🙂
I can see saying that. However, “conservative” and “republican” aren’t that different these days. They’re definitely different and I wouldn’t generally lump them together, but I also wouldn’t call someone a liar for saying one when we were talking about the other.
. “I can see saying that. However, “conservative” and “republican” aren’t that different these days.”
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I would disagree with that statement quite a bit. It’s one of the reasons we’re seeing the Tea Party grow like it is. The Republicans in office, well, many of them any way, are being painted as Republicans who are no longer conservative. They’ve “lost their way” and need to be replaced by Conservatives.
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I actually know a lot of conservatives who have been issue voters for years now and are not Republicans by any means.
Many of those republicans call themselves conservatives even though their values are different that what I would call conservative. I can totally understand saying that they’re not really conservatives.
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However, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about whether or not someone was telling a “bald-faced lie” by saying that PAD claimed Beck was a standard bearer for Republicans. If PAD was really talking about conservatives, then I wouldn’t think he was talking about Barry Goldwater, I would think he was talking about the people who won’t shut up about Real American Small Town Conservative Values ™. It doesn’t seem like a stretch for someone to think he was referring to the Republicans.
I can see how someone could take that to mean that you think of Beck as a standard bearer for the Republican Party.
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I don’t, unless you are contending that everyone in the GOP is an ultra-conservative Beck-worshipper who doesn’t know basic history and oozes ignorance from every pore. The fact is that there are plenty of Republicans who are as appalled by Beck as I am, to say nothing of the party heads of the GOP who are terrified by the Tea Party…as they well should be. For all the play that the extreme wings of both party receive in the media, this remains a moderate country at the polls. A party that allows itself to be dragged too far to the extreme is going to be pulled right off the road sooner or later.
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PAD
PAD: “I don’t, unless you are contending that everyone in the GOP is an ultra-conservative Beck-worshipper who doesn’t know basic history and oozes ignorance from every pore.”
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You didn’t define the people you were talking about that way. You were actually a bit vague about the people you were talking about, all you really said is “not liberals.” Since the percentage of Republicans who call themselves liberal is much smaller than the percentage of Democrats who call themselves conservatives, and many Republicans have made a habit of painting liberals as the enemy I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to think you were talking about Republicans as much as conservatives.
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I don’t think we’re dealing with a “bald faced lie” here. Just a misunderstanding.
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Keep in mind, I think Jerome Media is a piece of scum and an idiot. I’m not saying he’s right on any greater point, I’m just trying to be fair. Personally, I’m not sure why you bother responding to the guy in the first place.
“Piece of scum and an idiot” is blatantly unfair. I can safely say he is neither.
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Beck is not a standard bearer fro republicans. He is not a standard bearer for conservatives either. As PAD says I don’t, unless you are contending that everyone in the GOP is an ultra-conservative Beck-worshipper who doesn’t know basic history and oozes ignorance from every pore. Well, that only doesn’t describe the GOP it doesn’t describe conservatives either. In fact, there is more diversity among conservatives than among the GOP, I suspect. Derbyshire, Frum, Parker, Palin, hëll, I don’t know if any of the aforementioned even like each other, and only Palin seems to be much of a Beck fan.
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If Beck is a standard bearer for anyone I would guess it is for fans of Glen beck. 40% of Americans describe themselves as conservative, according to Gallup (twice the number who admit to being liberals, he added unnecessarily) which translates to a much bigger number than have bought his books or watch his dopey show. I would no more describe him as a standard bearer for such a large group than I would have described Louis farrakan as a standard bearer for black people just because he got a lot of folks to show up for a march.
. ““Piece of scum and an idiot” is blatantly unfair. I can safely say he is neither.”
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Yeah, I would have to second that. He’s hardcore for his political beliefs and I sometimes question the source for some of his information (and I’m sure he can say the same about me) but the fact is that neither he nor anyone else is their political POV all the time. I’ve had a few other interactions with him that are not related to politics and he’s actually a pretty good guy.
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It’s way to easy to judge people on just the print we see here, but the old saying about the best way to make someone not be an enemy (or scum and an idiot) anymore is sometimes to get to know them. It’s really too bad that the lot of us, geeks all, really can’t all show up at the same convention one year. I think a lot of people might be surprised by who they walk away liking and/or disliking based on current expectations.
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Con Nooga 2011 might be good. I understand there might even be a film or two to discuss afterward and buy related merchandise for.
. “Beck is not a standard bearer fro republicans. He is not a standard bearer for conservatives either.”
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I would agree and disagree here. He cannot be truly called a standard bearer for the entire party. However he has become a major figure in/face for the Tea Party movement. He can legitimately seen as and argued to be a standard bearer the tea Party and some of the success they have.
Con Nooga 2011 might be good. I understand there might even be a film or two to discuss afterward and buy related merchandise for.
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You can also mercilessly mock the dialog and special effects until the creators run from the venue in tears.
“The fact remains there is NO ONE in office to serve as a true political foil for Obama the way Gingrich was to Clinton. “
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This is only partially true. Many Senators and Representatives have led the charge against whatever policy Obama supports, even when it comes from Republicans.
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The difference is that it is often a different Senator or Representative each time. And, that none of them get the press that non-congressmen like Beck and Palin receive.
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So, while we can’t point to a single person who is Obama’s political foil, we can point to a group of people who are willing to 180 on their own proposals if it meets with his approval.
. “Pretty rich from a guy who said he was going to reach across the aisle and in his “I won” arrogance decided to do whatever he dámņ well pleased.”
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Now, that just isn’t true at all. Have you ever looked at the Health Care Bill? So many things were put in there to appease Republicans, who still voted against it, that it went from a bill that wasn’t great to one that was pretty bad. And, of course, Republicans just can’t get enough of complaining about the “pork” that they, themselves, insisted be put in so that they wouldn’t vote on it when the time came.
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I wish Obama had pushed through things the way people claim he did. I mean, seriously, am I the only one who remembers that it was Republican Henry Paulson who called for the automotive bail out? The one that everyone blames Obama for? (Sure, he shares blame because he agreed to it, but the press and public today act like it was all his idea and no one other than he was for it.) Or that the Housing and Economic Recovery Act was signed by GW Bush in July of 2008? The Bank Bailout that Obama supposedly rammed down the country’s throat?
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Theno
Pundits, regular people and talking heads on the Right have referred to Beck as a new standard bearer of the conservative movement.
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I’d appreciate the names of any pundits and talking heads on the right who refereed to him as a new standard bearer, so I can ratchet down my respect for them. Regular folks, I’m sure, but I can find regular folks who think all manner of foolishness.
. Well, it takes another thing as well. It takes anger.
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I think the left has had enough anger out the whazoo in the last 10 years that they could have worked with. Nothing. All we hear is how bad the republicans are and how spineless the Democrats are and whaa whaa whaa. I can at least respect the tea party people for trying to change the game, in the face of all those telling them they were wasting their time.
. “One wonders why the geniuses in, say, the anti-war movement did not try the same thing.”
. They did. They even went the Tea Party route and picked the dumbest person possible to run for office. Or have you forgotten that they drafted Cindy Sheehan to run against Nancy Pelosi for Pelosi’s seat in Congress?
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I would not consider Sheehan’s run much more than a vanity performance. What I am asking is why the anti-war people did not do what the TP folks did–actually run sympathetic people in primaries, demand more than lip service from the people now in office, scare them onto the straight and narrow. It may be that they did not have enough numbers or influence or maybe the Democrats don’t believe them when they threaten to withhold their support.
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Someone once speculated that the Republicans fear their base and the Democrats hate theirs. It’s an idea worth mulling. certainly the last year has seen republicans fearfully moving toward the positions of their base while many democrats have reacted with fury at the audacity of the left wing blogs to dare criticize them.
I’m one of the anti-war people you are talking about and did (and am doing) just the things you mention: I supported all of the Anti-War candidates I could (supported Kucinich untill he dropped out, then vacillated between John Edwards and Obama because I liked Obama for being against the Iraq war from day one, and I respected Edwards’ work on health care and his willingness to say, “I was wrong” about Iraq. Almost no politician ever says that.) I worked on Obama’s campaign in California when Edwards dropped out, and then stopped supporting him when he voted for Bush’s “wiretapping plus immunity” bill. I voted for the Green candidate after that because Obama didn’t represent me, I wanted to help 3rd party candidates grow, and voting Green wasn’t about to shift California over to the Republicans. Voting Nader in 2000 (and other times) was my (and others) way of saying that we weren’t going to support a Democratic party that didn’t represent us (and we all know how well *that* worked out, even those of us in Calif.) and, for a while, with Obama’s campaign and Al Gore’s “reinvention” it seemed as though the Democrats had gotten the message, “Abandon us, and we’ll abandon you.” And then Obama started once again down the Clinton path of assuming we were in his back pocket and “reaching out to”-i.e. practically surrendering to-the Republican party. So now we’re left in a quandary for this election. Do we:
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A. Vote for the Democrats to keep things from getting worse under the Tea party’s favored? Would this tell Obama and the Dems. that they can do whatever they like and we have no choice but to vote for them? (i.e. the Clinton years)
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or
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B) Sit out this election (or vote third party.) If that leads to a Tea party/Republican victory, will that cause them Dems to surrender to them even more, or realize that abandoning their “base”/”the left wing”/whatever we’re called this week will never work as a strategy. It sometimes seems as though they are incapable of learning this, which is why I wish that more people on all sides would take more looks at third parties.
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Basically, we have few, if any good choices, and think the reason why, “If the Tea party is so stupid, why can’t more people do what they are doing” argument doesn’t work is that I see the modern day Fox demogogues as the equivalent of Father Coughlin. It’s comparatively easy to run on sheer bigotry and hatred. Eloquently providing an alternative is much harder. (and I don’t buy any of that, “I’m not racist, I just want a smaller government/my country back” bûllšhìŧ. If you want smaller government, the party of the Patriot Act, torture, wars built on lies, occupations, wiretapping, and bigger deficits under every Republican president isn’t the way to go.)
I’m saying it isn’t enough to work at the top. Work at the bottom.
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Frankly, presidents get tens of millions of votes and your one vote isn’t much of a factor. Even pooling resources with like minded people isn’t enough, except in a once in a lifetime situation like Bush/Gore/Florida.
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But at the primary level you can do a lot. Your influence is far greater than it is at the top.
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The problem is that the far left has only one goal–beat the republicans–and doesn’t have the stomach to demand any more from democrats than that. Democratic candidates have to worry about being beaten by republicans. republican candidates have to worry about their opponents…AND their base. Guess which party is more likely to listen to its base?
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But at this point I would not recommend leftists sit out the election because the conventional wisdom is that this is a bad year for Democrats so if they are defeated there will not be any real opportunity for progressives to say “See, that’s what happens when you blow us off.” That kind of thing has to be made clear early on. And if the Democrats do well it won’t be seen as thanks to progressives, it will be seen as the Tea party going too far.
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There’s always 2012. But trust me, a vote for Dennis Kucinich won’t change a thing. And it’s a whole lot easier and more likely to see success if you try to change one of the existing parties than to make a new one. The two parties have stacked the deck pretty well against that threat.
Bill, I consider myself very far left, and I have several goals beyond, “Beat the Republicans” and demand a hëll of a lot more from the deomcrats, (which is why they almost never get my vote.) Most of the leftists I know personally (and the organizations I see in action) have several more goals. I agree with Andrew Vachss (he doesn’t toe a party line, he’s solely a child protector) that the left wants to do to many things to be focused: save the whales, save the libraries, save the schools, save the museums, save the parks, save the bay, etc. etc. We’re the ones pounding the pavement over medical marijuana and ending drug prohibition, legalizing gay marraige (I don’t mean to discount the libertarians on those three) protesting the dealth penalty and trying to get innocent prisoners released. We’re the ones protesting against torture and wiretapping committed and covered up by both parties. I find your definition of the far left wholly inaccurrate.
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I don’t think sitting out an election year is ever a good idea. Vote for *something* to make your voice heard. otherwise your lack of a vote could represent apathy or laziness to those in charge instead of disagreement and opposition. I still think it would provide an attempt to teach the the Dems, I just think that voting for others is better.
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At the promary level, i worked for Obama. i got burned. I’m not discounting it, but I’m also not relying on it. Personally, I disagree that a vote for someone like Kucinich or third parites won’t change a thing. Even if that candidate loses, it teaches the one who wins (and I think *somewhat* taught the dems for a short term) that a votes supported a specific platform, e.g. peace over continued war. And I think that third parties are growing in power and numbers and that it’s a worthwhile long-term goal, while having the short term goal of affecting the two larger ones. I don’t think that they can stack the deck forever; I’m looking for a Lincoln.
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(I also disagree with Rene that people don’t take left-wing protesters seriously. It’s difficult to prove cause and effect, but I think the Anti-War protests grew in power over time, along with W’s excuses looking weaker everday.)
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Laslty, the biggest successes I’ve seen (and been involved in so far) have had to do with protect.org’s goals and campaigns. I hate to type it, but it looks like lobbying mostly works.
Obviously, Jonathon, I’m making a pretty broad generalization of what the “far left” is. But you have to admit it’s a far kinder generalization than saying, as you did, that the Tea Party people are racist.
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I think one reason the anti-war protests did not gain much traction is that they were seen not as true anti-war protests but just as anti-Bush protests. The fact that the wars are still going on but the protests have dwindled since a Democrat has become the one calling the shots seems to bear this out.
“But you have to admit it’s a far kinder generalization than saying, as you did, that the Tea Party people are racist.”
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Hey, be fair, I said bigotry *and* hatred. I’m willing to admit that stupidly letting the Koch brothers run the show to show how “independent” one is of the big two can be caused by sheer,unreasoning, “Government BAD!” feelings (while ignoring the Republican’s role in all of that.)
I thought that saying that “I don’t buy any of that, “I’m not racist, I just want a smaller government/my country back” bûllšhìŧ.” pretty straightforwardly implied that you did, in fact, think they were racists. If I say to someone that I don’t think they are not a racist am I not saying I think they are one???
People just don’t take left-wing protesters that seriously anymore. They’re just part of the scenery. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s become chic to see the 1960s and 1970s agitations as a failure, because the promised Utopia never came? (Though I’d not say it was a failure, as a whole lot of things and changing social mores came from 60s-70s unrest).
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In any case, there is an in-built cynicism, even from people from the Left. PAD himself is fond of mocking and attacking political correctness, right? So, except if we get some trully massive left-wing protests, people will just shrug them off as a bunch of arrested teenagers, aging hippies, and annoying PC weirdos.
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Right-wing protestors, conversely, seem to be noticed, at least.
Looks like a jáçkášš. But yeah, against Alvin Greene it’s pretty hard hope he loses.
It’s not that the guy is a bigot that disturbs me. It’s that he is either crazy or a expert at Orwellian double-think, able to hold two mutually exclusive worldviews simultaneously.
I still don’t understand how any Republican can get away with saying they’re against government interference and then advocating forbidding people from teaching on public school on account of their private lives. WTF?
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The dude says that government should not endorse particular behaviors. And then he says: “We need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our values.”
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WTF?WTF?WTF? And WTF again for good measure.
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Saying you’ll not hire a pregnant single woman isn’t endorsing a particular behaviour?
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I wish to hëll that Conservatives would just decide if they’re hardened individualistic libertarians or stalwart defenders of christian values. You can’t be both, people! If you believe government has not the right to interfere with people’s lives, then you can’t try to pass laws to interfere with people’s lives. Duh!
So how did it happen?
How did we come to the point where we are so vehemently opposed to one another?
I’m a conservative. I am against what Obama has been doing. I am against much of what the Democrats keep trying to do as a party. I am against how poorly the Republicans have been representing us.
I know most of you on the left say I’m racist, but I’m not racist by any reasonable meaning of the term that I know. I don’t dislike people because they are Black or Jewish or Hispanic. Because I don’t want to have a double standard does not, to me, mean I am racist. But that’s what the Democrats seem to say.
I know they try to say that the Republicans are so hateful, so cruel, so spiteful … but I see the same thing, only 10 times as strong, from the Democrats toward the Republicans.
People talk about how hateful Rush is, or Beck is, or Hannity is … and there are things I hear them say that I feel they go too far, and end up pushing things too much — but it is still less than what I see from the left.
And yet … from Rush and Beck (not as much from Hannity, it seems), it seems like I see more light-heartedness, more of a sense of humor, and yes, more compassion, then I ever see from higher up on the left.
Just in the responses to this blog post, it seems like what I see is almost entirely rabid unwillingness to deal with the other side from EITHER side.
We conservatives think that, when it really comes down to it, a majority of the country is with us. You liberals think the same thing. The elections don’t necessarily prove anything in the short term. You killed us in 2006 and 2008. I suspect we’ll kill you in 2010 and 2012. Really, it isn’t that surprising. Seems to me that the trend of flopping back and forth between the two extremes has been going on for quite a while.
But is it my imagination, or has it been becoming more and more angry over the years? More and more hate-filled? I find myself wondering, is there any way for us to become a united country again? Or has it gotten so bad that there is no longer any solution except self destruction?
I’m worried because I can’t seem to see any way back together. Ignoring the details of the silly jokes that have been going around, sometimes I do wonder if this country needs a divorce along political lines.
I don’t know … it really no longer seems possible to have any sort of good solution to this mess. But I have to admit it saddens me.
I think it just seems that way. Go back and look at other elections in times gone by and you’ll see plenty of bile, mendacity, invective, etc. What’s changed is that the culture is now far more tolerant of crude talk so it seems like it’s gotten worse, in my opinion.
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Yeah, if the GOP does well this cycle you’ll hear some liberals talk about succession and/or moving to a country without a history of bad electoral decisions, like Germany, but it’s all just talk. They ain’t going anywhere and the big blue states are going to be too busy going bankrupt to fund a serious succession move. Plus, they’d all kill each other arguing over the name, flag, and national anthem.
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I do know people who refuse to have friends of different political persuasions (or limit said friends to me because they think I’m doing some kind of performance art or something). Dumb move, some of my dearest friends are political opposites. Losing those people would hurt nobody but myself.
I don’t think that the attacks have gotten worse, but that the hyperbole has gotten greater.
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One side says that the other candidate is a person who avoided military service by leaving the country. Then, that side accuses the other of election tampering. Then, the first side fires back that the other lied about his actions in Vietnam. So, the other side says that their opponent allowed terrorist acts to happen. Which escalates to the first claiming that the other is an anti-American terrorist.
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It is the same thing, just with stronger verbage. With more emotionally charged language. Honestly, you can take the last 20 years of presidential politics and distil it down to a half-hour schoolyard insult session.
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What I think is sad is that these tactics worked for so long that they have taken over the discourse. As I recall, and I’m willing to admit that I may be looking at it through the rose-coloured glasses of time, but I seem to remember that the mud slinging was second to the discussion of policy and promises when Clinton challenged Bush in 92.
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But, when McCain and Obama tried desperately to discuss policy and to make promises, the media kept coming back to “too old and sick to be expected to survive the term with a crazy VP pick,” versus “Muslim terrorist with no birth certificate who has a crazy Christian minister.”
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I worry that if we were to ever have a candidate to solely run on issues, without trying to demonize the opponent, that person would never get air time and would have no public recognition when it came time to vote. Thus proving that Americans don’t care about issues, we only care about drama and name-calling.
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Theno
Well, Sharron Angle seems to know who we need to take our country back from, although somebody might want to check to see if she’s been sniffing glue: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101007/ap_on_el_se/us_nevada_senate_angle
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Do tea party members really believe and support BS like this? Or was that just a waste of keystrokes to ask that question?
Democrats planted a “tea party” candidate in NJ.
[i]…he will appear on the “NJ Tea Party” line on the ballot.[/i]
this is exactly what i’e been trying to get across to people for a year or so. it’s total crap. like he said, their merely pissy they lost an election
Perhaps if things go badly for the Democrats they will have the opportunity soon to demonstrate how to lose an election with dignity and grace.
If they lose, there will be political backbiting, I’m sure. That’s business as usual. I doubt there will be the race baiting we’ve seen ever since Obama was elected, however.
Well, race baiting can be in the ye of the beholder. Would you consider what Loretta Sanchez pulled on her Vietnamese opponent racist? If a white politician made as naked a plea to whites as Obama is making toward his minority base they would (quite possibly fairly) get holy hëll for it (and to be clear, I don’t find Obama’s pleas to be de factor racism–he is appealing to the one group who still holds him in overwhelmingly high esteem.).
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Lawrence O’Donnell’s racial insult to Michael Steel nothing unusual, black conservastives get called Uncle Tom or worse all the time. What was unusual was that O’Donnel had the stones to admit it and apologize.
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Of course, most minority politicians are Democrats so you are probably correct that there will be less race baiting if the (mostly) white republicans get elected. Unless you consider articles about “how white America lost its mind” to be racist in which case it has already begun.
conversely, if some conservatives were to attack Obama in exactly the same manner, tone and degree of invective that some on the left attacked Bush, it would probably come off as racist, even if their intent was merely to be hateful.
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Nice…
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So a black writer writes a piece about how “white people” have lost their minds and he’s “courageous” and the people who praise his article “get it” rather than him being an idiot and them being his fellow idiots. Beyond the fact the the things he points to about whites and their views on Obama also apply to blacks, Hispanics and Asians in this country is the simple fact that, using his Obama-is-a-Muslim example, the vast majority of whites in America don’t believe that he’s a Muslim or of foreign birth. Yet somehow his writing this stuff in the framework of whites being crazy and whites being against Obama is “relevant” and “courageous” according to his readers and some media critics.
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Of course, had he been a white writer who wrote about the words and actions of Sharpton, Jesse Jackson JR, Malik Zulu Shabazz, and other black “leaders” while writing it in the borderline them VS us style he used and naming the piece “How Black People Lost Their Minds” we would see him crucified in the court of public opinion, fired and labeled a racist.
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Gotta love the “progress” we’ve seen in this country sometimes.
Oh, there are idiots who say stupid, racially-charged things on the Democratic side, no doubt, and I’m sure more examples will pop up. Will we see the equivalent of the semi-organized birther movement, or laws enacted like the Arizona stop-them-if-they-look-too-Mexican fiasco?
Well, we already have the “truther” movement which merely claioms that George Bush is the one who actually brought down the twin towers. Which is just a but worse than claiming a guy is hiding the place of his birth, if you ask me (just in case there is any doubt, I think both positions are nuts. One is a bit nuttier, though really, once you are insane it really doesn’t matter if you are a little less insane than the other guy.)
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The Arizona law is actually favored by more than just some conservatives, as witnessed by the fact that it has single handedly made it likely that the unpopular governor of Arizona will probably ride it to an easy re-election. One NBC poll showed that Fifty percent of Democrats said they support the law provision allowing police to question anyone they think may be in the country illegally.
. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/05/two-national-polls-show-arizona-immigration-law-very-popular.html
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Only 34% of all respondents said they were somewhat or strongly opposed to the law. It has actual bipartisan support. So I don’t know if that was a great example. (full disclosure–I’m not a huge fan of the law, though I think the opposition to it has been largely poorly argued.)
I won’t disagree that there is idiocy with the 9/11 truthers, but that’s not racially motivated, and that’s what the subject of discussion is.
As for Arizona, I’ll give you that it appears that the state as a whole is insane at this point.
Actually, that was a national poll so you would have to extend the “insane” diagnosis to the country as a whole. Which I’m sure many on the left will be happy to do. That’s why I am amused by any suggestion that liberals will handle defeat better than Republicans; experience shows they are just as likely to go through all the stages of grief:
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Denial: “We did not lose! they cheated!”
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Anger: “This country sucks! It’s going straight to hëll and I will laugh, laugh as it happens! I hope they’re happy when (insert some terrible fate), because I will be laughing”.
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Bargaining: “Ok, if we can get all of our remaining people to stick together and get a few of theirs to flip…”
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Depression: “How can so many people be so blind? How can they not see what is so obvious? The system is broken. Why bother?”
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Acceptance: “Oh well. There’s always 2012.”
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regrettably, some will never get out of stage 1 and many get trapped in a lifelong state of stage 2. But the smart ones will move on.
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It’s a measure of the times we live in and the influence of the web that some liberals are already going through the stages and the dámņ votes have yet to be counted! Hëll, most have yet to be cast! A lot can happen in a month.
But I have no doubt there will be lots of stories about racist actions, even if they have to be made up from whole cloth. have you heard that Mark kirk is being accused of insensitivity for using the word “jigger”?
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I saw that one. I thought that the Kirk people were overreacting at first because I saw the somewhat more reasonable Democrats speaking in the first few articles I read and on the one thing I heard about it. The objection, stretched as it was, was that he was insinuating that minority districts were going to be ripe for shenanigans just because they were minority districts.
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Take this quote from Freddrenna Lyle: “For him to insinuate that there is some vote fraud going on in these communities is just an insult to the hundreds and hundreds of people who serve as election judges on elections. I find it disgraceful and insulting”
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Seems reasonable. Then I saw this one later from the same @$$hat.
. “He said what he meant. He may not have meant to say it in that manner, but he said it, and it’s offensive”
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Didn’t make since.
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But along came Rev. Albert Tyson!
. “The problem I had is that it sounds so much like another word.”
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Followed by a report that many Democratic activists are complaining that Lyle and others were offended by Kirk’s use of the verb “jigger” when talking about regions heavily populated by black voters.
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Oooookay…
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Race Baiting 101 and getting really old. I hope they lose that election and lose it hard because of this crap.
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Uhm… Didn’t make sense.
Let’s see, how Democrats have “lost” an election:
Al Gore concedeing, Singing “God Bless America” with the Republicans after 9/11, saying, “I didn’t vote for Bush but I stand with him after this attack on our country.” Peter David supporting Bush in attacking Afghanistan.
How Republican lose an election: Criticizing the President after claiming that anyone who criticizes the President is endangering the country, calling Obama the biggest threat to this country after Nazi Germany, Claiming that Obama’s health care plan (the one Republicans proposed) makes him Hitler, Stalin, and is full of “death panels.”
Yeah, that’s *exactly* the same as calling Bush a Nazi after he trashed the constitution, implememted torutre, and attacked other countries on false pretenses. Way to go with the false equivalencies people.
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Nice Jonathan…
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To show how the Democrats lose an election you cite two specific people as examples, but to show how the Republicans lose an election you simply say “the Republicans” and talk in generalities. Hëll, I can understand why you would do it. It’s much easier to pretend you’re right when you can cherry pick examples for your argument and broad brush the other side.
Pardon me Jerry:
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Singing “God Bless America” with the Republicans after 9/11, saying, “I didn’t vote for Bush but I stand with him after this attack on our country.”
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You’re absolutely right, I only pointed to two specific people who Sang “God Bless America” with the Republicans. Of course I was deliberately leaving out everyone who did that and said, “I didn’t vote for Bush, but I support him” instead of tracking down and listing everyone who said it. How can you ever forgive me?
Not to mention:
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“Yeah, that’s *exactly* the same as calling Bush a Nazi after he trashed the constitution, implememted torutre, and attacked other countries on false pretenses.”
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Again, that must have been one of those “specific examples” I “cherry-picked” instead of painting only one side in a broad brush. Nice to see you comment on y comments without reading them clearly. Hëll, I can understand why you would do it. It’s much easier to pretend you’re right when you can rewrite what I typed rather than address it.
Jonathon, he isn’t asking you to name all the people who sang God bless america…which had nothing to do with the election anyway. he is saying it is a poor comparison to name two people who supported Bush on one thing, and not even the same thing, and then just throw out unspecific charges against all republicans in some kind of comparison.
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There’s so much wrong with your post you should thank jerry for being kind. You start out strong–Gore was indeed gracious in defeat. As was McCain, as I recall. So we have a wash there. Certainly there were some Republicans who wer less gracious than McCain in 2008 but I’m sure I don’t need to point out that there were some Democrats who acted likewise in 2000 and 2004. So again, a wash.
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It is also true that democrats sang God Bless America and PAD supported the war in Afghanistan after 9/11. To make any comparison with republicans we would have to see how they react should we be attacked during Obama’s presidency. I hope we will have to forgo ever fully knowing how that would turn out.
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Not all or even most republicans think that Obama is Hitler and Stalin all rolled up into one, so when you throw that out there without even attributing it to some specific person you have to expect it to fall flat (especially after mentioning 2 Democrats by name). Then, when jerry points that out you think that he is asking you to list EVERYONE who sang God bless America…I think you’re letting your passions get ahead of you here.
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If you’re upset over the upcoming Democrat debacle there are a few things to keep in mind: A- it might not happen. B-if it does it isn’t the end of the world and C- these things go in cycles and only fools and pundits (but I repeat myself) talk about how any election is some kind of permanent development.
Bill, what gets to me is what I see as false equivalencies. I hate to say it, but I’ve seen a lot of that in your posts about how Democrats/liberals deal with losing elections the same as conservatives/Republicans.
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Why I disagree, (and I’m just listing those I remember in my lifetime.)How did Democrats deal with losing to Reagan (twice?) Was there any attempt to impeach him? Was there any Whitewater-style investigation that was going to show how corrupt his office was that didn’t result in a single resignation? Were there ongoing accusations that he murdered a staff member? Do you remember accusations over terroist attacks in Beirut (among other places) that this proved that Reagan wasn’t tough on security? Did George Bush Sr. or Jr. ever face a Whitewater-style investigation or threats of impeachment?
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After the Republicans retook Congress, New Gingrich told Clinton that they were going to run him out on a rail. After the Dems retook Congress, Pelosi and the Dems took impeachment “off the table.” When Obama became the front runner, how many conservaties chorused in that he wasn’t born born in America and wasn’t eligible? How many Liberals/Democrats claimed that McCain wasn’t eligible because he truly wasn’t born in America? How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously? When Bush was compared to Hitler, it was for invading Iraq on false pretenses, instituting torture, detention, kidnapping, and ignoring civil liberties en masse. When Obama is compared to Hitler and Stalin, it’s for health care. So of course I’m going to call bûllšhìŧ.
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That’s some of the stuff that gets me about the “liberals/Dems handle defeat the same way Republicans/conservatives do.
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On a related note, you asked me in the past how I thought things would turn out when and if the Democrats get thumped this November. At the time, I didn’t have an answer. After thinking about and reflecting on the past, I think that most likely answer is that Obama will take a page from Clinton after he lost congress: meet with the Republicans, try to throw them an olive branch or two, and steal their thunder/issues as Clinton did on China, Haiti, business over human rights, law and order etc. Basically what Obama has already been doing on health care and more. If history repeats itself (and I agree with the sentiment that history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes) this will be met by nothing but more rage and hatred from the Republicans, Obama will sqeak to vitory in 2012, lose even more progessives, and face various removal attempts, drummed up invetigations, and maybe even an impeachment attempt, will he wil weather at a cost, and in the Presidential election after that, the next Democrat will suffer a huge loss of support as Gore did for what the Democrats did during the Obama years. Will progressives be resigned to the Dems, figuring that another Bush is too much to risk? Give up on the Dems entirely for always selling out? (I have.)
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Of course, I don’t expect history to repeat exactly, and columnists I’ve checked have pointed out that most Presidents’ terms haven’t been defined this early. God knows what wil happen next. If I’m pìššëd øff about this election it’s because I think that progressives are going to be screwed by Obama/the Dems, either we’ll be taken for granted and ignored, or written off and ignored; either way Obama will keep “reaching across the isle” moving further to the right, just as Clinton did. This is one of the many reasons I vote third party (and deal with my other voting friends constant laughter over such.) I’m gonna go nurse a beer.
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Jonathon, again you’re mixing and matching things here. You’re also reaching pretty far back to make comparisons to today.
. “How did Democrats deal with losing to Reagan (twice?) Was there any attempt to impeach him? Was there any Whitewater-style investigation that was going to show how corrupt his office was that didn’t result in a single resignation? “
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I don’t know, how did Republicans deal with losing to Carter? Did they try to impeach him? Did they Whitewater him? Other than a few exceptions you don’t have a lot of the same power players in Congress in either party that you had when Carter and Reagan were in office. If you want to talk about what the people who are there now will do then talking about the people who were there 22 to 30 years ago isn’t really of great value outside of discussing how some of the dirtier players now were groomed and where they developed their ideas that the old ways weren’t dirty enough.
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Politics got a little more focused in the dirty pool department when Newt and crew came into power, but it was never that clean a sport.
. “Were there ongoing accusations that he murdered a staff member? Do you remember accusations over terroist attacks in Beirut (among other places) that this proved that Reagan wasn’t tough on security?”
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The accusations about murdering staffers was promoted largely by people who never held elected office. It certainly got a large amount of play in talk radio by talk show hosts i.e not elected officials. If that’s the standard then, yeah, we can talk all night about similar comments.
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There were talkers, bloggers and writers on the left who engage in all sorts of wonderful speculative fiction while W. was in office. They said that he was still drinking and doing drugs while in the White House. His political adversaries grabbed hold of a story about an accident Laura was involved in and some twisted the story as a young and reckless Laura basically murdering her friend all those years ago. And, of course, there were the ones who claimed that Bush was behind the murder of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 and essentially murdered every person who died in the wars started because of that.
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There was a New York Times non-fiction best selling novel written by Vincent Bugliosi titled The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder that lays out his case for prosecuting W, for the “murder” of 4000 soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis. Bush was described as so evil for his crimes we even got murder fantasies about him. We got a movie while he was in office that was about the murder of George W. Bush in office.
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Can you imagine how ballistic the same left that was mostly accepting of this film would go if someone did a film about killing Obama? Can you imagine the screams of racism?
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Oh yeah… Racism.
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Remember so many on the left blaming blaming Bush for Hurricane Katrina and then citing his poor performance on not caring about black people? West was the first person to really get the spotlight for saying it, but he had a nice little chorus spring up behind him saying that he was right. Bush didn’t react to Katrina because he didn’t care about the loss of life since it was pretty much just black people. You even had some on the left put forward the notion the Bush, Cheney and Rove liked what was happening because it was thinning out the Democrat’s voting block down there.
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See how much fun you can have pointing out the idiocy of the Left when you mix and match elected leaders with just any of the people who said something stupid in the same way you did when discussing the Right?
. “Did George Bush Sr. or Jr. ever face a Whitewater-style investigation or threats of impeachment?”
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Threats of impeachment, yes. W. was threatened with it several time, but the resolutions didn’t pass. The first ones because you had a Republican majority and the later ones because of a combo of smart Democrats and cowardly ones.
. “How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously?”
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Few claimed that specific examples of things like that made Bush weak on terrorism and security. However, many claimed that Bush made us less safe in general and a greater target of the terrorist. MSNBC brought their ratings out of the gutter by playing to the left audience with just such claims amongst other things.
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And let’s not forget the aftermath of the 2004 elections while we’re at it. The Democrats lost so gracefully that we got never ending stories about rigged voting machines. We were even told that there was proof that the machines were being rigged by the Bush administration in the run up to the 2006 elections just like the rigged them in 2004. Story kinda faded fast when the Democrats won that election though.
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I’m sorry, but the liberals and conservatives out there act pretty much exactly the same. The only thing that can be said about the Republicans is that they often show more discipline and unity when they go on the attack. They also have a stronger echo chamber since they have far more of the talk radio market. They’re better at getting the message and the smears out, but their messages and the smears aren’t much worse than the Republicans.
************************************************************************** Okay… This is interesting. My comments aren’t going through. I’ll try again with this one. Apologies if later on two of them pop up.
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Jonathon, again you’re mixing and matching things here. You’re also reaching pretty far back to make comparisons to today.
. “How did Democrats deal with losing to Reagan (twice?) Was there any attempt to impeach him? Was there any Whitewater-style investigation that was going to show how corrupt his office was that didn’t result in a single resignation? “
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I don’t know, how did Republicans deal with losing to Carter? Did they try to impeach him? Did they Whitewater him? Other than a few exceptions you don’t have a lot of the same power players in Congress in either party that you had when Carter and Reagan were in office. If you want to talk about what the people who are there now will do then talking about the people who were there 22 to 30 years ago isn’t really of great value outside of discussing how some of the dirtier players now were groomed and where they developed their ideas that the old ways weren’t dirty enough.
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Politics got a little more focused in the dirty pool department when Newt and crew came into power, but it was never that clean a sport.
. “Were there ongoing accusations that he murdered a staff member? Do you remember accusations over terroist attacks in Beirut (among other places) that this proved that Reagan wasn’t tough on security?”
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The accusations about murdering staffers was promoted largely by people who never held elected office. It certainly got a large amount of play in talk radio by talk show hosts i.e not elected officials. If that’s the standard then, yeah, we can talk all night about similar comments.
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There were talkers, bloggers and writers on the left who engage in all sorts of wonderful speculative fiction while W. was in office. They said that he was still drinking and doing drugs while in the White House. His political adversaries grabbed hold of a story about an accident Laura was involved in and some twisted the story as a young and reckless Laura basically murdering her friend all those years ago. And, of course, there were the ones who claimed that Bush was behind the murder of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 and essentially murdered every person who died in the wars started because of that.
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There was a New York Times non-fiction best selling novel written by Vincent Bugliosi titled The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder that lays out his case for prosecuting W, for the “murder” of 4000 soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis. Bush was described as so evil for his crimes we even got murder fantasies about him. We got a movie while he was in office that was about the murder of George W. Bush in office.
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Can you imagine how ballistic the same left that was mostly accepting of this film would go if someone did a film about killing Obama? Can you imagine the screams of racism?
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Oh yeah… Racism.
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Remember so many on the left blaming blaming Bush for Hurricane Katrina and then citing his poor performance on not caring about black people? West was the first person to really get the spotlight for saying it, but he had a nice little chorus spring up behind him saying that he was right. Bush didn’t react to Katrina because he didn’t care about the loss of life since it was pretty much just black people. You even had some on the left put forward the notion the Bush, Cheney and Rove liked what was happening because it was thinning out the Democrat’s voting block down there.
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See how much fun you can have pointing out the idiocy of the Left when you mix and match elected leaders with just any of the people who said something stupid in the same way you did when discussing the Right?
. “Did George Bush Sr. or Jr. ever face a Whitewater-style investigation or threats of impeachment?”
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Threats of impeachment, yes. W. was threatened with it several time, but the resolutions didn’t pass. The first ones because you had a Republican majority and the later ones because of a combo of smart Democrats and cowardly ones.
. “How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously?”
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Few claimed that specific examples of things like that made Bush weak on terrorism and security. However, many claimed that Bush made us less safe in general and a greater target of the terrorist. MSNBC brought their ratings out of the gutter by playing to the left audience with just such claims amongst other things.
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And let’s not forget the aftermath of the 2004 elections while we’re at it!
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The Democrats lost so gracefully that we got never ending stories about rigged voting machines. We were even told that there was proof that the machines were being rigged by the Bush administration in the run up to the 2006 elections just like the rigged them in 2004. Story kinda faded fast when the Democrats won that election though.
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I’m sorry, but the liberals and conservatives out there act pretty much exactly the same. The only thing that can be said about the Republicans is that they often show more discipline and unity when they go on the attack. They also have a stronger echo chamber since they have far more of the talk radio market. They’re better at getting the message and the smears out, but their messages and the smears aren’t much worse than the Republicans.
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Now if only this one goes through…
I also disagree that McCain has been gracious in defeat; two articles that produce examples:
. http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_12_18.html#018213
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That’s a story about McCain criticizing Al Frankin. It has absolutely nothing to do with how he handled defeat in his quest for the presidency.
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and:
. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/11/mccain-201011
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An article talking about how McCain does not like Obama and has changed his positions. Nothing about how he handled defeat in his quest for the presidency.
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You gave Al Gore conceding as an example of Democratic largess. McCain conceded. True, he has been quite critical of the president since then…are you of the opinion that Gore never had a harsh word for Bush after his concession? Because you would be most assuredly wrong.
You mean like…
. “Gore said media who challenge Bush and Cheney’s claims of a link are intimidated by the administration.
. “The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts(Emphasis mine) who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops,” Gore said. The term “Brown Shirts” refers to Nazi supporters in the 1930s and ’40s.”
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Al Gore, June 25, 2004 http://articles.cnn.com/2004-06-24/politics/gore.bush_1_al-gore-gore-rips-bush-bush-nor-cheney?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
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Couldn’t resist dropping the Nazi ref in there it seems.
I’ve has similar difficulty posting recently, so we’ll see if this one goes through. I think that some of this conversation is going round and round so this will probably be my last on the subject.
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“I don’t know, how did Republicans deal with losing to Carter? Did they try to impeach him? Did they Whitewater him? Other than a few exceptions you don’t have a lot of the same power players in Congress in either party that you had when Carter and Reagan were in office. ….”
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John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Ðìçk Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,The People behind the Project for a New American Century etc.. One doesn’t have to be in Congress to be a “power player” in the party. Especially when you’ve got Steele kowtowing to Limbaugh, The Koch brothers heading up the Tea Party, along with Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. How did the GOP deal with Carter? By claiming that the Iran hostages were proof that he was weak on terrorism, even when he launched a rescue operation. Did we see similar condemnation of Reagan by Democrats for pulling out of Beirut after a terrorist attack?
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“The accusations about murdering staffers was promoted largely by people who never held elected office. It certainly got a large amount of play in talk radio by talk show hosts i.e not elected officials. If that’s the standard then, yeah, we can talk all night about similar comments.
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There were talkers, bloggers and writers on the left …”
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On the right we had a hugely funded effort to prove that Clinton murdered Foster. (see, “The Hunting of the President.” We had Scaife and Falwell backing this, major power players in the movement. We had Dan Burton, an elected official, claiming this. (along with Christine O’Donnell, who now apparantly represents the majority of Republican primary voters in Delaware) We had Rupert Murdoch-funded talk show hosts with millions of viewers spewing this. On the left we have… talkers, bloggers, and writers. Not a comparable audience of viewers, funders, and sponsors. Show me George Soros funding a murder conspiracy movement. Another false equivalency.
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Why did so many people on the left (and not on the left) blame Bush for so much of the disaster for hurricane Kartrina? Maybe because he put an unqualified person in charge of FEMA which led to greater disater. I don’t see how justifed criticism belongs in the same paragraphs as claims of with-hunts. Same thing with Vince Buglisoi (and how exactly does one write a “non-fiction novel?”) he looked at the legality of proven evidence tampering that led to war (which, by the way was not authorized by Congress, despite Bush’s claims to the contrary. He claimed a specific bill gave him the power “to do whatever was necessary” but congress can’t rewrite the constitution without ameding it.) Another false equivalency.
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“Threats of impeachment, yes. W. was threatened with it several time,”
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He had one or two Congressionals make a motion that almost no one supported. He was never in danger of impeachment. The new Speaker of the House went out of her way to make it clear that there would be no impeachment. Clinton was impeached, which took a ton of votes. Again, the two were entirely different.
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“How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously?”
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“Few claimed that specific examples of things like that made Bush weak on terrorism and security. However, many claimed that Bush made us less safe in general and a greater target of the terrorist. MSNBC brought their ratings out of the gutter by playing to the left audience with just such claims amongst other things.”
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So in other words, lots of people (including military personel who are paid to know this stuff) made fact-based claims that Bush made things more dangerous (resurgence of Al Quaida, birth of Al Quaida movements in Iraq, creation of new terrorists worldwide because of the Bush Administration’s actions at Guantanemo, Bagram, Abu Gharib, and “black sites” worldwide) and this is somehow equivalent to hypocritcal claims that Obama’s allowing a trial was more dangerous than Bush allowing a trial? I’m getting worn out with all of the false equivalencies here.
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“I’m sorry, but the liberals and conservatives out there act pretty much exactly the same.”
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Bûll-fûçkìņg-šhìŧ.
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“The only thing that can be said about the Republicans is that they often show more discipline and unity when they go on the attack.”
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Which is a huge difference. One or two Democrats called for impeachment for W. A majority did for Clinton.
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“They also have a stronger echo chamber since they have far more of the talk radio market.”
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And who supports that? Who gives them the audience? On the right you have Limbaugh and others claiming that Clinton murdered Vince Foster (to huge ratings) and on the left, you have …what? Keith Olberman? A man who actually apologized when Jon Stewart called him on his rhetoric? When has anyone on the left who has the standing of someone like Limbaughon the right accused Bush of bumping off an underling. Calling Bush a murderer based on his bombing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t even come close. (and if you want to call Obama the same, for the same, I’ll completely agree.)
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“They’re better at getting the message and the smears out, but their messages and the smears aren’t much worse than the Republicans”
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I’ll assume that the final sentence was supposed to read Democrats, and as I’ve shown here and in other posts. This isn’t true. Bush faced attacks (and the dreaded N-word, Nazi) based on torture, the deaths of tons of civilians, ignoring the constitution, illegal wiretapping and kidnapping etc…in other words, criticm based on his *actions* If Republicans and conservatives were calling Obama Hitler/Stalin based on bombing civilians, continuing illegal detention and wiretapping etc..I’d agree with them 100 percent. Who is condemning Obama for this? Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, The Pink Ladies, The progressives I meet every week
at the San Jose Peace and Justice center who show documentaries on civilian casualties of Drone Aircraft under Bush and Obama. All fact-based. How many Republicans spread and believe the lie about Obama being secret Muslim/Atheist/Radical Christian/Socialist/Facist/Communist/etc. based on what? Health care? Newt and Beck’s claims.
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On the idea that Repub and Dems, Lib and Conservs. are the same because we can find a few crazies on either side, I’ve shown that these are part and parcel of the Repulican establishment. I rest my my case.
and Bill, my point about linking to the two John McCain articles is to show that:
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1. John McCain has responded to his defeat by becoming unhinged to the point that he makes attacks on Franklin for *folllowing proper procedure* and falsely claiming that this procedure had never been used before, when he himself has used it.
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2. It’s one thing to change your positions. It’s another to try to pretend you’ve never had the earlier ones (to the point of even trying to deny that he’d ever claimed he was a maverick, and ignoring his earlier position on the Arizona fence, among others.)
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3. As those and other articles showedm he has abandoned the “reach across the aisle and get things done, play peacemanker” role he once sought.
So if I’m understanding you correctly it is perfectly ok to call Obama a Nazi as long as it is because one thinks that he is continuing too many of the policies of Bush.
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I would find it hard to work up much outrage on that premise. “How DARE you have the AUDACITY to call President Obama a nazi over his health car policy! He is a nazi because of his use of drones over Pakistan, refusal to close down Guantanamo, issuing assassination orders against American citizens who have not been convicted of any capital crime, selling out the public option to corporate interests, strengthening the NSA wiretaps…AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!!!
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You know what? You’re blind in your Left eye.
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You see the bad stuff the right does and you bemoan the horrible nature of it, but you choose to not see the Left’s similar actions in the same light or simply not see them at all. And if presented with them in a discussion you simply sidestep the actions being discussed and insert your own version of the argument being made to discuss that.
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Case in point:
. “Why did so many people on the left (and not on the left) blame Bush for so much of the disaster for hurricane Kartrina? Maybe because he put an unqualified person in charge of FEMA which led to greater disater. I don’t see how justifed criticism belongs in the same paragraphs as claims of with-hunts.”
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Your comments here might have been relevant if I had been defending Bush from charges of incompetence during Katrina, but that’s not what I brought up. I brought up the various voices on the Left, from West on a fundraiser for the victims right on up to MSNBC hosts and their guests and a whole slew of people in between, who said that Bush’s poor response was based in large part because he didn’t care about the deaths because the were black. I brought up the people who went even further and claimed that Bush and crew were actually happy with these deaths because it reduced the area’s Democratic voters.
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Your response is to say that the criticisms were fair and just because Bush did bungle things from before day one. Oh, okay. So in your world it’s okay to peddle the idea that he hated blacks so much he was more than fine with their deaths in emergencies like Katrina or even maybe happy about it because it thinned the Democrat herd so long as you point out that he did some other stupid stuff too.
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Like I said; you’re blind in your left eye. You’re like many of those who protested Bush and demanded that Bush and Cheney be tried as war criminals for their actions in the war. You’re like many of the people who demanded that Bush and Cheney be arrested for violating the Constitution with their heinous crimes against America.
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These people claimed that they were demanding this and protesting because of what was right and moral. And then Bush went away and Obama came in and Obama actually chose to continue many of the things Bush started. So of course these people kept protesting, right? No. They mostly went *POOF* and went away. A few people stuck to there morals, but most seemed to have forgotten their cause when the partisan component went away. It went from the greatest evil of our time under Bush to being kinda bad but something they could live with under Obama.
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You kinda remind me of people like that.
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Your reply to Bill just shows this even more. You pointed out that Gore was gracious in defeat. Bill points out that McCain was gracious in defeat as well. You point out (with fairly weak examples) that McCain has changed his tune. It’s pointed out that Gore did the same.
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But it’s not the same in your world. You’re the equal-but-opposite number to the average Rush callers and commenters on Conservative blogs. They cry and moan that the evil, dirty, cheating Left and there lies are so horrible and question the heavens as to how anyone can get away with things like this. But point out the things the Right does that’s just as bad and they claim it’s not the same, they say it’s actually justified or they dodge the point and substitute their own before going back to bemoaning how anyone can be as bad as those evil Lefties out there.
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You are a Dittohead for the left. Their Side is always more evil and worse than Your Side ever was and ever could be; even when both sides are often equally crappy in their own special ways.
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Your world and you’re welcome to live in it for as long as you want. I’ll stick to the real world where I can see out of both eyes just fine.
Well I had hopes.
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Bill, my point was that if one is going to call Obama (or Bush) a Nazi, or evil, it makes sense that one would point to examples of them doing similar things, e.g. the slaughter of civilians. If someone says that a person is Hitler and Stalin because of…ummmm national health care, that person is báŧ-fûçkìņg insane and impossible to take their view seriously. If this become the rallying cry for a significant segment of the anti-Obama crowd, it is hard to take the “merits” for the case seriously, and what one should take seriously is that such disturbed people are a significant part of what passes for Tea Party/GOP philosophy. I mean aren’t *you* a little disturbed to think that such people are setting the agenda for one of the main parties. I know that I am.
As for you Jerry, enjoy your ad hominems, regardless of whether they match with reality. I’m blind in my left eye, I’m a dittohead for the left….because I agree that Obama is a war criminal along with Bush…because I think that Clinton and Albright should face a war crimes tribunal for starving 100,000 Iraqi kids…because I don’t see Kayne as having the same influence as Limbaugh or Glenn Beck…and speak up when I see Clinton and Obama continue trade with China when it ignores human rights…all that makes me a dittohead of the left who can’t see what my suppposed side is doing, even when I protest it. Right. Logic.
It seems to me that if you think that Barak Obama, the President of the United States, is a war criminal, then the fact that the Tea Party people are unfairly maligning him on some other issue ought to be mighty small potatoes. You seem far more worked up by John McCain acting like just another phony politician then by the War Criminal in Chief.
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I think that if I actually thought that badly of the guy I would welcome even unfair attacks…what, I want to make sure a war criminal is treated fairly?
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Well, if it’ll make you feel batter I could just say that you either have some reading comprehension issues and that you seem to be unable to actually discuss what someone actually says to you rather than what you would rather insert into what they said. That list, lovely as it is, has nothing to do with why I said you were basically blind in your Left eye. You inserted your list of reasons in place of what I actually said much as you ducked the race issue (twice now since you only reference West and not the chorus of voices, amongst others some on the largest websites that the Left was popularizing at the time and some that hosted MSNBC’s highest rated shows, who supported his assertion) and argued something I didn’t say.
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But like I said; it’s your world and you have fun in it.
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Er… Feel better…
Browser ate my posts twice now. Once More:
“It seems to me that if you think that Barak Obama, the President of the United States, is a war criminal, then the fact that the Tea Party people are unfairly maligning him on some other issue ought to be mighty small potatoes.”
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If people are ignoring the real issues, it means we’re not going to have real solutions. Throwing Nixon out because we didn’t like his haircut wouldn’t have led to any reforms. Calling Obama Hitler/Stalin over health care isn’t going to lead to any restoration of civil liberties, especially from people who didn’t even bring them up under Bush.
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“You seem far more worked up by John McCain acting like just another phony politician then by the War Criminal in Chief.”
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Yeah right, I just pointed out that claims that he’s handled his defeat with grace don’t hold water.
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“I think that if I actually thought that badly of the guy I would welcome even unfair attacks…what, I want to make sure a war criminal is treated fairly?”
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I want the voters to pay attention to the constituion and the reasons that candidates come and go, and how these “strategies” work. Jerry can live in a world where a few months of claims from MSNBC that W was a racist are equal to the billion dollar huntings of the Democratic presidents. The rest of us have to deal with real world problems and solutions, and correctly identifying the problems are vital.
. “Yeah right, I just pointed out that claims that he’s handled his defeat with grace don’t hold water.”
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But you insist that Gore, who acted much as McCain did with the passage of time, handled his defeat with grace and dignity and acted, in your words, “gracious in defeat.” Both men lost to their opponent, both men conceded defeat in a civil manner and then both men went back to partisan politicking for their side at a later date. So the only standards by which you stated that Gore handled defeat gracefully also apply to McCain. Yet, somehow, when both go on the attack at a later date it’s only the side you dislike most that is the bad one who is not acting “gracious in defeat.”
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See the ever so slight disconnect there? But, of course, it’s someone else’s comments on the matter that don’t hold water.
. “I think that if I actually thought that badly of the guy I would welcome even unfair attacks…what, I want to make sure a war criminal is treated fairly?””
. “I want the voters to pay attention to the constituion and the reasons that candidates come and go, and how these “strategies” work.”
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Uhm… You may need to have your sarcasm detector sent in for its scheduled 10,000 mile maintenance. It’s not working properly.
. “Jerry can live in a world where a few months of claims from MSNBC that W was a racist are equal to the billion dollar huntings of the Democratic presidents. The rest of us have to deal with real world problems and solutions, and correctly identifying the problems are vital.”
. yawn
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Yeah, done with you now. When the weapons in your arsenal are replying to things not actually said to you because doing that is easier for you, equating apples (McCain criticizing Franken) to watermelons (the claim you tried to back with that link) and constantly cherry picking stuff to contrast and compare issues with then you’re entertainment value drops rapidly.
Aw, Jerry, you never needed the magic feather to be entertained; all you needed was confidence in your ability to deny reality. Now fly, little elephant, fly!
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To be fair to the Truthers (and oh how I hate you right now for making me type those words) they don’t all claim that Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened. I’ve seen and met far more of them that believe in the shadow government concept and believe that little groups in our government did this without everyone else’s knowledge. Still, you do have a good chunk who do.
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Still bat$&!^ crazy though.
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Likewise, not all of the Tea Party are racists or act in a racist manner. Many of the regular people on the ground are certainly are not. However I am starting to see a game being played more openly by some conservatives bigwigs in the Tea Party, The Republican Party and the punditry to appeal to the racists and the ignorant out there. For example- I would not have labeled Newt a racist and a bigot before and would still be hesitant to do so now; however, his recent actions have definitely been geared towards appealing to that fringe and the ignorant. And some in the Tea Party and some of the most public Tea Party supporters are embracing his garbage instead of denouncing it.
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It’s basically guilt by association, but it does create a stronger impression of racism on a larger scale in the Tea Party when so many public figures connected to the Tea Party embrace the “He’s black, he’s Muslim, he’s Kenyan- He can’t be one of us!” tactics rather than denouncing them.
I’m not sure how fringe the Truthers really are. There was a poll a few years ago, and I seem to remember that a majority of Americans don’t believe in the official government explanation for 9/11.
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Though I think most people believe Bush and co. knew of it and let it happened, instead of being the actual perpetrator.
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Likewise, I think nowadays people who believe that the Kennedy brothers and MLK were killed by lone gunmen in incidents unrelated to anything else are the “fringe,” as far more people believe in the conspiracy theories proposed.
. “Though I think most people believe Bush and co. knew of it and let it happened, instead of being the actual perpetrator.
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I think there’s a slight difference in the two things you’re addressing, Rene. The 9/11 Truthers believe that 9/11 was planned and carried out by either a faction in the US government or by Bush and Cheney themselves (depending on just how fringe they are.)
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On the other hand there are a lot of people out there who believe that Bush “knew” something was about to happen due to the various intelligence warnings, including the now famous one that stated OBL was planning to strike America, but that he was more interested in the never ending vacation that he started his first term with. In that case they’re not expressing the belief that Bush knew about 9/11, simply that they believe that Bush knew something was going to happen and ignored the warnings.
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There are actually very few Truthers in the overall population, but the percentage of the second group is quite large. I’ve also seen at least a few sloppily done polls that mix the two by simply asking the polled if the believe that Bush/the Government knew about 9/11 ahead of time. That number tends to be larger because you have all of the Truthers saying yes and the people who merely believe that Bush was asleep at the switch.
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But, no, the Truthers are not really a large percentage of the population by any means.
of course, the main point that the truthers keep harping on is that fire can’t melt steel (steel being made, as we all know, by a combination of unicorn horns and fairy dust) so the Towers were brought down by a controlled demolition. And even they are not demented enough to suggest that somebody ran up the towers while they were burning and set the charges. So the charges had to have already been there. But of course there would be no point in doing that unless you knew that some reason to set them was on the way so the inescapable conclusion if you don’t believe that the aircraft fires brought down the building was that there was a massive conspiracy (most likely involving Jews, because, well, because!) to knock them down and blame a bunch of innocent radical Muslims who, as luck would have it, played along and took the credit.
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calling it crazy is an insult to crazy people.
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All of the truther stuff I’ve seen is clock full of nutty stuff like how airplanes fired missiles at the towers, there was no actual plane that hit the pentagon, etc. It’s a lot like creationist stuff–they find one unanswered mystery or question and throw out the 99% of the truth that makes sense just for that one inconsistency.
I support the search for truth in everything. A few of my friends could fall under the Truther moniker, including a few highly intelligent people. A few of those point out problems or artifacts in the video that, working in TV as they do, they should recognize. However, they see them as “evidence.”
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Now, do I believe we know the whole truth about the attacks? No. But, do I think there was some conspiracy in DC? No. But, when you see what was in the popular media around the time, everything from Wag the Dog a few years before to the series premiere of The Lone Gunmen, the mind could go places if left unchecked.
I would like to believe that the Tea Party Movement isn’t a racist organization. But, every Tea Party website, rally, function, or advertizement includes racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments. Some of them are merely offensive “jokes” but others are outright propaganda.
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I actually agree with most of the Tea Party’s stated goals. It is how they plan on achieving those goals that I disagree with. When I see that they say that they want to limit government spending, I agree. When I see that their plan for achieving that goal is to increase the deficit, my mind goes kablooie.
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When I see that they want to protect Medicare, I agree with them. When I read that their plan for protecting Medicare is to oppose government provided health care, I back away slowly.
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When I see that they oppose the bank bail outs and want to remove those responsible from office, I agree with them. When they claim that Obama and Pelosi are to blame for the bill signed by Bush in March 2008, I lose respect for them.
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When I read that the Tea Party wants to bring “change” to Washington, by opposing every reform proposed from health care, to banking regulations, to industrial safety regulations, I wonder when “change” started to mean “the same as before.”
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I feel like the Tea Party is, as a whole, a person looking to buy a new car. The car they have is a 2000 Chevy, and they have spent 10 years dissatisfied with it. They take it in to the dealer to buy a new car and say, “My father gave me this car when I graduated, and I hate it. It gets poor gas millage. There is no leg room. I don’t like that it has a temperature light instead of gague. I don’t like the arrangement of the dials and switches. And, the radio only has a cassette player and a broken antenna so I can’t listen to my favourite music.”
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So, the dealer shows them a new model Ford. It gets 36 mpg, compared to 28. It has a temp dial. It has greater leg room and head space. It has cruise control on the wheel rather than the arm. It has the dimmer switch on the arm rather thanthe pannel. It has a sat radio with CD player and mp3 capability.
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The buyer rejects the car, though. And, instead picks out a Chevrolet. The salesman says, “You do realize that the car you picked out advertizes only 25 mpg and mostly the same features as your old car?”
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“Yes, I saw that,” the buyer answers.
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“Then,” the dealer asks, “why do you prefer that one over the one I showed you?”
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The buyer says, “It may not be what I’m looking for, but at least it isn’t a Ford.”
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Theno
. “I would like to believe that the Tea Party Movement isn’t a racist organization. But, every Tea Party website, rally, function, or advertizement includes racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments. Some of them are merely offensive “jokes” but others are outright propaganda.”
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You know, I’ve seen Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m You” ad several times now just for the pure comedy value of it and I’ve somehow missed the racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments in it. Can you point them out to me? I suppose I’ve missed the offensive jokes in that one too unless you think that witches were really peeved that she kicked started the ad by joking about that she’s not a witch.
I should have said, “every … advertizement that I have seen.” Also should have included anti-hispanic while I was at it.
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And, while I have seen parts of the “I’m you” commercial, I haven’t seen all of it, and so wasn’t considering it.
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But, again, everything that I’ve seen from a pan through the crowd of a report on a rally, to an actual rally, to facebook pages, to fliers in my local coffee house has something racist in it.
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Maybe it is the photoshop of “ObamaCare” with the tribesman attire. Maybe it is a “send the Muslims back home” suggestion. Maybe it is a call to “take back America from the immigrants.” Maybe it is simply using the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” interchangably.
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But, here in Ohio, Tea Party candidate John Husted has publically distanced himself from the movement because he objects to the rampant racism on display.
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Although, to be fair, Rich Iott is being unfairly painted as a racist because of one of his hobbies. I haven’t seen any pro-Iott ads, so I don’t know what they include. I would hope that they are the exception to my experience, if only because of the accusations against him.
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Theno
But, every Tea Party website, rally, function, or advertizement includes racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments.
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You make some good points but when you state something so over the top as that, you lose me. Every advertisement? really? the first tea party ad I found on google was this one: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/07/new-tea-party-ad-its-time-for-us-to-retire-bart-stupak/
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Nothing about blacks or Muslims.
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Fair enough, Bill. I meant to say, “every … that I’ve seen.”
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I’ve never seen that anti-Stupak ad. And, you are right, nothing offensive in it at all.
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And, now that I think about it, I’m going to take a step back and say, “every … that I can recall” because it is entirely possible that I’ve come across one or two here or there and in my memory they’ve just been drowned out by all of the others.
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But, that was really my point in the first place. Sure, there are Tea Party people who aren’t racist. Just as there are non-racist people who occasionally do or say racist things.
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But, in the case of the Tea Party, it has been my experience that the overwhelming majority appear to be if not racist, at least supportive of spreading racist ideas.
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Although, while I’ve been typing this and my reply to Jerry, I realize something. When Neil Gaiman was asked about comic book women wearing skimpy, revealing, or bondage-esque outfits, he pointed out that the ones who do are in the slight minority. Just that they are the ones people tend to remember, and the ones that tend to get used in advertizing.
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Considering that, I have to accept that maybe the Tea Party isn’t racist, but that the aspects that I see on tv, that I get via email forwardings, that I see advertized on Facebook, are the vocal minority. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the smallest segment of a group had the loudest voice.
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So, Bill, Jerry, I admit that I was wrong. And, I admit that it is unfair to describe the Tea Party as racist. And, since I do agree with parts of it, maybe I should do some investigating of my own. Maybe the other parts of it I disagree with are also from the minority.
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Theno
If you do that, please get back to me on what you find. I have to admit that my knowledge of the TP is limited to what I’ve seen locally, which is probably why I have been a bit annoyed when people have labeled the people at these things as racists–the ones I know are anything but. A few are genuine ex-hippies and most are distinguished mainly by the fact that this seems to be the first time they have gotten involved in politics to this degree.
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I guess that is what has fascinated me about the phenomena even though I find the movement a bit too simplistic for me (but then I’ve always been surrounded by politics so the gee whiz dewy newness of what they are doing holds no appeal). I hope the movement isn’t significantly racist since it would be a shame to waste a potentially interesting development like that.
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And, as a general aside, you are a true mensch.
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Yeah, to be sure there’s a lot of coverage about that and not all of in unwarranted. The idiots who who carry signs like the witch doctor picture or anything else derogatory that is designed around and can only work based on race and then wonder why they’re getting labeled racists certainly deserve to be made to look bad in the press. And, least we forget, it was the head of the Tea Party Express who got the rest of the Tea Party groups embarrassed enough to publically denounce him and claim that he was no longer allowed in their clubhouse after a series of racial charged and racist stunts.
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But the one catch to remember about the coverage is that controversy sells and gets ratings so that is what you’ll see the most of. The story doesn’t have in sizzle in it if it’s just a bunch of people peaceful protesting. Well, unless it’s Fox News. They’ll actually pretend that the racist stuff on display doesn’t exist at all half the time since the story they want to tell is even more unrelated to reality than the story the other side wants to tell is. There are a lot of really lousy people in the Tea Party movement and they certainly get their 15 minutes of fame at every rally.
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But you also have a lot of people who are not those jáçkáššëš. Like I said somewhere way above (Or was it in another thread at this point?) a lot of the people on the ground level, the regular folks from the neighborhood, are not those jáçkáššëš. Some to be sure, but not all.
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And, yeah, the Rich Iott thing is kinda cheesing me off right now as well.
Ever since the “Tea Parties” gained national attention, the debate has raged on whether they are a grass-roots protest movement in the proud tradition of American dissent, or a hysterical mob driven by fear, intolerance and selfishness. Recently, two much-discussed surveys — a CBS/New York Times poll and a multi-state University of Washington poll — have been bandied about as proof that the leftist caricatures of the Tea Partiers as mean-spirited rich white bigots are accurate. Yet a look at the data suggests that this interpretation is highly skewed by political bias.”
They may not be racist, but I strongly suspect they’re mostly hypocrites.
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One reason I always distrusted and disliked young Marxist rebels here in my country is that most of those “anti-American” rebels are middle-class kids that wear American clothes, watch American TV, eat American food, and listen to American music all the while shouting about how alienated and colonized the rest of us are…
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Same thing with the Tea Partiers and other so-called “Libertarians.” They’re always complaining about government spending money on the poor or on minorities, but do they refuse to take advantage of government expenditure aimed at THEM? Somehow I don’t think so. What about that Rolling Stone article about all the Tea Party old geezers riding around in government-paid scooters?
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I don’t think they’re necessarily racist, they’re probably just regular human beings that want others to do the sacrifice for them while they come across as righteous and commited themselves.
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But people may get the impression of racism due to the simple fact that the Tea Party’s are a bunch of white old guys (mostly living off the government like old guys everywhere) while decrying government expenditure. And since they naturally blame “other people” for leeching off the government, naturally we imagine they mean non-white minorities, since they can’t mean themselves, right?
You may be right about the hypocricy…then again, if you pay your taxes wouldn’t you have to be willing to be a chump if you also refused to take advantage of any chance to have some of that money paid back to you?
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It would be like calling someone a hypocrite for opposing the Bush tax cuts but being willing to take the money that it saves them. And yeah, I’ve heard some conservatives say nonsense like that and it makes little sense to me.
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Now if you are all for lowering taxes, cutting government to the essentials but still want to get all kind of goodies from this now leaner government, yeah, THAT would be hypocritical.
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I think there are too many reducto ad moronium type arguments. “Want less taxes? Oh, so you don’t want roads or a military!” “In favor of letting the tax cuts expire? Oh, so you must want Sweden style 90% tax brackets on the wealthy!”
Yes, you’d have to be a chump to refuse any government largesse after paying your taxes, but it would make their protests more impressive if they showed themselves to have at least a fraction of willingness to make sacrifices.
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Otherwise, they end up looking the same as all the other “rebels” everywhere that live in comfort while “rebelling” against certain aspects of the society that gives them that same comfort, and somehow it’s always other people that are at fault for not having the backbone to follow directives that the members of the movement don’t follow themselves.
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I know it’s too much to expect that the Tea Partiers will be like Randian heroes, it’s just that it’s hard for me not to feel cynical at most political protest these days.
Perfect example of what I said above–Chris matthews trying and failing to make a coherant political spin out of the Chilean miner’s rescue: “If the trapped Chilean miners had subscribed to the tea party’s “every-man-for-himself” philosophy, “they would have been killing each other after about two days,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on his “Hardball” show Wednesday night….
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“You know these people, if they were every man for himself down in that mine, they wouldn’t have gotten out…. They would have been killing each other after about two days.”
. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43592.html
If the Baby Jessica story were happening now, Fox would be holding it up as a metaphor for the Obama administration while MSNBC would be declaring that lack of oversight left over from the Bush administration was responsible for the well being accessible.
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PAD
For some people, the free market vs. government discussion is almost like religion. They get carried away.
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I can’t really understand or sympathize with either side.
Wow, there’s still a discussion going on here? (I hadn’t checked in on this column in a while.)
Well, I guess I’m kind of a libertarian nutcase in many ways, so I guess I might need to defend myself a little.
I have received some Federal benefits in my life– free school lunches, Pell grants, and right now I’m on Medicaid. I do feel guilty over that last one. I put off applying for Medicaid as long as I could stand to do so, and I did have my family trying to convince me to apply for the last few years.
I guess I do qualify as a hypocrite. I would prefer some other option, but I’ve been unable to find one. (I’m not one of those so-called ‘libertarians’ who liked the system we’ve had for the last several decades. Health care financing in this country has long been a horrendous mess, but it couldn’t be called a free-market, either. I would’ve preferred some sort of free-market solution, but I’m not certain there was one. I’m not sure the new ‘Obamacare’ is going to work well, either, but I don’t know enough about it to insist we get rid of it. I am willing to wait and see how things work out.)
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But in my defence, I’m primarily a libertarian in regard to personal freedoms– drugs, prostitution, stuff like that. And I’d love to see a great many laws and regulations repealed (even some that are innocuous when viewed on their own merits– because a lot of good laws can become bad laws when they’re all working together).
I’ve never been a huge critic of welfare programmes, although I think we should always be willing to make huge changes to the ones that don’t work well.
I’ve spent my whole life in poverty or close to it, as have most of the people I know, so maybe my perspective is a bit different from the more vocal upper-class libertarian-types. So I guess I’m more accepting of welfare programmes, but on the other hand I tend to get very angry over all the government actions that work to keep people in poverty, such as zoning laws that prevent people from operating businesses out of their homes (the only way most poor people can ever hope of starting their own business).
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With all that said, I do think we’ll soon have to find some way to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I don’t know for sure how they should be cut, and I’m scared that any cuts that finally do happen might really hurt me, but they are such a huge part of the Federal budget I don’t know how we could ever get out of debt without cutting them.
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I know nobody was asking me to defend libertarianism here, and I didn’t do a very good job of it anyway, but I thought I should give it a try.
Regarding personal freedoms, I’d consider myself a Libertarian too. Up to and including advocating the possession of guns by those who desire guns.
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I think we all have our little hypocrisies in everyday life. I’m no different in that. I think that is perfectly normal. It only bothers me when people get strongly involved with a movement. A serious activist or rebel should be held to a higher standard, otherwise they’re just imposters.
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Interesting to find out that you’ve been poor, Mary. Makes me respect you more, because in my experience, many libertarians are comfortable middle-class people that don’t need desperately government help (though many will take it anyway).
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Economically, I advocate whatever works in a given situation. I don’t consider myself learned or wise enough to have a definite oppinion of which is better: free marked enterprise or government enterprise. Intuitivelly, I think both have their drawbacks and they work better together. I am afraid many people choose one or another over philosophical reasons, instead of practical ones. And they just convince themselves that they’re being practical, and that bothers me.
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Nothing wrong with taking a philosophical stand, as long as you’re honest about it.
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Want to bet there aren’t some Tea Party types who’d gladly take those pesky problems (no polio vaccine, etc) if it gave them what they wanted? Fanatical extremism comes in many packages.
Only until they themselves get polio. Then they’ll scream “why didn’t the government DO something?”
Y’know…kinda like they did with the oil spill. They wanted deregulation, then blamed the Obama administration for not making sure things like that didn’t happen.
“America doesn’t go back. America goes forward.”
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this.
Why must every critic ALWAYS focus on the extremists? I, personally, identify greatly with the Tea Party. My wife feels she helped create it, having used the tea party references to friends and others during the last presidential election cycle.
What do we have now? A congress and government that seems intent solely to bribe Americans with their own money. An America where the secure jobs all seem to be in government service, not industry. In California, we find that our state is going bankrupt not because we don’t have enough taxes going in, but because we owe more in pensions to former workers than we are paying to our present workers. Cities are laying off employees, and then hiring back the same workings to do the same job as outside contractors because then they don’t have the pension and other benefit obligations required for public employees.
We have teachers starting to think about undoing their unions, because those unions are now more concerned about political power and control than about getting kids educated. PAD, have you ever considered volunteering at a local high school, say with a weekly class on creative writing, or Kath teaching a class on art or puppets? Forget about it, unless you have also taken the time to get an advanced degree in education or a teaching certificate. The last thing the teacher’s unions want is competition from the truly talented!
I could go on for a while like this, but you probably get the idea… 😉
Charlie
Charlie,
I do a lot at Caroline’s elementary school every week. I give an afternoon of my time to the library and help with the puppet club that is there. I don’t get paid for this but I do have the satisfaction of helping making her school a better place. Our PTA is very active in the school and the teachers (who are union) are very grateful for the help we give.
It is different elsewhere but that’s how it is in our neck of the woods.
Kath “the wife” David
PAD and Kath,
It’s not that way in California either. Southern California at least, where I was born and have lived my entire life. Our budget issues are not a direct result of state pensions. Since Prop 13 gutted the property tax revenue going to the counties, the state has been burdened with almost all of the funding for education, infrastructure and public safety. None of which are easy to cut, although all three have been underfunded for years. This burden, combined with our historically boom or bust economy and the state, by law, unable to bank or invest budget surpluses, when they happen, is the source of our budget woes.
As someone who was at my son’s school so much they offered me a job, I applaud you.
You are the kind of parent that every school hopes for and every child needs. If we could simply double the number of parents like you, our educational crisis would almost cease to exist.
“PAD, have you ever considered volunteering at a local high school, say with a weekly class on creative writing, or Kath teaching a class on art or puppets? Forget about it, unless you have also taken the time to get an advanced degree in education or a teaching certificate. The last thing the teacher’s unions want is competition from the truly talented!”
A a union teacher, I’d like to point this out as a complete load of BS.
As someone who has guest lectured in all kinds of school settings, ranging from creative writing classes to kindergartens, I would agree.
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PAD
As another union teacher, I second that.
Another union teacher here. Thirded.
Charlie,
why do you think that teachers being required to learn about education is a bad thing? They definitely need to be very qualified in their subject as well, but that alone does not make them good teachers – they have to be able to communicate their subject to their students, to motivate them, and ideally to make learning their subject fun. And these are all hopefully things they learn when getting their teaching certificate, or at least techniques to help them with it.
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I do not know how it works in the US, but in Germany, teacher trainees have to take classes on general concepts of education, on concepts specific to their subject (If you are teaching a language, what are specific problems non-native speakers have, and how do you best address them? How do you best design work sheets, and how do you use media like newspapers or films in your classroom effectively?), and they have to teach classes under supervision so they can be told what to improve (first a single period, then three weeks, then a whole semester). All this is to ensure that when they finally teach a class of their own, not only do the confidence to do so, but they won’t just stand there in the front, read their script, give the children their homework and then vanish.
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Being a good teacher is lot of work, and requires a specific skill set that you do not acquire simply because you are good at maths, or physics, or French, or what have you.
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I am sorry for just taking one point out of your longer post, but I study with a lot of teacher trainees, and to be honest I found the implication that teaching is something anybody can do somewhat irritating.
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Benjamin
Oh yes. I can think of several cases where people were hired as teachers who knew the subject in its smallest detail … but were useless at actually teaching it. One was so bad I left her class partway through the year, tired of wasting time having her explain the jargon she was using to explain the jargon she’s just used. Can you say “circular definition”? The moment which killed it for me was when she did the equivalent of saying “white is a colour we call ‘white'”. A ‘Human Resources Management” class as I recall. Fortunately another teacher was available for the same subject and I wound up in his class, only to learn they were two chapters ahead because he used plain English tailored for the level of knowledge of his class. Unfortunately, at the last class he announced he was retiring. World needs more teachers such as he.
It’s not the unions, Charlie. It’s the massive, unrelenting burden of governmental red tape. Everything we do now must be documented duplicate or triplicate. We have to have hundreds of hours of continuing education at our own expense (many districts themselves pick up at least a chunk of the expense, but it’s still an unfunded mandate) and on our own time or risk losing our certification. This is regardless of whether we already have a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Doctoral degree.
I’m not sure what “advanced degrees” you’re talking about. Things vary from state to state, but here you can become a guest teacher (a paid substitute) with a bachelor’s degree. No teaching certification required. The only other stipulation being they pass their safety clearances so we don’t end up with some “truly talented” pedophiles.
Speaking of the “truly talented,” I’ve had several students return to school in their senior year after being home-schooled all their lives that couldn’t string five words together to create a grammatically correct sentence, and the home schooling lobby is constantly screaming that their rights are being violated when they are asked for even a fraction of the accountability that teachers are.
That being said, my school has numerous volunteer parents and other community members who put in hours and hours of service to make our schools great.
The maker of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH has a new documentary out called WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”, about the education system, and it portrays the teacher’s unions in a very negative light. In fact, they come off as being the most reprehensible element of the whole system.
Okay. Good for them.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t speak to its points. Do the unions have problems? Absolutely. No doubt about it. There’s a number of things I’d like to change about them if I were in charge, and I might agree with some or all of the flick’s points. Dyslexic dog knows I’ve bìŧçhëd about their practices numerous times in the past. I won’t know until I see it.
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I WILL say that if the movie makes the points that the unions require all kinds of rules that prevent all these wonderful laypeople from showing those elitist teachers how to *really* get the job of education done. It’s full of šhìŧ. That is the point that was made above, and that was what I was refuting. As I said, people without a teaching degree are allowed in numerous places to get involved in a variety of ways in public education.
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Hëll, when I was living in New Mexico twenty-plus years ago, all you needed to be a substitute teacher was a GED. If that’s an example of the evil union throwing its weight around, then I’d have to say you’ve got nothing to worry about.
here in NC I can vouch for the fact that people who want to help out would be most welcome.
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On the other hand, I can also vouch for the fact that the state makes people who want to become teachers jump through hoops that are illogical and have driven away a few good people. that’s not a union thing though, our union is virtually powerless. We are State Employees so we can’t strike which kind of limits what kind of influence you can have.
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I suspect that’s one reason I make a lot less than some of my relatives who are teachers in New York. However, if the cost of that was to put up with the union politics that I have personally witnessed there, I will gladly make do with what I have. It’s dreadful and they clearly don’t give a rat’s ášš about the kids or the teachers, it’s all about the power of the people in the union bureaucracy. Absolutely dreadful situation.
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I have no idea if that particular situation is unique or typical.
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I’d like to see the WAITING FOR SUPERMAN movie–I’ve been kind of surprised to see some folks who have seen it and are usually staunch liberals literally shaking with rage at the union people in that movie.
On thing people don’t realize about teacher’s unions is that they are not equally powerful in every state. While perhaps they may be a problem in states with a strong history of workers’ rights and unions such as New York, they are barely effectual in other places. .
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Florida’s problem is not the unions, but the FCAT, and I’ve yet to find one teacher who doesn’t curse No Child Left Behind.
It was obviously written by someone who has never attended a Tea Party gathering. I’ve been to a few in various places in the country, and I have yet to encounter racists or Luddites.
Malcolm, there’s somewhat of a problem in that there’s not *A* Tea Party, but many disparate groups with a small handful of shared views and buckets of views that differ from group to group all operating under that one banner of “Tea Party.”
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Even so-called Tea Party “officials,” when interviewed about some of the more, shall we say, “controversial” views espoused supposedly under that Tea Party banner are quick to point that out.
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So, while your local “Tea Party” might be fine and dandy, another areas might be quite the hate mongers. And, since the movement seems reluctant to form a centralized leadership to weed out the nutjobs, those nutjobs have just as big a hand in shaping the public’s perception of all those who identify themselves with the Tea Party.
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–Daryl
It is an inherent characteristic of groups with no real membership control and no centralised authority and which rely on volunteers to do the work to drift to the extremes, because rational people get bored with the grind and fall aside, or have other, more important things to do (like lives), but the fanatics hang in there.
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Here in Atlanta we had an “underground” newspaper called “The Great Speckled Bird.” It was an all-volunteer operation. Even before someone fire-bombed its original office, the more moderate types were falling away … but the Trotskyites (no, i’m not kidding – this was the Seventies, remember) hung in there, and by the time it died a merciful death, it was limping along totally under their control.
Holy friggin’ šhìŧ. That’s an awesome piece. I wish Democrats like Obama would go on the offensive with stuff like this.
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Seriously, though, Peter, I think you could’ve said it yourself. You’ve done so before. 🙂
Or maybe, just maybe, what they mean by “we want our country back” is that they want the portion *THEY* paid for, instead of said money being taxed and given to the more than 50% of the population that doesn’t *PAY* any taxes. Maybe they want some of these functions taken *AWAY* from the Federal Government, and given back to the *STATE* governments, where it can be applied more effectively.
…and what colour of paisley is the sky in your world, dear?
The color of understanding *WHY* the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was a bad idea – what balancing mechanism in the original document it completely removed.
I’m rather glad, actually, to see Congress deadlocked, not getting anything done. That’s that much less they’re screwing up worse.
So, Tara, are you actually saying you want to have LESS say in who represents YOU in the Senate? The 17th Amendment allowed YOU and your fellow citizens the opportunity to decide who represents their interests in the Senate, INSTEAD of a handful of legislators. I have no idea in what state you live. but let’s look at California (the most populous state in the country). In 2006 (the last year that Cali had an election for the US Senate), just over 8.5 MILLION valid ballots were cast. Now, California’s State Senate consists of a mere 40 members and the Assembly consists of a mere 80 members, for a combined total of 120 people. In case your math is seriously impaired, the OLD system would allow as few as 61 people to “elect” a US Senator; in other terms, that’s 7/10,000ths of 1 percent.
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By comparison, in New York with 212 legislators, as few as 107 people would determine the Senator compared to the nearly 4.5 million people who voted in 2006.
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What you fail to understand, Tara, is that there was NO “balancing mechanism” in the original document. All the early system did was to have Senators beholden to the small handful of people who gave them their jobs. (Some people MIGHT describe that as a “special interest.”) The ONLY type of “balance” that existed was to prevent small states like Delaware from being overwhelmed by the large states like Virginia. The Great Compromise that resulted in the state legislatures’ selecting the Senators was done SOLELY to ease the smaller states’ concerns. The ORIGINAL plan (the “Virginia Plan”) would’ve had Senatorial candidates selected by the State Legislatures but then have the US House actually decide which candidate won; additionally, the Plan recommended that BOTH Houses of Congress be based on population (not 2 Senators per state, but maybe as few as 1 or as many as 5 or 10). Beyond that, there was no real “balance” in the Founders’ final plans for representation in Congress. Both Houses shared power. Exactly HOW the Senate was to be elected wasn’t really considered all that important, merely that each state be equal in its representation as the others.
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Furthermore, what MIGHT interest you is that the 17th Amendment came to be because of STATE pressure on the Congress. The states have a power (granted them by Article V) to amend the Constitution. In 1910, nearly 2/3 of the states had applied to call for a convention to adopt an amendment requiring the direct election of Senators, and 2/3 is the “magic number” for this.
Or maybe, just maybe, what they mean by “we want our country back” is that they want the portion *THEY* paid for, instead of said money being taxed and given to the more than 50% of the population that doesn’t *PAY* any taxes
PLEASE. Do not reply this inaccuracy. It’s simply not correct.
(Rather, it’s woefully incomplete; most of the country most certainly DO pay their Social Security, Medicare and sales tax)
I’m not sure most people can chart exactly where what taxes go (for example, I really don’t think you want national defense functions given to the states).
Also, I thought the precise statement was that 47 percent of households had no tax liability on April 15, and that they owned no taxes on April 15. That’s different from paying 0 taxes. (though I’m a bit fuzzy on this….)
Exactly WHAT functions do you mean? Let’s get SPECIFIC with that claim. Most state governments don’t seem to function very well without massive federal assistance. How many states are currently operating on a budget surplus? (And, let’s exclude Alaska, shall we? Alaskans benefit from a slight touch of socialism–I mean, very little oil is being drilled in downtown Anchorage or Wasilla, yet residents of both of those cities get to share in the state’s oil wealth.)
To be fair, I think most nostalgics just don’t think through the consequences of literally “turning the clock back.” Nostalgia is pure feeling, not reason. It’s rose-colored glasses and all that and people just gloss over the hideous stuff in the past.
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It’s not very different from people who dream of an age of chivalry long past, while the real Middle Ages was a brutal, dirty, senseless, illiterate, un-hygienic period.
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In any case, I loved the piece.
Mark Evanier linked to this 4 page article on the tea party by Matt Taibbi. I loved it:
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904
For a sizable percentage of the self-proclaimed Tea Partiers, I suspect the country they want back is the CSA.
That was hillarious, Jonathan.
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Best line:
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“The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.”
I believe it was Mark Twain that said, “The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can usually count upon the support of Paul.
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My attribution may be off, but it goes hand in hand with Rene’s favorite line.
Yup. Being against wastefull spending is the same as being against all spending (cause you know, it’s all black and white, with no shades in the middle). Yup, all tea partiers are racists. I’m sure there’s a nazi thing there. Yup, all tea partiers hate old people, women, and children, and want segreated schools and buses. Yup, every piece of unsubstantiated retoric I’ve heard over the past two years, repeated in one article. Nothing new here.
Just over a month.
I think the problem with the (reasonable elements of the) Tea Party isn’t what they say they want per se (controlled spending and responsible government aren’t bad things) but that they don’t seem to have any idea how to implement them. Lower taxes? Fine — but the deficit goes up, and there’s not a 1-1 correlation between lowering taxes and economic stimulus. Cutting spending? Fine — who wants to cut military spending, or school funding, or health care? (Actually, a lot are saying they’ll actively dismantle Obama’s health care — then listing the things they would keep from it.) Smaller government? Awesome — say goodbye to infrastructure, or security, or any job creation.
There are a lot of very smart comedians who do a great job pointing out the problems in government (often both sides) but are adamant that they won’t join because while they know the problems, they don’t have solutions. The Tea Party pretends to have the solutions when they are only offering platitudes about the problems.
(And the fringe elements embody some of the worst parts of America: racist, homophobic, mob mentality, and absolutely opposed to any bipartisan work whatsoever — being branded as “RINOs.”)
Nope, those branded as RINOs are those George W. Bush republicans, who claimed to be conservative, but wasted money, and offered no control on spending or the deficit.
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There’s a reason folks like Karl Rove hate the tea party movement. But hey, all of you so ready to attack the tea party now have something in common with Karl Rove and much of the old school establishment GOP. Congrats!
Nope, those branded as RINOs are those George W. Bush republicans, who claimed to be conservative, but wasted money, and offered no control on spending or the deficit.
Examples? Because I don’t think that’s true.
Though I do think it’s ironic that it’s George W. Bush is being branded a RINO….
Seriously, if that’s the case, RINOs make up the bulk of the party. It’s not like the 2004 election saw a huge upswing in support for the libertarian candidate or anything.
Well, the 2008 primary did show significant support for the libertarian Republican candidate, but not nearly enough support.
Jeebus, am I the only one who remembers when the term RINO was coined, during the run-up to the 2000 election? (Yes, Virginia, there was a Republican party before 9/11.)
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RINOs were people who weren’t as ideologically pure as Bush and Rove, people who were willing to compromise with dem EEE-vill Democrats to get things done. You know, like Reagan.
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So, now even Bush and Rove aren’t pure enough? What, to avoid the dreaded “RINO” tag, you can’t even talk to a Democrat? Or does it require denouncing anyone who’s not in the lunatic fringe of the Right as a traitor deserving a stay at Gitmo?
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Maybe I will work harder to make it to the local Rally To Restore Sanity, on the 30th. Lord knows we need more people in politics who believe that screaming at your opponents is pointless, annoying, and terrible for your throat…
RINO is whatever a person thinks it is. I’d limit it to those people who, if they donpt get the nomination or a posh chairmanship position was waved in front of their face, will happily switch parties to keep their grasp on power.
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There are some DINOs as well. A few might show themselves after this election.
Pshaw. The old “let’s take back our country” bit was quite popular among democrats when it was the Republicans in charge and, if the GOP wins big in a few months, they will dust it off and use it again. Heck, Howard Dean even wrote a book: “You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America” which sounds like a it could be a poster at a tea party rally, if you put in a few misspellings (rimshot! I know my audience.)
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If–and I am still sticking with my prediction that this won’t happen because I’ve been predicting it for some time and there’s no glory in changing your mind at the last minute to agree with what everyone else is thinking–the GOP wins massively the blame can be in large part laid at the incredible tone deafness so many Democrats showed when the tea Party thing began. They could have co-opted some of it. Obama, smarter than most in his party, has made some comments to that effect, that the passions of the TPers mirrors the desire for hope and change that swept him into office. But no, to many of the Democrats could not stand to see anyone question them and they simply treated the movement with first contempt, then mockery, then with slander, now with fear. All of which just made these folks all the more eager to get their shot at the polls. John Sterwards observation that conservatives are lining up at the polls like the new harry Potter novel is coming out while democrats sit in front of the TV watching tapes of old Obama speeches and picking funyun dust out of their navels is only a slight exaggeration.
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I still highly doubt the GOP can take the senate and if they fail by just a seat or two many will lay the blame at the TP folks for pushing idiots like Angle and O’Donnell but at the same time it is the energy of those folks that are making once safe seats like Feingold’s up for grabs. But the real problem for the Republicans will be when these folks see that once elected the people they supported go right back to being the power grubbing hacks they were trying to replace.
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And it will be best for Obama if the GOP takes both the senate and the house. If things get better, he gets reelected. If things stay lousy or get worse he blames them. Of course, if the Democrats win big in 2010 and things get better in the next two years he wins huge but I would not bet money on that scenario.
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But anyway, back to the tea Party–laugh all you want but if the Democrats thought for even a microsecond that the left could and would mount primary battles against entrenched senators and congressmen to replace them with committed idealists, you’d see a lot more action on things near and dear to your heart. As opposed to now where it’s like “Gay rights? Why should we risk political capital on a bunch of people who are going to vote for us and give us money anyway?”
Bill, you and I have disagreed in the past on politics, interested in your take on the following.:
I don’t really know for sure what will happen in November. Historically, If I can remember correctly, the Incumbent party usually loses a number of seats in the midterm elections. How much of if can be attributed to supporters of the incumbent party feeling disillusioned with the party, or complacent (having “Their Guy” in the White House) and less likely to go to the polls, or how much of it is the supporters of the defeated party being motivated to organize, get to the polls, push to get heard and make a change etc. I don’t know. This also leaves out things such as the specific personalities running, being replaced, who the president is, the conditions of the country etc.
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It’s a big mess and really hard to say (with any justification) *this* specific reason is why x and y got elected, defeated, replaced, whatever. And who doesn’t want to take credit. Some have pointed out that Fox News acts as though it calls the shots for the Republican party (and Michael Steele was quick to kiss Limbaugh’s ášš when it was brought up) and that the party acts the same. however, Fox News wanted anyone other than McCain elected, and didn’t get their way. They still pulled off a huge campaing for McCain and the Repubs, and didn’t get their way. There was a huge hue and cry against health care, and they didn’t get their way. (David Frum was one of the few conservatives to write in articles, “Our methods aren’t working; perhaps we should look again at our methods and maybe change them. Maybe we should stop looking like a bunch of rabid nutcases who screm that Obama is the Anti-Christ.” (Obviously, I’m paraphrasing.) He just *happened* to lose his job thereafter.
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The long-belaboured point I am trying to make, is that certain people and groups can make a lot of noise-Sarah palin, Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes, Fox News “pundits” in general- and *look* like they have a huge wave of support, but not have that translate into political muscle, support, and numbers. Is the Tea Party in that category? If there is an upset in November, they’ll take the credit, (Hëll, who on the right *won’t* take credit?) How can we figure out what really caused it? I don’t claim to have an answer, and I’m not seeing any reliable commentators that do. What do you think?
Ack, that should have been, “Bill, you and I have disagreed in the past on politics, but I am interested in your take on the following” Ðámņ typos
Well, unlike Allan keyes, who I must confess I have not heard from in years, the tea party people can certainly claim some success already this cycle. And the democrats have named them front and center as the Scare Du Jour so if their side pulls off a victory they will have some justification in claiming a good portion of credit. But you’re correct, it may be that in this environment just about any Republican has a shot at winning and the TP was just in the right place at the right time.
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If–and again, this is a big if–the GOP does stupendously well, 1994 style, the more interesting thing for me will be who gets the blame. Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan. I sense a hint of preemptive blame casting in Obama’s recent speeches where he said that if progressives sit on their áššëš and don’t go out and vote then they weren’t serious in the first place or whatever. meanwhile I have heard some mutterings from liberals disappointed in some aspect of Obama about sitting this one out as a protest. The wisdom of that would be if the party is going down you might want to take credit for it as a warning that next time they’d better listen to you. Of course, this can also snatch defeat from victory so it may not be a smart thing to do. You never know for sure until te votes are cast and counted.
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So it will be interesting if the Democrats take a shellacking. What does Obama do? Take the GOP strategy of waiting for your opposition to overreach? tack to the center and try to recapture the independents? Tack left and try to electrify the base? Play golf for 2 years and decline to even run for re-election? (for most people I would discount the last as nearly zero likelihood but I could see Obama foregoing the need for a second term. I have my doubts as to how much he is enjoying being president but I am certain he will have great time as a young, historic ex-president and all the better if he goes out on his own volition.)
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Thoughts?
I don’t know. My two questions are:
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1.What happens if the Republicans do very poorly? Does the Tea Party (and their supporters) spin it as “better luck next time, our guys weren’t right-wing enough, let’s do more of this” (the reaction to the 2008 election) or does the GOP really change? I don’t see the Libertarians getting a huge swell of support (which is what I really think would happen if the people were sick and tired of overreaching government.)
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2. If there are no major upsets, and we get more or less a status quo with few seats changing, what then? The Tea Party would claim credit for the primaries, but there wouldn’t be evidence of a national shift, just one within the GOP. Who knows what the fallout would be. (Though I’m sure that lots of journalists desperate for news and political fanatics would claim that the few seats that changed were “Proof of a major change within the Nation!”)The next GOP presidential primary would have a bunch of the candidates running far-raight, but primaries are usually about running to the extreme, then trying to run to the center for the national election. McCain may have been the exception for the GOP (though not for lack of trying) and there were a few ways to see his defeat:
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1. He almost got it, and running towards the center was the way to go. Just do more of it.
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2. Moderation fails, screw the center, completely pander to the right wing (which seems to be the GOP position.)
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3. He was screwed because of W’s terms no matter what. No real lesson.
If the republicans do poorly the GOP establishment will blame the TP and try to marginalize them out of the movement. I would expect the TP to deflate from the disappointment.
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Converesely, if the GOP does meh, no big gains, no big losses, the TP will blame the GOP mainstream for their lack of support and try even harder to take them over.
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If the Democrats do poorly they will form a circular firing squad. As usual.
Yeahhhh, I’d give it a lot more credibility if it wasn’t from ‘the Huffington Post.’ God, Arianna’s the most annoying woman since Rosie Perez.
With Palin, O’Donnell, and Angle out there, I cannot imagine anyone typing the above with a straight face.
Dismissing an argument because it appears at the Huffington Post is not much of an argument. Anyway, Arianna didn’t write it.
My standard response to “I want my country back” is, “It’s right where you left it on the coast of Africa, with no government interfering with your kind of rugged individualists. It’s called Somalia. Take it back, go, enjoy!”
Something tells me to disagree…I think you would have stated as well as Ellsberg did
I think all Tea Party candidates are kind of like a dog chasing a bus or Benjamin and Elaine at the end of “The Graduate:’ “OK, we have it. Now what do we do?”
I’m a little reluctant to comment here, since I’m going against the views of people I respect on here, but I really detest this sort of caricaturing of the Tea Party movement. To me, this seems such an obvious simple-minded straw man type of attack. Is this Elisberg really so naive as to believe that anyone who talks of ‘taking the country back’ or ‘returning to original principles’ really wants to literally turn back the clock? Has anyone pining for the good-old-days ever truly wanted that? The Tea Partyers don’t want everything to be the way is was at some earlier point of time– like everybody else, they want to keep the changes they like and get rid of the changes they hate.
But so many critics prefer to simply label them as ignorant redneck reactionaries, and I can’t help but believe they do that solely to place them beyond the pale, so that nobody need to take anything they might say seriously. This is not legitimate political argument, it’s a belittling of one’s opponent to avoid debate entirely. And it makes Elisberg and those like him appear to be elitist bigots.
I know there are a lot of nutcases and extremists within the Tea Parties, but dismissing the whole movement as nothing else is no different from the Right-Wing critics who use the looniest Hollywood airheads to represent all Liberal or Progressive types.
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I don’t mind that PAD dislikes the Tea Parties. There is plenty of legitimate criticism to be used against them. But I am disappointed that he considers this sort of simplistic prejudicial attack to be a valid criticism of the movement.
(Sorry, Peter.)
Show me the careful, nuanced arguments of the Tea Party, and I’ll listen.
Show me the “solutions” provided (well, sloganed, really) that don’t end in shafting the general public, and I’ll listen.
Show me the principled stance that isn’t simply reactionary (and too often racist or genuinely elitist (i.e. in the service of or to the substantive benefit of the (economically) elite), and I’ll listen.
Until then, all the “Tea Party” is doing is tea bagging. When all they have are ad hominem attacks and empty jingoism, it’s appropriate to be characterized as such.
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I never said I was a Tea Party supporter. I agree that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticise them. I was simply saying that this sort of patronising straw-man attack is not the way to do it.
It doesn’t have to be nuanced at all. That’s the problem — the motivating factors behind the vast majority of Tea Party Americans are remarkably simple and clear. Here’s a little quiz I’m whipping up on the fly here:
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1) Government spending. Do you believe the federal government…
a) Spends much money overall?
b) Needs to spend even more money?
c) Spends just enough?
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2) Taxes. Do you believe the federal government…
a) Takes too much money from individuals and organizations?
b) Needs to take even more money from individuals and organizations?
c) Takes just enough?
3) Government officials. Should government officials — especially those empowered to write and enforce the laws — be obeying those laws they expect us to follow?
a) Absolutely, if not held to an even higher standard.
b) Of course not. They’re too busy and too important to bother with such trivial concerns.
c) Geithner? Rangel? Dodd? Never heard of ’em.
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If you answered “a” to two or more questions, you’d fit in just fine at a Tea Party rally.
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If you answered “b” or “c” to two or more questions, you’re the kind of voter the Democrats are depending on.
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Yes, it’s just that simple.
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Jay, I found none of the answers provided on your little quiz sufficient.
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“Does the government spend too much (or too little) money?” On what? By whose standards?
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“Does the government take too much/too little in taxes?” Answer the first conundrum, and you may find an answer to the second. Remember that taxation is the only way the government is permitted to make money – NASA, for instance, could have made a killing on selling satellite-launch facilities, except they weren’t legally permitted to do so. Cut the taxes, and you’d best lower the spending, because otherwise you guarantee deficits. (This was my biggest problem with the Bush-era cuts – made at the same time as increased Medicare-D spending, and two wars…)
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As for 3, that’s a bit of a straw man – find me a public official who has been caught committing a crime, and gone with absolutely no punishment specifically because he/she is a public official. Not someone you think probably committed a crime – someone who definitely did so. Not sure what you believe Dodd did (I don’t recall seeing the name in the news lately), but Geithner and Rangel are currently under investigation (because a lot of us like to, you know, prove the charges before convicting and punishing…).
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Simplistic world-views may make your life easier, but they don’t provide complete answers in a complex world.
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“Show me the careful, nuanced arguments of the Tea Party, and I’ll listen.”
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Hey, they were very nuanced back during the healthcare debate. They made it very clear that the government paying for health care was wrong, evil and communism and that Obama and the Democrats better dámņëd well not touch their Medicare.
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It would be funny enough if it had been just the various Tea Party groups putting out mixed messages, but what made it hilarious was that 9 times out of 10 those two statements came out of the same mouth.
I don’t dislike the Tea Party per se; I dislike extremists in general. There are plenty of people in the extreme fringes of the Democratic party as well; they’re as quick to censor, for example, as anyone on the right. The difference is that the right tries to censor because it offends their sensibilities while the left tries to censor because they’re concerned it’s going to offend someone else’s sensibilities. Either way they try to shut down free speech.
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The Tea Party is simply the latest iteration of the Know-Nothing Party from the mid-nineteenth century. The only difference is that the TP’s fifteen minutes of fame may be extended because televisions exists now.
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PAD
So are tea party people extremists? The know-nothings were a party that was limited to a specific ethnic group–and despite claims to the contrary, I have seen no evidence that the Tea party people do likewise. It was limited to one religion- and I see no evidence of that. It was a secret organization (ergo the name)–ditto. they resorted to violence that killed at least dozens of people–ditto again.
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One could argue that the decentralized organizational structure is analogous in both but given the unsavory nature of the Know-Nothings, comparing the two is just another attack against them. And I really believe that this is something the Democrats will come to regret. Most of the tea party people I have talked to have little love for the republicans but they see the Democrats as people who genuinely hate and slander them and would do them harm if they could get away with it. So naturally when given a choice they will go for the party that probably hates them just as much but is smart enough to not make that obvious!
“Know-Nothings?” In Arizona, there’s a Tea Party candidate for Congress who is a literal rocket scientist. Look her up — Ruth McClung.
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Violence? So far, the only violence involving Tea Partiers have featured the Tea Partiers as the victims.
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The core issues of the Tea Party boil down to holding the government accountable — control spending, control taxation, and demanding that elected officials honor their allegiance to the law and the Constitution.
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Yes, there are some nuts and extremists. But they’re usually isolated and pushed out. (I particularly like the Tea Partiers who deploy their “We’re Not With Stupid” signs.) Or they’re “plants” — Democrats and union officials out to discredit the Tea Party movement. (It’s pretty well documented.)
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On the other hand, there’s an upcoming anti-war rally where the organizers are explicitly inviting Marxists, Communists, Socialists, and the whole host of leftist extremists.
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That’s what drives the organized left (and, to an extent, the institutional right) about the Tea Party. The message is simple. The movement has no recognized leaders. It literally is a populist movement, and they have no idea how to deal with it.
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J.
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In ref to the “the institutional right” example- “The movement has no recognized leaders. It literally is a populist movement, and they have no idea how to deal with it.”
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Sure they do. They’ve worked to usurp it. The same hardcore, militant Right in the Republican Party that thought that purity oaths were a pretty good idea not too long ago and that sees compromise with Democrats as weakness have grabbed the movement and begun to try to reshape the party in their image.
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When we had special elections right after the Tea Party started making some noise we saw the Tea Party support the only Republican candidates that they had the option to vote for. This year we got to see the Tea Party make an impact in the Republican primaries. The results have been interesting.
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Anti-abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
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Pro-Creationism and anti-evolution.
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Abolish the EPA.
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Abolish the Department of Education.
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Not just anti-gay rights, but in a few cases backgrounds that are just plain full on anti-gay.
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When people peek behind the curtain and see who is actually funding and organizing the biggest Tea Party events we see the names of long time hard Conservative (and in a few cases Evangelical) Republican players and supporters. While many of the regular people who show up at events may well be less than extreme or idiotic; the power players in the group and the results of their actions are nothing new in the Republican Party.
I don’t think there are many true Libertarians among them, sadly.
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To me, it’s the same old, same old Conservative politics. Stern Daddy politics that want their kids to be tough individualists regarding their money, yet are controlling as hëll of their social lives.
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I don’t think the Nurtining Mommy politics of the Democrats are such hot stuff either, but it’s the lesser of two evils, IMO.
Heh, I meant NURTURING mommy.
All extremists should be shot.
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What?
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Why are you looking at me that way?
I don’t know if the TeaParty knows nothing, but with a spokesperson like Sarah Palin I would lean toward agreeing with you.
But I’m 99% sure that the Dems and Repubs don’t know much about living in the real taxpaying world.
They have had it with uncontrolled spending, they see this for what it is, a massive takeover of the economy from private hands to public.
Thats it.
Racism? Really?
Pathetic.
They are just a symptom of a larger truth–we are in real trouble. We cannot tax enough to get out of this debt. We cannot cut enough to get out of this debt. Our only hope is to grow out of it and we may be in a position where that can no longer realistically happen. Or suffer some catastrophic economic “fix’ like a bout of hyperinflation. Lovely.
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I almost can’t blame either the tea party people or their critics for making this a strictly personal thing–it beats the alternative which is facing a problem that may no good solution. Easier to just attack “those people”, whoever you think they may be.
I think it’s wise to be suspicious of simple solutions. The devil is always in the details.
That said, I’m a little disheartened by the number of sacred cows on both spending and taxing. Why is the military (which makes up one of the two largest segments of spending) not examined for more savings? Why isn’t Social Security not means tested at some level? Why aren’t capital gains taxes (lower than regular taxes) being adjusted to be in line with other taxes?
“I think it’s wise to be suspicious of simple solutions. The devil is always in the details.”
This reminded me of the TNG episode where Q looses his powers and a moon was in a decaying orbit and crash in a planet. The crew of the enterprise was trying to save the planet and Q states that the solution was simple: just change the gravitational constant of the universe.
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I shoud have said: a moon was in a decaying orbit and ABOUT TO crash in a planet.
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Sorry
Roger, slate.com had an article awhile back about once unthinkable cuts in military spending. I caught a link to it from Mark Evanier’s page some time ago, not sure where the links are a this moment. But some of these changes are happening.
One could argue that the decentralized organizational structure is analogous in both but given the unsavory nature of the Know-Nothings, comparing the two is just another attack against them. And I really believe that this is something the Democrats will come to regret. Most of the tea party people I have talked to have little love for the republicans but they see the Democrats as people who genuinely hate and slander them and would do them harm if they could get away with it
Well, as long they understand that a lot of Democrats also see elements on the right that they feel hate and slander them and would do them harm if they could get away with it, as well. (For gays, that’s certainly not been unfounded)
If they don’t recognize it, aren’t they part of the problem?
The difference is, those elements on the right were never going to vote for Democrats. The tea party people were up for grabs, to a degree.
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They were always going to tilt to the republicans, if only because they are against the status quo and the Democrats control both houses of congress and the presidency. But the Democrats have made sure that the tea partiers regard them as people who hate them and think they are all violent racists. Way to win those hearts and minds!
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I mean, is there anyone who disagrees with me that the attacks on the tea party people have failed to shut them up or make them unlikely to vote? Those attacks energized them. Looking at the advertisements currently being run by many democrats, they sound a lot like what the tea party people have been saying (some even go out of their way to slam Pelosi and Obama!). Should have done that from the beginning, it just looks sad and desperate now.
“The tea party people were up for grabs, to a degree.”
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At the very begining, when it was still trying to find it’s voice, the Tea Party did in fact include true Libertarians, and even some Progressives unhappy with how moderate the Democrats had become. But a year later, even Rand Paul is towing the Republican party line: “Drugs are bad, War is good, and, oh, yeah, Domestic spending is downright EVIL!!! (But *we* won’t touch your Medicare, don’t worry.)”
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The constant Liberal sniping at the Tea Party isn’t going to win any friends. But the Liberals were pushed out of the Tea Tent long before the Democrats made them the Enemy.
Bill Mulligan: “The difference is, those elements on the right were never going to vote for Democrats. The tea party people were up for grabs, to a degree.”
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I would tend to disagree with that assessment with the vast majority of Tea Party groups. There may well be a small group of truly independent voters in the tea Party, but the vast majority of the Tea Party backers, the people that fund them, the organizers and members are people who would not vote for the Democrats.
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I know for example, either personally or professionally, a huge number of people in the Tea Party movement in Virginia. Long before there was ever a Tea Party these most of people were voting Republican. Long before there was ever a Tea Party most of these people were part of PACs for the Republican Party. Long before there was a Tea Party, and still today even as the donate small amounts to Tea Party events, these people pump money into the Republican Party. And far more often than not I see the same thing when I look up Tea Party groups in other states.
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They started out from day one not fighting for a third party or by supporting centrist Democrats and Republicans, but rather pushing for hard Right Conservatives. And they’ve seemingly only gotten more extreme in their push for this as the Republican Primaries worked through their process and as the midterm elections approach.
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The Tea Party, or at least those who actually have the power in the Tea Party, are nothing more than the newest version, the newest mask, of the extreme Right.
Obviously the situation may vary from one place to another–all can say is that here in NC the people I have talked to have been almost entirely right of center but by no means extremely so. The impetus has been pretty much 100% economic (a few were also into the immigration debate. Nobody ever mentioned the war on drugs) and the only thing that they seemed to have in common, the part that really struck me, was that they are all people who have had little to no real political involvement before.
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If indeed the tea party people are just the same old extreme right wing Republican voters we had before it’s surprising that the republicans are polling so well. My sense is that a goodly number of them are formerly apathetic independent voters who are having a great time being involved in a new social activity.
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But even if I’m wrong and they are exactly as you say they are, I would suggest that the actions of the Democrats when the Tea Parties first sprang up have all but ensured that the passions they displayed over a year ago will be maintained right up through voting day. heir best hope at this point is that the TP gang will suffer the same sort of post election let down that a lot of us expecting hope and change after the last election are feeling now.
“Obviously the situation may vary from one place to another–all can say is that here in NC the people I have talked to have been almost entirely right of center but by no means extremely so. “
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“My sense is that a goodly number of them are formerly apathetic independent voters who are having a great time being involved in a new social activity.”
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And a number of the “common people” in the Tea Party may well be what you describe. But a number of the people who are now in positions of power in the Tea Party and are essentially controlling the direction of the movement are anything but. They’re likely thrilled beyond words with the movement picking up the formerly apathetic as well. It certainly works in their favor since the formally apathetic weren’t really paying attention to what was going on in any real detail and likely still are only paying attention to the surface gloss of this new pastime they’re having so much fun with.
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Right now there is no real system for creating candidates from the ground up in the Tea Party and what may well represent what Tea Party defenders claim is the majority of regular people who support the idea of a Tea Party is not what seems to be the results of their recent electoral support.
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And when you dig behind the scenes of the Tea Party and the backers of its biggest events and organizers it’s easy to see why. The list of names reads likes a who’s who of the same old hardcore conservative names. And to some degree they’re controlling the focus and the choices of the Tea Party.
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“If indeed the tea party people are just the same old extreme right wing Republican voters we had before it’s surprising that the republicans are polling so well. “
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Depends on what you consider good polling. Republicans are polling better than Democrats now in election run ups, but other polls show an interesting contradiction in logic. A number of polls actually show that many people trust the Democrats more with things like the economy but then flip on who is the most likely to get a November vote. It’s almost like an odd reverse of the 2008 POTUS election. Some people are voting for change above and beyond anything else.
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I’m even in an interesting place right now as to what I would like to see as the best outcome. I tend to like seeing different parties in control of the White House and the Congress. It tends to lead to some policies being more mainstream in their final passing form. We also seem to do best when we have a D POTUS and an R Congress pulling each other to the center.
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I’m not happy at all with Obama and the Democrats controlling everything. They’re actions have been a bit too far over to one side and their actions haven’t been as focused economic issues as they should have been sine they most wanted to push social issues out of the gate. I want to see a change in November.
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But the catch is that the Republicans and the Tea Party seem hellbent on putting candidates on the ballot who range from only borderline qualified options who are arch conservatives to outright nutjobs who are arch conservatives.
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Disgruntled conservatives are thrilled with this. All they’re looking at is the fact that the candidates are promising to be arch conservatives.
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A lot of other people just don’t seem to be bothering to look beyond the surface gloss. In person and on blogs I’m seeing the same thing I commented on about Obama supporters back in 2008. I’ll ask people why they support specific candidates or I’ll look at the comments of the enthusiastic online posters and see people parroting hallow talking points and talking in generalities. Most people have no idea about what these people they support actually say they stand for or what they say they want to do once in beyond “stopping the Obama machine.”
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A lot of people want change. But a lot of these people just seem to be unable to really hold more than three thoughts right now.
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1) Republicans are not Democrats.
2) Obama is a Democrat.
3) Vote Republican for change.
I think if the usual movers and shakers were really behind the tea party we would have seen much much better candidates emerge than Angle or O’Donnel.
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In fact the stuff I have seen indicates that the candidates supported by the tea party people who got won the nomination over the establishment Republicans are not getting the kind of support from the party apparatchiks that the mainstream ones are.
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And as someone else pointed out, it doesn’t take much to “fund’ these rallies–facebook, construction paper and some magic markers and a mic setup.
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really, the left ought to quit griping about the tea party and try to emulate their success–unless they are afraid that they will fail (the “coffee party” was a flop) which they probably will unless they do more than just imitate them.
Way to win those hearts and minds!
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And yet, this equally applies to GOP politics in the last couple of election cycles, and how they reacted toward Obama in particular.
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Screaming about Obama being a Muslim terrorist? That really didn’t win the hearts and minds of independents.
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In the end, I just flat out find the Tea Party laughable. They scream about small government and lower taxes, yet the party most of them will vote for – Republican – has had quite the hand in creating bigger government in recent years, and taxes are generally lower than they were decades ago.
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How much lower do these people want their own taxes to go when most of them aren’t in the group that actually pays the most taxes, ie, the rich?
I think if the usual movers and shakers were really behind the tea party we would have seen much much better candidates emerge than Angle or O’Donnel.
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Well, this would be some of the same group who let Palin get on the ballot with McCain.
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As I pointed out with the special election in Massachusetts earlier this year to replace Kennedy: they (the GOP) just want the seat; they really don’t care who sits in it right now.
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“really, the left ought to quit griping about the tea party and try to emulate their success–unless they are afraid that they will fail (the “coffee party” was a flop) which they probably will unless they do more than just imitate them.”
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Oh come on… They’re not organized enough or smart enough. The best movement they had going in the last 20 years was the Obama campaign and the sizzle in that steak went poof when they had to actually had to watch POTUS Obama rather than campaigner Obama and realized that they should have read more of Obama’s platform than the first three lines.
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It’s also never gonna happen with the modern Democratic Party for the simple reason that it’s actually rather harder to distill the social issues that Democrats seem to do best with into easy rally bullet points. You can’t even unify the party on many social issues that Obama campaigned on.
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Candidate Obama actually ran on, amongst other things, changing healthcare to something closer to universal healthcare. He said it at several stump speeches and it got loud cheers. President Obama went to start working on it and there was almost no support by many of the elected and unelected who called themselves Democrats.
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Republicans and their causes make easier bullet points even if they don’t intend to follow through on them. They’re simple and don’t require any explanation to have an impact on the masses.
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“Lower Taxes!”
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Works great and you don’t even need to explain much about it. You want to lower taxes or are for lower taxes. When pressed for details you only have to answer in generalities about businesses, job creation, class warfare and mom & pop and you’ve get huge applause at the rally.
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“Equal Rights for Homosexuals!”
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Doesn’t work as well. Define “equal rights” for this guy over here and that guy over there thinks it’s too much. He might agree with it, but it’s just not a good time to do it just now. That guy in the back thinks it’s a good idea, but then it shouldn’t actually be called marriage when they get together while this guy up here wants to know why the homophobe in the back wants to deny people their equal rights to marriage. And that guy over in the corner wants to know what this will do to the children.
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The Republicans have cornered the market on pushing an easy to parrot agenda based on economic ideas. Democrats, even when they can do better on some financial matters, just cannot get very much traction on those issues. But those are the easiest bullet points to build a movement around; especially in times like this.
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“In fact the stuff I have seen indicates that the candidates supported by the tea party people who got won the nomination over the establishment Republicans are not getting the kind of support from the party apparatchiks that the mainstream ones are.”
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It depends on where you look. The mainstream establishment that values actually getting elected and having good odds of doing so certainly aren’t happy with some of these people. But they might not be the driving force here.
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“I think if the usual movers and shakers were really behind the tea party we would have seen much much better candidates emerge than Angle or O’Donnel.”
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With most political movements I would agree with you. Most political movements are in fact geared to getting their people elected in large numbers and that’s the way most people think about such matters. I’m not sure that’s 100% the desired goal of some of the people sending their money to the Tea Party or being the most vocal national advocates of people like Angle and O’Donnel.
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Look at the people on the national stage who are the biggest supporters of the Tea Party. They seem to fall into predominately two groups. There are people like Sarah Palin who are cash in types. There’s money for their pockets in courting the Tea Party, greater celebrity status in “the movement” and maybe a little bit of shoring up their power base.
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Then there’s the purity crowd. There are a lot of power players in the conservative movement who have long been vocal about “RINOs” and traitors in the movement. “Traitors” being defined by some of them as being a moderate Republican who meets a moderate Democrat halfway on an issue. Doesn’t matter if it was for a good cause with a good outcome or not. They compromised conservative principles and are RINOs.
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I am in a position to tell you that there are members of the Republican Party, elected and unelected and some with a national profile, who are actually happy with the results they’re seeing with the elections of people like Angle and O’Donnel in the primaries. They’re worried that they might not get elected, but they’re looking at the message that these primary results are sending to some elected Republicans.
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There’s a purity test. There’s a purity level set by the most conservative parts of the party. Don’t tow the line and you’re gone in the next primary.
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It’s insane, but there’s a core group in the conservative movement who honestly think that it’s a better long term strategy to have an uncompromising core unit running the party and this will bring the party back to glory. It’s something akin to the evangelical religious movement that tried to gain power in the party in the late 80s.
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And then there’s a group in every faction across the board and in both parties that believe that people like Angle and O’Donnel (or fill in the blank on the other side of the isle) will be easy to control and manipulate if they get in office. Who cares if they’re insane? We can control them.
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Now I don’t think that most of the Tea Partiers on the ground are thinking on that level. Most of the ones I’ve met certainly aren’t. But I’m not sure the same can be said for the people who are trying to join, usurp and control the focus of much of the Tea Party from behind the scenes. It’s a bit like some of the groups that sprang up under Bush that lasted about as long as a cup of coffee before power players grabbed them and shifted their effort to something that was less independent and more Democrat friendly.
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Again, the Tea Party followers claim that they’re for certain things that have been listed by several here. Fine. But the results of many of this year’s primaries do not fall in line with those espoused beliefs. We’re seeing Tea Party candidates who hold many social and fiscal beliefs that are far more in common with the hardcore fringe of the Republican Party and those of many of their most vocal and most moneyed backers.
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I could be wrong. This may not be by design. But if it’s purely by accident that this is happening; the Tea Party voters are making themselves out to be bigger idiots than the people who voted for Obama while only being able to claim “Change!” as their knowledge of what was in his platform because they’re shooting their own cause in the foot and making themselves look like loons based on who they want to put in power.
Know-Nothings?” In Arizona, there’s a Tea Party candidate for Congress who is a literal rocket scientist. Look her up — Ruth McClung.
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SER: Jay, PAD is not maligning the Tea Party by making the historical comparison to the Know Nothing Party. The two groups do share some positions. Also, the name did not refer to intellectual capacity but to the secretive nature of the group (members — when asked about it — would say they “know nothing.”
SER, I was pretty much in tune with that, but I was adding to the “stupid rubes” theme usually laid on Tea Party people.
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And even the secrecy doesn’t fit — the Tea Party completely open. No secrets, no nothing.
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What’s really scary about the Tea Party is their openly-stated strategy for enacting their agenda (which is also an open book). They aren’t a subset or an element of the Republican Party. They’re the Republicans’ Mongol hordes.
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They’re not the tools of the party leaders. They intend to use the party as its tool. What they’re doing is best described as a hostile takeover. They’re planning on taking out enough establishment Republicans in primaries, “pour encourager les autres,” to make certain that the survivors get the message.
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Then, come November, they’re going to take out enough Democrats to at least put the brakes on the Obama/Reed/Pelosi agenda — and reverse as much of it as they can.
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No secret plans. No denials. No covert agendas.
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And no secret puppet masters pulling the strings and funding the whole thing. Just the power of individuals uniting.
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Some of you find it scary? I find it positively refreshing.
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J.
I find aggressive social conservatism scary instead of refreshing, no matter who is pushing it, be they “puppet masters” or “regular people.”
“No secret plans. No denials. No covert agendas.
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And no secret puppet masters pulling the strings and funding the whole thing. Just the power of individuals uniting.”
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And one day (like, say, when you actually bother to start fact checking what you say and believe) you’re going to get as big a surprise about this as you did when you finally saw that sea front property in Topeka, Kansas you picked up for such a bargain price.
Jerry, I’ve been to some Tea Party events, and paid close attention to the whole movement. Can you say the same?
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Anti-abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
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Pro-Creationism and anti-evolution.
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Abolish the EPA.
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Abolish the Department of Education.
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Not just anti-gay rights, but in a few cases backgrounds that are just plain full on anti-gay.
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What you’re doing is projecting your stereotype of the social conservative movement on to the Tea Party, and it just doesn’t fit. Yes, there are some who feel that way, but there are plenty who disagree — and they are more concerned with the actual issues they put forward.
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When people peek behind the curtain and see who is actually funding and organizing the biggest Tea Party events we see the names of long time hard Conservative (and in a few cases Evangelical) Republican players and supporters. While many of the regular people who show up at events may well be less than extreme or idiotic; the power players in the group and the results of their actions are nothing new in the Republican Party.
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Oh, horse hockey. LOOK at a Tea Party rally. How much funding does it take to put one together? Everyone brings their own signs; there are no mass-produced signs and banners and T-Shirts (like you’ll see at any good liberal rally) handed out. And organizing one isn’t tough; there’s this thing called “the internet” that lets people communicate incredibly quickly and cheaply.
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So, Jerry, you obviously know who’s behind the curtain, pulling the puppet strings. (No offense, Mrs. PAD. He started the metaphor.) Enlighten us. Give us names of individuals and organizations that are secretly running things.
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Ðìçk Armey? He wishes. He’s an opportunist who sees which way the crowd is running, and is trying to run ahead of it to look like a leader.
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The Koch family? Please. They mainly work through institutions and funding, and the Tea Party has no use for either.
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On the flip side, I can give you chapter and verse of the left’s institutionalized rallying. I know that that’s the paradigm you’re more familiar with, but it just doesn’t apply here. And you can’t make it fit.
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The best precedent is the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60’s. Yes, there are leaders, but the cause is bigger than them. Take out a leader, the cause will shrug and move on. Accuse them of being the pawns of some grand conspiracy (Communists then, Klansmen or racists or fascists or whatever now), and they’ll just laugh at you and keep going.
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Jerry, you’re a prisoner of your own prejudices and preconceptions and bigotries. That’s your right, and you’re entitled to your own opinions. But you’re not entitled to your own facts.
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Now scamper off to the Kossacks or the DUmmies or Puffington Host or whoever supplies you with your latest talking points and conspiracy theories, and bring ’em on back. I could use some more laughs.
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J.
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“Jerry, I’ve been to some Tea Party events, and paid close attention to the whole movement. Can you say the same?”
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Yes, I can. I’ve even had the joy of arresting a few of them and a few counter-protesters.
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“What you’re doing is projecting your stereotype of the social conservative movement on to the Tea Party, and it just doesn’t fit. Yes, there are some who feel that way, but there are plenty who disagree — and they are more concerned with the actual issues they put forward.”
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No, what I’m doing is pointing out what the Tea Party candidates that the Tea Party supported in this year’s primaries have actually stated as views and beliefs themselves and partly campaigned on. So, yeah, those are the actual issues some of them are and have been putting forward.
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“Oh, horse hockey. LOOK at a Tea Party rally. How much funding does it take to put one together? Everyone brings their own signs; there are no mass-produced signs and banners and T-Shirts (like you’ll see at any good liberal rally) handed out. And organizing one isn’t tough; there’s this thing called “the internet” that lets people communicate incredibly quickly and cheaply.”
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I like the way you changed the argument of both of these points from what I actually said to what you wished I had said so that you could then address the wrongness of them. First you slightly twist what I said about the people the Tea Party has been getting elected in the primaries and argue as if I was addressing the majority of the regular folks in the Tea Party and here you simply drop the part where I said, “funding and organizing the biggest Tea Party events,” in forming your response and simply reply as if I had said any old, little neighborhood Tea Party.
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I pointed out that I was talking about the biggest events for a reason. The biggest events, the ones that draw the A-List Tea Party rock stars, get a week’s worth of run up coverage and promotion on Fox News and set some of the Tea Party’s public tone and agenda have a lot of astroturf fingers in the mix. That astroturf traces back to the same old Republican players more often than not and, surprise, surprise, the end result of these events is a rah-rah-rah vote Republican event.
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“Everyone brings their own signs; there are no mass-produced signs and banners and T-Shirts (like you’ll see at any good liberal rally) handed out.”
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Okay, that’s a lie and a documented one. At the largest rallies and at the DC events there were identical signs being handed out and mass produced t-shirts. This practice was nixed in part because it made it easy to point out the fact that things weren’t as grass roots and they were trying to sell these events. But, again, I did use the example of the largest events. I can understand you having to change what I said a bit and argue your point as if I was talking about every little neighborhood rally though. It’s easier for you that way.
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“Ðìçk Armey? He wishes. He’s an opportunist who sees which way the crowd is running, and is trying to run ahead of it to look like a leader.
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$250,000 was has been pledged to TV and radio ad campaigning for Christine O’Donnell’s campaign by The Tea Party Express (made famous just a while back for their racism problem created by TPE leader Mark Williams and his wonderful sense of humor.) TPE gets a lot of funding and support from several “grass roots” groups that are in fact created and run by Ðìçk Army.
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The Koch family? Please. They mainly work through institutions and funding, and the Tea Party has no use for either.”
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Yeah. I know the tired routine. The Tea Party is all grassroots and never takes money from people like the Koch Brothers even when they in fact do. What really helps the Tea Party maintain this illusion is that they don’t legally have to reveal who their donors are.
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And, of course, it was just a mom and pop Tea Party member who was the single person who donated $1 million to Tea Party Patriots back around the 21st of September.
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The simple fact with the Koch Brothers is that they are a major funder of Americans for Prosperity and AfP is a major funder for the Tea Party. Koch industries also helps to fund Ðìçk Army’s Freedom works which helps fund various Tea Party groups.
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But, of course, the Tea Party “has no use for” either “institutions and funding” in your world so it must be true in the real one.
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“Jerry, you’re a prisoner of your own prejudices and preconceptions and bigotries. That’s your right, and you’re entitled to your own opinions. But you’re not entitled to your own facts.
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Now scamper off to the Kossacks or the DUmmies or Puffington Host or whoever supplies you with your latest talking points and conspiracy theories, and bring ‘em on back. I could use some more laughs.”
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If you want a good laugh there’s this political blog called Wixbang. Funny as hëll. Especially when some of the writers flog as facts things debunked months earlier. From time to time I drop in and read it for a giggle. You should try it some time.
“Jerry, you’re a prisoner of your own prejudices and preconceptions and bigotries.”
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Jay Tea, Jerry is a personal friend of mine and I can tell you that the truth about him is exactly the opposite of your perception. He’s one of the most well-informed and fair-minded people I know. He’s as likely to bìŧçh about liberals as he is about conservatives, and as quick to call “bûllšhìŧ” on Democrats as he is on Republicans. Need I point out that in this very thread he criticized a certain percentage of Obama supporters?
ditto to what Bill said. Mega dittos!
The Bills know of what they speak. I have proof.
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Okay… The Tea Party or anybody else with pull needs to back this guy. I have no idea what he stands for, but I will pay good money to see the news media and cable talk guys try to say his name on screen with a straight face.
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John Assalone, Candidate for State Senate RI 21st District. (Independent)
http://www.congress.org/election/candidate/id/182117
A candidate you can get behind?
An asset to the party?
I’ve noticed odd named for people in politics for some time now. My favorite was Ross Perot’s campaign manager: Orson Swindle.
I can see the news spots now–When Rhode Island tries to get a little cheeky, Assalone Has A Sit In….
I’m gonna sum this up pretty simply.
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Modern Political Discourse:
Category 1: Far Left Nut Jobs
Category 2: Reasonable Left Leaning Individuals
Category 3: Reasonable Right Leaning Individuals
Category 4: Far Right Nut Jobs
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People in categories 1 and 2 have an easier time arguing against and critiquing category 4. People in categories 3 and 4 have an easier time arguing against and critiquing category 1. It’s much easier, and more emotionally empowering, to fight against horrific racists/communists/eldritch rather than reasoned people who disagree with you.
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This was an obnoxious article. What did it accomplish? What details did it bring to light? It was cute, that’s all. Don’t, for the love of god, say “Well, what has the opposing side published recently?” That’s a schoolyard argument and I can’t stand it. They should both be chastised for their lack of quality and substance.
When I say I want my country back, for me it means I’m sick of the government, all parties, telling me how bad and racist I am because I want to keep most of what I work for and continue to work for.
I’m tired of supporting crack heads and prisoners, I’m tired of reading stories about people who have cell phones, cable television, newer than five year old cars, saying they can’t afford healthcare, oh and they are saying this while outside movie theaters or restaurants.
I’m tired of the government putting police, fire and teachers first on the cut list, how about cutting the things that are really draining the money.
I’m tired of hearing how great unions are while all the union type jobs head overseas, I’m tired of being considered a racist because I think you should speak understandable English if you live and work here. I’m tired of being considered uncharitable because I don’t want to give half or more of my earnings to the government.
So maybe saying I want my country back is the wrong thing to say, so I’ll start saying the government has stopped representing me and I want new attitudes there and won’t vote for anyone in office regardless of party till it changes.
It sounds as though you’d mostly make common cause witht the Libertarians. I’m not a Libertarian (The Green Party mostly represents me) but I respect that they mean what they say about supporting smaller government (which the Republicans claim to, and then get into office and disprove while still claiming to support it) and personal freedoms.
Everything we claim ownership of outside of our own bodies is only ours by the grace of fortune and the social contract. Take a moment to consider this before you get overly possessive of anything you imagine to be ‘yours’.
There is no them, there is only us.
If I have a tumor I have it removed, a pimple I pop it, when the nails get too long they are clipped and discarded.
Can I apply these principals to ‘us’? Or is the survival of ‘us” not important?
There is another serious problem I have with Tea Party. And that is some of the individuals involved that they have not distanced themselves from, but in fact have embraced.
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Such as Glenn Beck, who has a far greater disrespect of Godwin’s Law than I ever realized:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093005267.html
12, 2010
Back in Black – Glenn Beck’s Nazi Tourette’s
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http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-12-2010/back-in-black—glenn-beck-s-nazi-tourette-s
To Steve H I must point out that if we keep on imprisoning more inmates than any other First World country it is absolutely necessary to pay for the prisons, staffing and services. We can assume the large majority of inmates would be very happy to leave, but something (walls, guards, machine guns) keeps stopping them.
The right is fond of sending offenders to prison.
The left is fond of treating prisoners humanely (and conforming to state, federal and international law, which seems like a good thing).
Weariness of paying for prisons and prisoners is a non-argument. Let moderate Democrats and Republicans hash out appropriate taxes and outlays, rather than pining for the incoherent.
The last estimate i read, we are paying about 38k per year per prisoner. I think less tv, workout equipment etc., you know quit making them comfortable would cost less. But maybe not.
It just doesn’t seem reasonable to me to pay more for prisoners than say toll booth employees, not even to mention many teachers and policeman in my county.
But hey its more humane to treat the bad well, and make the honest hard working struggle.
isn’t that the way of the left?
Well, for starters, we could stop sending drug addicts to jail. Spending 38K to stop someone from killing themselves with a choice to use drugs by, instead, sending them to a place where they can be beaten and raped…doesn’t make sense to me from either a financial or moral standpoint.
No, but it’s the way of the right to paint the left that way. The left instituted most of the programs designed to ease the struggle of the hard working that the right wants to do away with.
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PAD
Which program targets the working? Don’t most target the non-working, can’t work, won’t work group of people?
Ah ah ah. It’s tricky to shift the goal posts when the stuff you just said is still on display. You split the population into two convenient groups: “Bad” and “honest hard working.” That’s what I responded to. Now suddenly you’re expanding “bad” to people who have, for instance, worked their whole lives through to retirement and now need assistance (Social Security, Medicare). Or people who are laid off or unemployed and, while looking for jobs, could use assistance (Food stamps). Or groups who don’t want to be discriminated against in their job search because of the color of their skin (the Civil Rights Act). Or people who are gainfully employed, but between jobs, and don’t have medical coverage (Obamacare).
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That’s the standard definition of being humane: Helping people when they need help.
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Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…
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PAD
This started with talk about prisoners, but you’re right bad is too general a term and each circumstance should be judged on its own.
I would put retired persons and unemployeed who are really tiring to get jobs in the hard working group. And yes anyone down on their luck deserves to be helped.
And maybe I am a terrible person, or just live in a worst place than most, but I am tired of helping the non disabled on disability people, the drug addicts that never have worked people etc.. Because I meet and know alot them.
And as I said in another reply I think Palin is a loon or whatever is a popular Alaskan bird.
Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.
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PAD
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Good old Glenn. The same idiot who thinks the Liberty Dime is a socialist symbol.
O sorry I should have known good ole sarah hated slavery.
What the heck is a liberty dime?
Watching House on the dvr, its pretty dang fine show.
What the heck is a liberty dime?
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=liberty+dime
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The Liberty Dime was a dime first introduced back in 1916 as a companion piece to the Liberty quarters and half dollars. It was so named because the dime had the head of Lady Liberty on it. The back side of the dime has a fasces wrapped with an olive branch to represent America’s readiness for war in those times and its desire for peace. Sculptor Adolph A. Weinman won a 1915 competition to create the image for the new dime with this design. He did tweak Liberty’s helmet by adding small wings to, in his words, represent liberty and freedom of thought.
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An important note here is that the fasces is a symbol that was altered quite a bit and then adopted/hijacked by the fascist movement some years after this dime was first minted. But prior to that, and still today in some places, it was used for any reason but fascism. The fasces appears on such things as the American flag that flies in the U.S. House, the National Guard Bureau insignia, on the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building, the Mace of the House of Representatives, the seal of the U.S. Senate, on a frieze on the facade of the United States Supreme Court building and was even incorporated into, of all things, the Lincoln Memorial.
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It was a symbol of freedom.
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So, of course, Glenn Beck, master of blithering ignorance and fact free lectures on history for the gullible and stupid, spent an entire show one day “teaching” his audience what this thing really was. It was the “Mercury Dime” and the image on the front of it was the god Mercury. The fasces, again, a symbol not hijacked by the fascist movement until much later, was proof of the dime’s true meaning. It was to show solidary with the political Fascist movements in Europe. The architect of this nefarious scheme to undermine freedom and the true American way of life? Why, according to Glenn’s fact free history of the US, that notorious progress communist and Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
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The “Mercury Dime” was, in Glenn’s alternate reality, the American Fascist’s who then controlled much of out government sending a message to the fascists in Europe that we were on their side. Not sure how even Glenn works that one into history very easily since we entered into WWI in 1917 and, to the best of the reality based community’s knowledge, fought against the fascists. Oh, and it was Wilson who was one of the voices pushing for war and called it “an act of high principle and idealism” and “a crusade to make the world safe for democracy.”
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But by the end of Glenn’s show, and with several million drooling idiots watching from their sofas and hanging on his every word, Glenn has turned a symbol of liberty and of the US’s resolve to fight if necessary even while desiring peace into proof that the Progressives have been fighting to shape this country into a fascist-socialist dreamland for at least a century and has had the power of the White House behind it when Democracy hating, fascist friendly guys like Woodrow Wilson were in charge.
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It also doesn’t help Glenn’s case much that his explanation of fascism as a movement is usually wrong to a large degree. But then Glenn and his fans and followers never seem to care much for facts so that shouldn’t be too surprising.
Thanks Jerry, Glenn does put a lot of square pegs in round holes doesn’t he?
The fasces is a symbol used in the Roman republic, and since many political systems were inspired by the Roman Republic, that symbol got around. The Fascists in Italy were inspired by the Romans, but so were the Americans (Republic, Senate, Eagle, Capitol Building and most of the Architecture in DC), and the French, and many others.
Fascism only started in Italy during WWI as a marginal party, and only took over in 1922, and only in the 30s became common in other places.
A small correction: in WWI the US fought the German Empire and not fascists. In WWII the US fought the Fascists in Italy, and Japan and Germany who were also inspire by Italian fascism + some other stuff.
Fascism and Communism are not the same thing. Fascism split from communism during and after WWI.
The label fascist is extremely overused.
I think Jerry is substantially correct in his assessment, though I think the fasces is more accurately a symbol of power, not freedom. On the Liberty Dime the fasces has an olive branch wrapped around it, which some have interpreted as symbolizing that the United States was ready for war or peace, whichever may come.
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It’s a lovely design. Been a long time since one showed up in my change…come to think of it, with a bank card it’s been a long time since I had change.
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“A small correction: in WWI the US fought the German Empire and not fascists. In WWII the US fought the Fascists in Italy, and Japan and Germany who were also inspire by Italian fascism + some other stuff.”
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I know. Fascism as an organized movement didn’t really start until 1919 or 1920. There were early signs and aspects in various groups before then, but the declared movement with major symbols, platforms, etc didn’t start until then.
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I should have made the one line more clear and I alluded to it by pointing out that Glenn’s definitions of Fascism as a movement are largely wrong, but I was writing that bit from the POV of Glenn’s error ridden commentaries about who was what in Europe back then.
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“I think Jerry is substantially correct in his assessment, though I think the fasces is more accurately a symbol of power, not freedom.”
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True. However I was speaking as to what the overall symbol of the dime was meant to represent as per the description by the designer in the contest. The combination of power (willingness to go to war if forced) and the desire for peace combined with the Lady was meant to be a symbol of freedom.
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Sorry I wasn’t as clear on some points as I could have been. Long night on patrol last night and I was a bit fried.
The important thing is that Glenn Beck is a nut promoting ignorance.
The funny thing is, with all the perfectly legitimate reasons to dislike Wilson–he was an awful racist, he was dismissive of free speech, he began the war on drugs that has been such a (snark) great success, his refusal to compromise effectively destroyed any chance of the league of nations to succeed, he wielded a heavy hand in his dealings with Latin America, and even after a stroke left him seriously incapacitated, he refused to step down or even let the public or congress know the full extent of his condition.
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For his hard-line segregationist, pro-KKK positions alone he does not deserve his unfathomably high rankings. Bottom tier president, in my book.
Bill M
I’ve seen some pretty old addicts, so its a slow kill at best. Anywho whom would you put in jail and what would you do to penalize the addicts?
The fact that you’re more interested in penalizing addicts than, say, treating and curing them, says plenty about how callous you’ve become right there.
Nice quick judgment Sheilaleft, first off I’m sure you know there is no ‘cure’ for addiction there are no cured addicts just non-using addicts.
I was just wanting to know if Bill Mulligan would penalize them since he said to quit putting them in jail.
If you want to pay to treat them you are more than welcome to do so.
“Penalizing” drug addicts fits right in with certain kinds of Christianity-inspired conservatism. After all, surrendering to baser physical pleasures while not living productive lives is the sort of sin that they hate the most, and they hunger to punish people for it.
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Obviously, I’m not defending what drug addicts do to themselves and their families. My brother is one of them. And the hëll he’s put us through in the last years, before seeking treatment, is far, far worse than any “afterschool special” you care to watch.
Sheilaleft,
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And this says a lot about the conversation we shouldn’t waste our time having with Steve H.
So sorry kneejerk reaction to being called callous.
Nothing I could do would be much worse than what they do to themselves. But it’s their choice. Get them therapy if they want it, still cheaper than jail.
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If they are feeding their addiction without robbing me why should I care? People make lots of destructive decisions in their lives and while I may weep for the people they were and the potential they waste, by what right do I force a change on them–particularly when that change involves incarcerating them with killers and rapists?
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I’ve toyed with the idea of actually letting people register as drug addicts and have the drugs provided to them. Of course, they would have to surrender certain rights, like the right to vote or own a gun. Maybe give them a nice little room in exchange for sterilization. Anyone who thinks that’s a great deal is not likely to be a good candidate for rehab anyway so we might as well make their remaining years comfortable. And still, wayyyyyyyy cheaper than jail.
If its cheaper then I’m for it, though I don’t know why we need to make them comfortable.
Surrendering rights would never pass the left, even if it’s reasonable.
As far as the right to vote, I would not let anyone vote who didn’t pay taxes for the level they are voting for, i.e. no federal tax paid no voting for president. Since we all pay local sales tax they could vote for local issues.
lest I seem tender hearted, keep in mind that one reason I would like to free up all that jail space is so that the real criminals can be kept there forever. You get 30 years to life you stay in for at least 30 years and unless you are some kind of mother@#$%ing class A cancer curing model prisoner you can expect your sorry ášš to be buried there. None of this get 50 years and get out in 7 with “good behavior”. You’re in jail. You’d better</i. have good behavior. Want a reward for it? Here's a cookie.
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I will happily pay more taxes if they are 100% guaranteed to go to the building of new prisons for murderers and rapists and people who cannot go 2 weeks without an arrest. I'll organize a bake sale. few things make life better than the removal of criminal elements from it.
I would prefer to just legalise all drugs completely, and don’t waste any tax money trying to discourage drug use in any way. Just let people live their own lives the way they want.
How was Rush Limbaugh penalized for his addiction?
He was sentenced to life…being Rush Limbaugh. Hëll, that has to count as some kind of punishment. The question is: for whom?
I do pay to treat them. It’s called paying my taxes. I’m kind of okay with that.
O thats nice, sat ya back a lot did it?
I thought Elisberg’s commentary was too glib. I’m not a fan of the Tea Party by any means, but I think Elisberg was more interested in caricaturing teabaggers than in finding meaning in what many members of the Tea Party are saying. I believe the Tea Party is wrongheaded and misguided, but nevertheless are worth understanding.
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Despite many teabaggers’ claims of perfect unity, there are some potential schisms within the movement. Part of the movement is made up of libertarians who believe the Tea Party should stay out of social issues, while another wing of the movement is both fiscally and socially conservative. It’s not possible, nor is it useful, to tar them all with one brush.
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My real issue with the Tea Party isn’t the racist wingnuts at its fringes, because every large movement has a lunatic fringe. What’s truly ironic about the Tea Party is the movement’s claim that it wants to “restore” a Constitutional government that matches the founding fathers’ intent. What they’re trying to “restore” is something that never quite existed. David Brooks wrote an excellent editorial in a recent edition of the New York Times in which he pointed out that presidents as far back as George Washington found ways to leverage the power of government to create social and economic change. If many members of the Tea Party truly knew and understood history, they might be suprised at just how “liberal” the Founding Fathers were in some cases.
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(Mind you, Brooks is quite a critic of Obama and Congressional Democrats, and he believes Obama’s economic stimulus package and health care reform were overreaches on the part of liberals. He believes more targeted and limited bills would have served us better in both cases.)
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What bothers me about the Tea Party is what bothers me about the electorate in general right now. The national mood is ultimately being driven by an emotional, knee-jerk reaction to some really thorny and complex problems that won’t lend themselves to a national temper-tantrum. As Bill Mulligan pointed out, the only way out of this wilderness we’re in right now is to restore robust growth to our economy. Unfortunately, our economy is suffering from structural problems created by policies from both Democrats and Republicans going back decades. There’s no easy, painless way out of this, despite what many would have us believe.
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What really concerns me is what will happen if the Republicans sweep back into power and, as I believe is likely, fail just as miserably as the Democrats at making a dent in the nation’s economic woes. I think a lot of people will become disillusioned with the whole system and rather than forming a third party will simply tune out of politics again. That would be rather sad… and dangerous.
I believe that what has been happening for a while is that more and more people are leaving the big 2 parties and putting “Decline to state” on their ballot. I don’t have the numbers on hand, but I believe that 3rd parties are growing in numbers and movements. As someone who’d like to see more variety in govenrment, I’m for it. My biggest problem with the Tea Party is that they seem to have exchanged their Libertarian elements for GOP ones. I don’t see that as a step towards variety.
Excellent post Bill.
It seems that while the world becomes more complicated and needs complex understanding and complex solutions, public discourse is becoming very simplistic, shallow, shrill and vicious.
I hoped that Obama had the intellectual ability to deal with this complex world, but I don’t know how well he’s doing in that regard.
I agree with micha–great points, Bill.
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Victory in November could be the very definition of the double edged sword. People will expect results. Do these folks have the courage to make the tough choices? Or, having tasted power, will they do anything it takes to avoid risking its loss?
I hoped that Obama had the intellectual ability to deal with this complex world, but I don’t know how well he’s doing in that regard.
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It takes two to tango. Which isn’t to say I’m simply blaming ‘the other side’, but I’m not sure many want to deal with the complex world regardless.
When I said I don’t know how well he’s doing I wasn’t being sarcastic. I really don’t know. I haven’t been following his successes, failures and public perception close enough to say either way. I know he’s having a difficult time, but I don’t know to what degree.
Thomas Friedman’s makes a case that there will be a serious third party challenge in 2012. Can’t say that I see the evidence of that yet. Personally, I think that party changes require two things: people really pìššëd øff about the way things are, and just the right personality. (to which some people will probably say, well *duh*) Historically, I’d say that Lincoln counted, Maybe Nixon (for bad reasons) Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.
The article is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03friedman.html?src=me&ref=general
Public discourse has always been simplistic, shallow, shrill and vicious. In America, we’ve had now 6 decades of polarization, of people demonizing their adversaries, of arguments based on emotion and which “team” you root for. I’m not sure the Tea Party changed things that much.
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Perhaps the real change is that before those arguments were more across generations. The young and cool and rebellious that were more liberal, the old and settled that were more conservative. It sounded a little like a family fight writ large
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I’ve been saying that a big change in the 2000s was that it became possible to be cool and conservative, and for people not to think you’re a white suburban aged mother for being conservative. And the Tea Party may be just this trend taken to the next logical level. Get together with your buddies and shout to the heavens that you’re a conservative.
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The dude that said the Tea Party was like the Civil Rights Movement was not so wrong (even though I think the Civil Rights crusade was a lot nobler than some comfortably middle-class folks being selfish). People get emotional, shout some slogans, feel like they’re committed and make a difference.
Jerry said, “The Liberty Dime was a dime first introduced back in 1916 as a companion piece to the Liberty quarters and half dollars.”
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I think I have a few of those. They look kind of cool.
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Bill Mulligan, talking about the liberty dime, said: “It’s a lovely design. Been a long time since one showed up in my change.”.
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A few years ago, I got a roll of 50 cent pieces from the bank, and mixed in with the Kennedy coins was an old Franklin 50 cent piece (from 1946, if memory serves).
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And speaking of coins, has anyone seen the new penny? I came across one the other day, and when I saw the reverse, these words sprang immediately to mind: “when Abraham Lincoln throws his mighty shield…”
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Jerry also said, “Good old Glenn. The same idiot who thinks the Liberty Dime is a socialist symbol.”.
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Can’t speak to that specific statement, since I neither watch nor listen to Glenn Beck, but it’s sad– almost depressing– how much wholesale ignorance is out there. You know the statement the Doctor made in “The Face of Evil”, “You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.”? I personally know people like that.
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Rick
“Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…”
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Really? Putting aside the fact you’re taking a cheap shot at Beck without a quote or anything to back it up:
1.) What exactly makes Back a “standard bearer”? This just shows the Republicans have truly been so powerless recently that you can’t even pick an officeholder to demonize. Boehner is no Gingrich after all. And yet the Dems still struggled to get things done. So you focus your energies on a TV commentator. Okay
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2.) You have an ex-president who feels that, darn it, if we had just been a bit more reasonable, slavery would have ended peacefully and therefore the Civil War was unnecessary.
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http://www.3nailsministries.org/2009/03/24/jimmy-carter-supports-american-slavery/
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I mean, sure, who knows how long it would have taken and how many blacks would have been victimized in the meantime? That’s the opinion of the sainted Jimmy Carter, who was merely the most powerful man on the planet at one time. And you want to make snide remarks abut a successful pundit? When this is one of the “elder statesmen” of your party? One who you helped grant extraordinary power? Have fun with that.
Are you under the impression that the Democratic Party has a “standard-bearer”? It is to laugh.
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Will Rogers said it best, back in the day: “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
But Republicans are constantly told that they DO have one…it’s just that who that person is seems to change depending on what conservative did or said something bad that day.
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I thought Rush Limbaugh was the boogeyman du jour but lately it’s been Beck or Palin…Gingridge gets trotted out now and again. If Angle or O’Donnel pull off an unlikely victory i suppose they will be the official Standard bearers. Whatever. So far the attacks do not seem to be greatly harming the party’s chances, which is a little alarming in that some of these folks are really pretty sub par. In a normal election cycle they would be non-entities but this time they are in the thick of the fight.
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I wish I could be as enthusiastic about a republican sweep as some of my friends are but I don’t see any great likelihood that it will make the needed difference.
“The sainted Jimmy Carter?”
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Are you high?
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PAD
Hey, you know he’s a jáçkášš, I know he’s a jáçkášš, Bill Clinton would probably like to stake him to an ant hill for a few hours…but he’s at least as popular among liberals as Glen Beck is among conservatives. More so, I would guess, but I don’t know if there are any poll numbers that would answer that.
Bill said: Hey, you know he’s a jáçkášš, I know he’s a jáçkášš, Bill Clinton would probably like to stake him to an ant hill for a few hours…but he’s at least as popular among liberals as Glen Beck is among conservatives. More so, I would guess, but I don’t know if there are any poll numbers that would answer that.
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I know people who respect his charity work (as do I), but I don’t know anyone who takes his political opinions seriously.
but he’s at least as popular among liberals as Glen Beck is among conservatives. More so, I would guess, but I don’t know if there are any poll numbers that would answer that.
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Do people, in looking back on his presidency, have a higher opinion on him now than they did then? Sure. That’s meaningless. Most presidents benefit from a nostalgic haze of forgetfulness, none more so than Ronald Reagan. So holding up after-the-fact opinion on his presidency hardly qualifies him as “sainted,” but just means that he gets the same post-presidency bump as most presidents (aside from Herbert Hoover,I suppose) receive.
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As for his humanitarian works, well, I found this from an ABC poll:
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(Carter) wins approval
for his post-presidency labors from large and roughly equal numbers of Democrats (79
percent) and Republicans (77 percent) alike.
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So there’s some basis for the claim that liberals approve of him…but, hey, so do conservatives. So it’s meaningless in terms of trying to ascribe him any sort of elevated influence or being of particular meaning to one side or the other.
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PAD
Really? Putting aside the fact you’re taking a cheap shot at Beck without a quote or anything to back it up:
If it bothers you that poor Glenn is being unfairly maligned, here’s a link to the audio of him actually saying that slavery was great at one point in time: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201010010026.
“If it bothers you that poor Glenn is being unfairly maligned, here’s a link to the audio of him actually saying that slavery was great at one point in time:”
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Yeah, I was out and about and channel surfed into that bit of his show. I actually paused for a minute thinking that he couldn’t possibly be saying what it sounded like he was saying. A few minutes later it became clear that, no, he was actually saying something even more mind bogglingly stupid. Slavery, on Planet Beck, wasn’t so bad a thing, innocent actually, and wasn’t even really evil when they were first bringing the slaves here. No it wasn’t evil until the government stepped in to regulate it. That’s when it became evil.
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This guy gets so much wrong, in both facts and simple concepts, about history that it’s absolutely amazing that anyone with over a 6th grade education takes anything he says about the subject seriously.
וֹYou are being unfair toward Beck. Based on what I heard (which is not much) it seems to me that he’s like a jazz musician. He has a theme: government is bad, it is responsible for anything bad. Given power it is going to ruin your life. That’s the beginning and end of everything he says. As a great jazz musician, he can take any subject or even any random word you can think of and start riffing with it and improvising around the same theme as the mood takes him. Whatever happens he gets exactly to the same point regardless of the actual subject or whatever things he said while he was talking. Now, you can’t hold him responsible for what he actually says while he gets there, it’s not like he’s actually thinking about it.
Sure, there’s only one straight line between point A and point B. But where’s the fun with that. There are infinite amount of crooked lines. Beck shouldn’t be held responsible for which one he happened to stumble on as he made his way to point B. For his fans what’s important is probably that he got to point B and that he did it very creatively.
After listening to as much of the Glenn beck passage as I could I think that A- that’s a few minutes of my life I’ll never have back and B- I’m not sure there are enough complete sentences and coherent thoughts to be able to fairly say he is claiming that slavery was great at one point until government screwed it up, as claimed.
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It’s possible he is trying, albeit in a really haphazard fashion, to make a valid point–there is reason to believe that slavery as it was practiced in the United States was pretty much a government created problem. The practice got it’s start here as indentured sevitude, a race neutral practice but bit by bit the governing bodies made it worse and worse until we ended up with the horrible conditions we had pre-civil war. Not that indentured servitude was any day at Disneyland but it was a lot better than slavery. At least it had an end point. But then they began to pass laws that made it permanent for blacks and then they passed laws that made the children of a slave also slaves, no matter the status of the father and then they passed laws that actually punished slave owners for not punishing their slaves if they made certain transgressions, etc etc…Slavery, by the time it ended, was an institution that could only survive here with direct enforcement by the government.
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Of course, one must also acknowledge that it was government edict that ended it as well, so Becks point, if that’s what it is, that government can only make things worse does not hold.
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“I’m not sure there are enough complete sentences and coherent thoughts to be able to fairly say he is claiming that slavery was great at one point until government screwed it up, as claimed.”
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Beck: “The President is exactly right when he said ’slaves sitting around the campfire didn’t know when slavery was going to end, but they knew that it would. And it took a long time to end slavery.’ yes it did. But it also took a long time to start slavery.
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And it started small, and it started with seemingly innocent ideas. And then a little court order here, and a court order there and a little regulation here and a little more regulation there. And before we knew it, America had slavery.
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It didn’t come over in a ship to begin with, as an evil slave trade. The government began to regulate things because the people needed answers and needed solutions. It started in a court room then it went to the legislatures. That’s how slavery began. And it took a long time to enslave an entire race of people, and convince another race of people that they were somehow or another, less than them. But it can be done.”
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Well, “it started with seemingly innocent ideas” and it “didn’t come over in a ship to begin with, as an evil slave trade” according to Beck. And the above bit that’s the easy to find on the web part wasn’t his only reference to the idea. I heard a chunk of it while out running errands last week. Beck and Beck fans can claim that he was trying to say anything they want; what he said, and then reiterated, was insane and showed his typical absence of knowledge about history.
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Slavery wasn’t evil when it was first bringing slaves over here to America. It only became evil once regulations were put in place. Uhm… Yeah…
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Like I said, not only is Beck’s base point insane, but it once again showcases his towering ignorance of history in general and in the details.
Ugh, I really don’t want to be defending this guy, because it might mean I have to start listening to him and this is really not my thing–I respect that he must be connecting to someone but what I’ve seen is as unwatchable as Olberman and most of these other popular pundits.
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But again, if you look at how bit by bit indentured servitude, a temporary race neutral situation that was entered into voluntarily, became slavery, a race based permanent institution that one was born into and lasted forever, one can see “And then a little court order here, and a court order there and a little regulation here and a little more regulation there. And before we knew it, America had slavery.” as not inaccurate.
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Was indentured servitude “innocent”? Not to my way of thinking but it was evidently preferable to whatever hellish life those who chose it were escaping from. It was better than slavery, that much must be granted.
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If beck is saying that slavery, when it first came over in a ship, wasn’t so bad, yeah, that’s insane. If he is saying that it id NOT first show up as a slave ship but instead was a legislative mutation of an existing institution (indentured servants) and from that change we soon went to slave ships and all the other horrors–that’s dependable, though I don’t think he articulated as well as I could, for a considerably smaller yearly income, I might add. based just on this quote i couldn’t honestly take the latter interpretation as a legit one but there could well be more.
Bill, if Beck was talking about slavery and indentured servitude were related and how government regulations made… Well, he’d still be somewhat off the mark since slavery existed alongside indentured servitude and was bad/evil before there was even an America.
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But the totality of what Beck said is what made it both insane and staggeringly wrong. Beck was doing his usual bit about hating Obama and hating Obama’s healthcare plan. Fine. But he then started discussing how things like healthcare, health insurance and other such things are all well and good and not in the least bit bad things until the government gets into the act of regulating them; just like slavery.
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This is not me or some liberal leaning site putting words into Beck’s mouth. This is what he said and this is the analogy he used on the air last week. Healthcare, health insurance and other things like it are all good things until the government get involved with regulating them just like slavery was. That was Beck’s big historical analogy and point and there isn’t really much that can be said to defend the mind numbing stupidity of it.
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And best of all is that Beck didn’t even walk it back after saying it. It would be one thing if he came back from the next break and said that he was a bit tired that day and that he didn’t use the best analogy but his point was [blank] and it still stood. No, he actually made at least one more reference to reinforce the rightness of his slavery point before I switched to another station.
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Beck’s towering stupidity here would be like someone who is against the death penalty saying that healthcare and health insurance was , you know, like murder in that it wasn’t really all that bad, rather innocent really, until the state started regulating the practice of executing people convicted of crimes and only then did murder really become wrong.
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You’re debating the point by discussing the role the various governing bodies got involved with slavery and made it worse. That’s fine. Perfectly valid discussion. But that, for full context of why Beck’s point and yours are different, is not what Beck did. He started out on healthcare, explained that it was actually a good thing, stated that it was a bad thing if the government got in on regulating or providing it and then said that this was just like how slavery became evil.
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Planet Beck – Healthcare is like slavery in America. Healthcare, like slavery, isn’t a bad thing. Healthcare with government intervention, like slavery with government intervention, is bad/evil.
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Now I’m sure Beck isn’t a pro-slavery racist and probably doesn’t feel that slavery was actually a good thing, but this isn’t the first time he’s constructed an argument that hinged on slavery related historical facts where he’s 1- gotten facts wrong and 2- made an argument that comes across as saying that slavery wasn’t all that bad or that the abolition of slavery was bad.
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Again, my point isn’t that I think Beck really is a pro-slavery racist. My point is, as I pointed out above, that I’m just amazed that someone who makes as many factual errors about the past and the present that he makes daily as well as basing his nutty conspiracies that are swallowed by gullible idiots as truth is taken seriously by anyone with higher than a 6th grade education. Yet somehow, as evidenced by his audience demos and breakdowns, a large number of the beck faithful have indeed received more than a 6th grade education.
And somewhere right now Rick Sanchez is saying, “This idiot still has a gig and I’m unemployed?”
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PAD
Well, if conceding the point means I never have to listen to this Glenn beck again I’ll cheerfully do so!
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All signs are pointing toward the fact that in just a few short years the democrats have managed to so poison their brand that amazing opportunities for the GOP and conservatives are there for the taking…and, sadly, those who are taking it are not really the best of the breed. Though I guess one has to give credit to those who are able to take advantage of life’s opportunities. Sure would be nice if someone with the media savvy of Rush Limbaugh, the wit of William Buckley and the, I don’t know, pact with Satan that makes them inexplicably popular of Glenn Beck was able to take the reins.
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We are entering one f those times when we really need a leader. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Reagan, these were men who showed up at very bad times for the country and changed the course for the better. You don’t have to agree with everything they did and each made some undeniable errors, some of them almost unforgivable, but they were leaders. Some think that we are now in a position where such a leader can show up and thrive but it’s foolish to assume that this is something that will happen just because we desperately need it to. I hoped Obama would be like that but I’ve long since given up on that one. Can’t say I really see anyone on either side that seems a likely candidate for greatness. Some nice folks, some competent folks, but we may need something considerably more than that.
Well, I looked up slavery on Wikipedia and it turns out that in America, or at least in Virginia, slavery did evolve from indentured servitude. Or rather, that for a short while Virginians treated African slaves as indentured servants. But this is a unique American anomaly. It also doesn’t seem to be a case of government intervening as much as government reflecting different social norms at different times in America.
Glen Beck still sounds like an idiot.
Jerome, Carter isn’t exactly a greatly beloved or sainted figure to many Democrats these days. While few will find fault with his work with Habitat for Humanity, he’s not much of a poster boy for the modern Democrats. Now, if you want to play comparisons you need look little farther than here in Virginia.
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Governor Bob McDonnell decided that Virginia needed to return to observing Confederate History Month here in Virginia after it had been long ago left behind. Not an all together stupid thing by itself, but it gets better. He released a proclamation that discussed the Confederacy and the Civil War but failed to make any mention of slavery. Not an all together stupid thing by itself, but it gets better. He created a huge flap in the press because he was asked about the omission and declared that slavery wasn’t that big of a deal when it came to matters of the Confederacy or reasons for the Civil War.
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He quickly amended his proclamation after the press dust up to address slavery and state that it was a major evil that led to that war. McDonnell and Virginia A.G. Cuccinelli have also been less than admirable in their political attitudes towards gays and less than honorable or honest with some of their proposed schemes to implement new laws to get around the legality of abortion.
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It should also be noted that the last Governor Virginia had prior to McDonnell who pushed for this kind of thing was George Allen. George Allen, the guy who started his TV ad campaign for Governor of Virginia with an ad that had the Confederate flag displayed prominently in the background. George Allen, the guy who sometimes wore a Confederate flag lapel pin as Governor. George Allen, the guy who kept a mock up noose (and sometimes a small Confederate flag near it) in his home office and his official Governor’s office. George Allen, the guy who directed a racial slur for blacks that was common in his mother’s native country as a guy with a little more melanin in his skin than the average white guy.
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Unlike Carter, McDonnell is a guy that Republicans look at as a rising star in the party. There’s talk in the party of him being an excellent VP or P nomination for 2012. Allan was a guy that a lot of Republicans wanted to see run in 2008 and is still discussed fondly from time to time as a wildcard option for the national stage.
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Carter is a fading politician who is less and less popular amongst the base and mainstream Democrats each and every year. Allan was a guy who the Republicans talked about as their future a short while ago while McDonnell’s name is bandied about now as the possible future of the party.
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I know people who respect his charity work (as do I), but I don’t know anyone who takes his political opinions seriously.
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That makes me happy!
Jerry,
“Carter is a fading politician who is less and less popular amongst the base and mainstream Democrats each and every year.”
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That’s great that you think so. But the point still remains that PAD took it upon himself to call Beck a standard bearer for the Republican party, despite the fact that Beck bashes both parties equally and that, last I checked, he held no office nor desired to. And the others you mentioned – Allen, etc. are not anywhere on anyone’s radar as far as having “standard bearer” status either.
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The fact remains there is NO ONE in office to serve as a true political foil for Obama the way Gingrich was to Clinton. Hëll,the man he beat ran as sclerotic, limp campaign as anyone has seen. Except for a few jabs by Palin late, McCain hardly let Obama have it with both barrels. he was a as moderate a “standard bearer” as you are likely to get and he got trounced by an inexperienced candidate with an empty resume and shallow “Yes we can!” slogans.
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For all the talk of what Obama “inherited” someone should have the balls to tell him, “Yes. And you also as a result inherited a dispirited opposition party with no true foil and overwhelming majorities in both houses. So what he did he has had to struggle to do and he was unable to do a lot of what he wanted? That means he was unable to win over members of his own party. Pretty rich from a guy who said he was going to reach across the aisle and in his “I won” arrogance decided to do whatever he dámņ well pleased. So much for olive branches to moderates like McCain and Graham or even Collins at times. Now things are rough, it’s getting harder to blame Bush and there is no one Republican to point at. So the Left, from Obama to PAD, want to blame anyone who doesn’t think the way they do – from Tea Partiers, you know, “extremists” who want us to live withing our means” – to a political commentator because it’s so much easier to mock or look down on the other side than to actually listen to what they have to say. So much easier to try to marginalize them and demonize a guy on TV than it is to rethink your ideas or that others may have valid reasons for rejecting them so vehemently.
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Much easier for Obama and everyone else down the food chain to simply chalk up others’ opposition to gullibility, stupidity and ignorance. which coming from a bunch of people who were swooning at such nuanced, brilliant phrases like “We are the ones we have been waiting for” is pretty rich.
No reason to get angry about it–it isn’t working! Obama’s collapse in popularity is fueling the resurgence of the GOP–far more than anything the GOP has done, sorry to say–and the Democratic response has been weak. I just wish a better crop of conservatives had run this year.
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Which may be the great lesson of the tea party. The fact that these folks got off their áššëš, quit just complaining and ran! They were laughed at. Didn’t matter. And now you even have Barney Frank looking nervous. Imagine of the party had the foresight and confidence to have spent the last 2 years really nurturing a solid group of candidates, pulling businessmen and women, medical workers, ex military people, etc. yeah, there is some of that, but not enough.
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Maybe the parties have this but I have never heard about it. They need to recruit people who can serve as talent scouts, looking for talented local pols or other charismatic leaders, people to nurture and see if their promise can bear some fruit. It’s not something the seasoned politicians will do–that would be growing their own competition. if anything, they probably do all they can to discourage that kind of talent.
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(for that matter, why don’t the national parties pay people to do nothing but cruise the web and look for good ad ideas? I’ve seen stuff on blogs that are about 400 times more clever and effective than what the professionals come up with. But maybe that’s the problem–the pros probably have a lot of friends in the right places.)
“Yes. And you also as a result inherited a dispirited opposition party with no true foil and overwhelming majorities in both houses.
To an extent, your point that Obama has no Lex Luthor/Joker/Doctor Doom as his foil is correct.
Considering the way the GOP is in lockstep, I’d say it’s more apt to say he inherited the Borg.
“It’s not Obama’s fault that the other side, including McCain, chose not to take it and even abandoned things they themselves proposed when Obama accepted the ideas and said that they were good things to do.”
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Sorry, lost a bit of meaning when I editted. The “it” there is the olive branch.
Editted?
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&$%&&*%&%!!!!!!!
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“… when I edited.”
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Jerome:
“That’s great that you think so. But the point still remains that PAD took it upon himself to call Beck a standard bearer for the Republican party,”
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Right now Beck might have more right to be called a standard bearer than Carter does. Carter was POTUS 40 years ago. He has since spent that time putting himself more and more on the outs with the mainstream and controlling powers of the party. He certainly didn’t do himself any favors by never letting go of his grudge with Kennedy, someone who could easily have been called a standard bearer right up until his death, and seemingly wanting to continue picking fights with the man even after his death. He’s a fading politician who has little or no real influence anymore.
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Beck, like it or not, has positioned himself as one of the two most prominent faces that get spoken of or referenced by both conservatives and liberals when talk of the Tea Party comes up. He jumped on the bandwagon early, promoted the hëll out of Tea Party events, coopted some events and gets featured as a Tea Party guest and speaker at their events with almost rock star status given to him by the movement. He’s used that status to promote and propel his other events such as the last one in DC as well. Even if he is not truly a “leader” of a Tea Party group he is seen as representing the Tea Party by many.
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Do note that the linked article that started the thread discusses the Tea Party.
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Since you and others have posted here that the Tea Party is basically what’s going to energize the Conservative movement and bring about the Republican sweep in November it can be argued that Glenn has certainly set himself up to be called a standard bearer for that movement and the party it chooses to support.
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Oh, and one screw up you made is that Peter never said that he was a Republican standard bearer. Peter’s quote-
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“Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…”
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“Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.”
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He said liberals. The opposite of that would be conservatives. And it’s not even like it’s something that Peter or the more left leaning out there came up with all by themselves. Pundits, regular people and talking heads on the Right have referred to Beck as a new standard bearer of the conservative movement.
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“despite the fact that Beck bashes both parties equally
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Yeah, and Matthews, Olbermann, Maddow and Schultz have all bashed both sides. They’ve all bashed Democrats right up to and including Obama. Hasn’t stopped many, included you, from calling one or all of them liberals and Democrat operatives on the TV. It shouldn’t either since other than with Matthews it’s 100% correct that they’re liberals. They often attack Democrats for not being “Democrat” or liberal enough. Likewise, Beck attacks Republicans when they fail to be “Republican” or conservative enough.
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Beck claims to be something other than a Republican, but he promotes and pushes for the election of Republicans and he basically made it clear at this years CPAC event and on the first show after that that he considered the Republicans his team. Saying he’s something other than a Republican just because he likes to claim he’s not even as he promotes them, speaks at their events and pushes for their election simply because he attacks them from time to time for not being conservative enough is as disingenuous in it’s way as saying a guy like Ed Shultz isn’t a Democrat.
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“and that, last I checked, he held no office nor desired to.”
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Doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to be an elected office holder to be the standard bearer for a movement or political idea.
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“And the others you mentioned – Allen, etc. are not anywhere on anyone’s radar as far as having “standard bearer” status either.”
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Nor did I say that they were. But they (well, more so McDonnell at this point) are rising stars in the party that get much buzz and discussion from time to time about their great future in the party. McDonnell is certainly someone who is more embraced by his party right now than Carter is by his.
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“Except for a few jabs by Palin late, McCain hardly let Obama have it with both barrels. he was a as moderate a “standard bearer” as you are likely to get and he got trounced by an inexperienced candidate with an empty resume and shallow “Yes we can!” slogans.”
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What actually hurt McCain more than anything was that he did run to the Right. He went back on some old stands and positions and played to his base on some matters where the base was previously not happy with his positions. He failed to win over some of that base and he lost a lot of moderates and middle of the road voters who may have helped put him over the top in a few key states.
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“For all the talk of what Obama “inherited” someone should have the balls to tell him, “Yes. And you also as a result inherited a dispirited opposition party with no true foil and overwhelming majorities in both houses. So what he did he has had to struggle to do and he was unable to do a lot of what he wanted? That means he was unable to win over members of his own party.”
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So you would be happier if the Democrats all group thinked and voted party line in favor of every Obama idea?
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Did Obama have issues with his own party? Yeah, because there are a lot of moderate Democrats in both houses. Both Senators from Virginia are are moderate to conservative Democrats depending on the issue. There are quite a few other Democrats who are the same. So, yeah, he actually had to fight to get some of his own party to agree with him on issues and to vote for certain things. I certainly prefer that to the rubberstamp majority that Bush had for a while and I would really hate the Democrats a lot right now if they acted like the congress that they replaced. I like the fact that there are dissenting voices in the Democratic Party and wish there had been more in the Republican Party form 2000 to 2006. The mess we’re in now might not be as bad if there had been some.
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“Pretty rich from a guy who said he was going to reach across the aisle and in his “I won” arrogance decided to do whatever he dámņ well pleased. So much for olive branches to moderates like McCain and Graham or even Collins at times.”
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Okay, that’s a wee bit disconnected from what actually happened. Obama did several things that he actually ran on as a candidate. Obama the candidate ran on, amongst other things, healthcare reform. He got elected so that’s one of the things he did. He also did offer the olive branch to the other side. He even used some of the ideas offered by Republicans. Yeah, they say that he didn’t when a national press camera is in front of them, but then they turn around and talk about what a great thing they did that made it into the fill-in-the-blank- bill when back in their home districts.
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Hëll, even here (and elsewhere with others Republicans) we have Obama critic Governor McDonnell talking about how bad Obama’s programs are while grabbing a ton of bailout cash to help balance the state’s budget with. Obama is bad and the programs are bad but he’ll still grab them and use them to balance his bad budget and then claim all the credit for himself and Team Republican afterwards.
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It’s not Obama’s fault that the other side, including McCain, chose not to take it and even abandoned things they themselves proposed when Obama accepted the ideas and said that they were good things to do. You can’t have only one side offer to work with the other side. It simply doesn’t work that way. If you and I had to work on something together and every single idea you presented I turned down or every idea of mine that you expressed interest in I suddenly turn on a dime on and did a 180 so that I now disliked it… Well, I don’t think you would find it fair or honest of people who said that whatever we were working on didn’t get done or didn’t get done well because Jerome wouldn’t work with Jerry and just couldn’t get it done. It really does take two to tango. One person doing the Tango and the other coming to box just doesn’t work too well.
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Plus. look at the recent Tea Party wins that we’ve been discussing. Tea Party candidates won in primaries in part by pointing out that the incumbent Republican voted at least once with Obama. The Tea Party wins boil down to this message; if you have ever compromised and worked with Obama then you’re ášš is out on the street. The party of “no” working hard to become the party of “hëll no and f#ck you too while we’re at it.”
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“Now things are rough, it’s getting harder to blame Bush and there is no one Republican to point at. So the Left, from Obama to PAD, want to blame anyone who doesn’t think the way they do – from Tea Partiers, you know, “extremists” who want us to live withing our means” – to a political commentator because it’s so much easier to mock or look down on the other side than to actually listen to what they have to say. So much easier to try to marginalize them and demonize a guy on TV than it is to rethink your ideas or that others may have valid reasons for rejecting them so vehemently.”
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Actually, the problem with that statement is that a number of people here, including a few moderate righties, have listened to Beck, have listened to Beck’s words and have thought about them only to find that beck is an idiot at best and a used car salesman peddling lies, hate and stupidity at worst. And it’s certainly untrue that most of the people here who have stated this about Glenn Beck haven’t thought about the reasons that Obama is failing and the reasons that some dislike where he’s going right now and are in fact people who have expressed concern themselves about Obama and where’s he’s taking us on certain things. Beck can be a lie peddling idiot and Obama can be a bad President in the same world. The two things can mutually exist and be true at the same time.
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“Much easier for Obama and everyone else down the food chain to simply chalk up others’ opposition to gullibility, stupidity and ignorance.”
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When as many people listen to Beck’s radio show and watch his TV show do so and then turn out for his rallies and talk about how insightful, honest and important what he has to say is… Yeah, it’s really easy because they make it easy.
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“which coming from a bunch of people who were swooning at such nuanced, brilliant phrases like “We are the ones we have been waiting for” is pretty rich.”
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Two things.
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1- There are a lot of people who don’t swoon over Obama who think Beck is a moron. Some of the post here.
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2- Pulling the odd badly worded line from an Obama speech and making out like he can’t talk at all or does not deserve some of the credit he’s given for being a gifted live speaker is dishonest. Reagan made so many stupid statements while President that you can, and some have, fill an entire book with them. It does not mean that the man wasn’t a gifted speaker or that he was unable to connect with a live audience when he was in a smaller venue. Likewise, Bill Clinton is such an electrifying and gifted speaker that even those who hated him spoke of how he would mesmerize you when you were in the room and he was speaking. I can pull out a ton of Clinton’s verbal gaffes.
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That’s a weak attack line and it gets weaker the more it’s over used.
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Bill:
“Obama’s collapse in popularity is fueling the resurgence of the GOP–far more than anything the GOP has done, sorry to say”
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Thus the great problem with the Tea Party and the elections this year. We’re not seeing a third party or even an attempt by a fallen party to get back on track. We’re seeing basically a lot of people stating that they don’t like “A” and they hate “B” so they’ll just pick “C” because “C” must be better than “A” and has to be so much better than “B.”
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The problem is that, as we learn more about so many of the “C” picks, they’re the same old same old with a new coat of paint or they’re like something out of a dark satire about what a failed political system would ultimately produce as winning candidates.
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“Which may be the great lesson of the tea party. The fact that these folks got off their áššëš, quit just complaining and ran! They were laughed at. Didn’t matter.”
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Yeah, but look at how and where they ran. Many of them ran to the hardest Right they could go. Not a great choice for moderates of any stripe to vote for.
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“(for that matter, why don’t the national parties pay people to do nothing but cruise the web and look for good ad ideas? I’ve seen stuff on blogs that are about 400 times more clever and effective than what the professionals come up with. But maybe that’s the problem–the pros probably have a lot of friends in the right places.)”
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They have done that. The Republicans just did that to get the basis for their new contract with America thing. How’d it turn out? They junked and chose not to use several things in their top ten things regular Americans told them they wanted on the website and wrote up the usual Republican playbook, bumper sticker sloganeering. It’s no use to have the idea or the mechanism in place to do that if the powers that be will ultimately just decide that the playbook they like is better than what the people say they want.
My point is that if moderates don’t like the positions of the tea party people, fine–but learn from what they managed to do! It’s easy to bìŧçh about politics but our system makes it surprisingly easy to actually have an effect on it. Takes dedication, takes work, takes organization…but it can be done.
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I mean, if the tea party people are as bone, stone, stick, stupid as their critics make them out to be it should be easy for others to do what they did. One wonders why the geniuses in, say, the anti-war movement did not try the same thing.
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“My point is that if moderates don’t like the positions of the tea party people, fine–but learn from what they managed to do! It’s easy to bìŧçh about politics but our system makes it surprisingly easy to actually have an effect on it. Takes dedication, takes work, takes organization…but it can be done.”
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Well, it takes another thing as well. It takes anger. A lot of the Tea Party people are angry at the republicans for working with Obama and/or for their fiscal irresponsibility when they were last the majority and they are extremely angry with Obama and the Democrats. A lot of the moderates and middle-ground folks are frustrated with some of what’s happened, but they’re not full on angry yet.
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It’s also easier to get people angry with the system to focus more on an extreme point of view than it is a moderate point of view. That’s a problem because once you get out of your little group you have nothing to appeal to the people that aren’t in love with the extreme.
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“I mean, if the tea party people are as bone, stone, stick, stupid as their critics make them out to be it should be easy for others to do what they did.”
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Not all of the Tea Party supporters are stupid. It just seems like most of the results and chosen figures of worship are. Not a phenomena unique to the Tea Party, but they certainly seem to be wanting to make up for lost time in that department by amping up the magnitude of the stupid.
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“One wonders why the geniuses in, say, the anti-war movement did not try the same thing.”
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They did. They even went the Tea Party route and picked the dumbest person possible to run for office. Or have you forgotten that they drafted Cindy Sheehan to run against Nancy Pelosi for Pelosi’s seat in Congress? The extreme left picked a fringe idiot to run for office and the results were that a lot of the left and moderates giggled their coffee out through their noses at the prospect of Sheehan in office and basically put the final nail in Cindy’s 15 minutes of fame.
“Piece of scum and an idiot” is blatantly unfair.
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I find it to be quite a generous description, actually.
“But the point still remains that PAD took it upon himself to call Beck a standard bearer for the Republican party
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That is a bald-faced lie. I said no such thing, and you KNOW I said no such thing because you quoted me in an earlier post.
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PAD
Okay, I’m a bit confused, PAD. I think the quote in question is this one.
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PAD: “Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.”
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I can see how someone could take that to mean that you think of Beck as a standard bearer for the Republican Party. Could you clarify who you think he’s a standard bearer for?
I agree with Jerry that it seems PAD was refereing to Liberals not the Republican Party.
PAD:
“Then again, liberals don’t have a standard bearer who thinks that slavery wasn’t a bad thing until government got involved, so…”
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“Palin wasn’t who I was referring to. The “standard bearer” I was talking about was Mr. Lincoln Memorial himself, Glenn Beck.”
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Jerry:
“He said liberals. The opposite of that would be conservatives. And it’s not even like it’s something that Peter or the more left leaning out there came up with all by themselves. Pundits, regular people and talking heads on the Right have referred to Beck as a new standard bearer of the conservative movement.”
I meant to say it seems PAD is refering to conservatives.
See what you did Jason? Now you have me confused. 🙂
I can see saying that. However, “conservative” and “republican” aren’t that different these days. They’re definitely different and I wouldn’t generally lump them together, but I also wouldn’t call someone a liar for saying one when we were talking about the other.
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“I can see saying that. However, “conservative” and “republican” aren’t that different these days.”
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I would disagree with that statement quite a bit. It’s one of the reasons we’re seeing the Tea Party grow like it is. The Republicans in office, well, many of them any way, are being painted as Republicans who are no longer conservative. They’ve “lost their way” and need to be replaced by Conservatives.
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I actually know a lot of conservatives who have been issue voters for years now and are not Republicans by any means.
Many of those republicans call themselves conservatives even though their values are different that what I would call conservative. I can totally understand saying that they’re not really conservatives.
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However, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about whether or not someone was telling a “bald-faced lie” by saying that PAD claimed Beck was a standard bearer for Republicans. If PAD was really talking about conservatives, then I wouldn’t think he was talking about Barry Goldwater, I would think he was talking about the people who won’t shut up about Real American Small Town Conservative Values ™. It doesn’t seem like a stretch for someone to think he was referring to the Republicans.
I can see how someone could take that to mean that you think of Beck as a standard bearer for the Republican Party.
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I don’t, unless you are contending that everyone in the GOP is an ultra-conservative Beck-worshipper who doesn’t know basic history and oozes ignorance from every pore. The fact is that there are plenty of Republicans who are as appalled by Beck as I am, to say nothing of the party heads of the GOP who are terrified by the Tea Party…as they well should be. For all the play that the extreme wings of both party receive in the media, this remains a moderate country at the polls. A party that allows itself to be dragged too far to the extreme is going to be pulled right off the road sooner or later.
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PAD
PAD: “I don’t, unless you are contending that everyone in the GOP is an ultra-conservative Beck-worshipper who doesn’t know basic history and oozes ignorance from every pore.”
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You didn’t define the people you were talking about that way. You were actually a bit vague about the people you were talking about, all you really said is “not liberals.” Since the percentage of Republicans who call themselves liberal is much smaller than the percentage of Democrats who call themselves conservatives, and many Republicans have made a habit of painting liberals as the enemy I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to think you were talking about Republicans as much as conservatives.
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I don’t think we’re dealing with a “bald faced lie” here. Just a misunderstanding.
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Keep in mind, I think Jerome Media is a piece of scum and an idiot. I’m not saying he’s right on any greater point, I’m just trying to be fair. Personally, I’m not sure why you bother responding to the guy in the first place.
“Piece of scum and an idiot” is blatantly unfair. I can safely say he is neither.
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Beck is not a standard bearer fro republicans. He is not a standard bearer for conservatives either. As PAD says I don’t, unless you are contending that everyone in the GOP is an ultra-conservative Beck-worshipper who doesn’t know basic history and oozes ignorance from every pore. Well, that only doesn’t describe the GOP it doesn’t describe conservatives either. In fact, there is more diversity among conservatives than among the GOP, I suspect. Derbyshire, Frum, Parker, Palin, hëll, I don’t know if any of the aforementioned even like each other, and only Palin seems to be much of a Beck fan.
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If Beck is a standard bearer for anyone I would guess it is for fans of Glen beck. 40% of Americans describe themselves as conservative, according to Gallup (twice the number who admit to being liberals, he added unnecessarily) which translates to a much bigger number than have bought his books or watch his dopey show. I would no more describe him as a standard bearer for such a large group than I would have described Louis farrakan as a standard bearer for black people just because he got a lot of folks to show up for a march.
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““Piece of scum and an idiot” is blatantly unfair. I can safely say he is neither.”
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Yeah, I would have to second that. He’s hardcore for his political beliefs and I sometimes question the source for some of his information (and I’m sure he can say the same about me) but the fact is that neither he nor anyone else is their political POV all the time. I’ve had a few other interactions with him that are not related to politics and he’s actually a pretty good guy.
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It’s way to easy to judge people on just the print we see here, but the old saying about the best way to make someone not be an enemy (or scum and an idiot) anymore is sometimes to get to know them. It’s really too bad that the lot of us, geeks all, really can’t all show up at the same convention one year. I think a lot of people might be surprised by who they walk away liking and/or disliking based on current expectations.
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Con Nooga 2011 might be good. I understand there might even be a film or two to discuss afterward and buy related merchandise for.
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“Beck is not a standard bearer fro republicans. He is not a standard bearer for conservatives either.”
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I would agree and disagree here. He cannot be truly called a standard bearer for the entire party. However he has become a major figure in/face for the Tea Party movement. He can legitimately seen as and argued to be a standard bearer the tea Party and some of the success they have.
Con Nooga 2011 might be good. I understand there might even be a film or two to discuss afterward and buy related merchandise for.
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You can also mercilessly mock the dialog and special effects until the creators run from the venue in tears.
“The fact remains there is NO ONE in office to serve as a true political foil for Obama the way Gingrich was to Clinton. “
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This is only partially true. Many Senators and Representatives have led the charge against whatever policy Obama supports, even when it comes from Republicans.
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The difference is that it is often a different Senator or Representative each time. And, that none of them get the press that non-congressmen like Beck and Palin receive.
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So, while we can’t point to a single person who is Obama’s political foil, we can point to a group of people who are willing to 180 on their own proposals if it meets with his approval.
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“Pretty rich from a guy who said he was going to reach across the aisle and in his “I won” arrogance decided to do whatever he dámņ well pleased.”
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Now, that just isn’t true at all. Have you ever looked at the Health Care Bill? So many things were put in there to appease Republicans, who still voted against it, that it went from a bill that wasn’t great to one that was pretty bad. And, of course, Republicans just can’t get enough of complaining about the “pork” that they, themselves, insisted be put in so that they wouldn’t vote on it when the time came.
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I wish Obama had pushed through things the way people claim he did. I mean, seriously, am I the only one who remembers that it was Republican Henry Paulson who called for the automotive bail out? The one that everyone blames Obama for? (Sure, he shares blame because he agreed to it, but the press and public today act like it was all his idea and no one other than he was for it.) Or that the Housing and Economic Recovery Act was signed by GW Bush in July of 2008? The Bank Bailout that Obama supposedly rammed down the country’s throat?
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Theno
Pundits, regular people and talking heads on the Right have referred to Beck as a new standard bearer of the conservative movement.
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I’d appreciate the names of any pundits and talking heads on the right who refereed to him as a new standard bearer, so I can ratchet down my respect for them. Regular folks, I’m sure, but I can find regular folks who think all manner of foolishness.
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Well, it takes another thing as well. It takes anger.
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I think the left has had enough anger out the whazoo in the last 10 years that they could have worked with. Nothing. All we hear is how bad the republicans are and how spineless the Democrats are and whaa whaa whaa. I can at least respect the tea party people for trying to change the game, in the face of all those telling them they were wasting their time.
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“One wonders why the geniuses in, say, the anti-war movement did not try the same thing.”
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They did. They even went the Tea Party route and picked the dumbest person possible to run for office. Or have you forgotten that they drafted Cindy Sheehan to run against Nancy Pelosi for Pelosi’s seat in Congress?
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I would not consider Sheehan’s run much more than a vanity performance. What I am asking is why the anti-war people did not do what the TP folks did–actually run sympathetic people in primaries, demand more than lip service from the people now in office, scare them onto the straight and narrow. It may be that they did not have enough numbers or influence or maybe the Democrats don’t believe them when they threaten to withhold their support.
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Someone once speculated that the Republicans fear their base and the Democrats hate theirs. It’s an idea worth mulling. certainly the last year has seen republicans fearfully moving toward the positions of their base while many democrats have reacted with fury at the audacity of the left wing blogs to dare criticize them.
I’m one of the anti-war people you are talking about and did (and am doing) just the things you mention: I supported all of the Anti-War candidates I could (supported Kucinich untill he dropped out, then vacillated between John Edwards and Obama because I liked Obama for being against the Iraq war from day one, and I respected Edwards’ work on health care and his willingness to say, “I was wrong” about Iraq. Almost no politician ever says that.) I worked on Obama’s campaign in California when Edwards dropped out, and then stopped supporting him when he voted for Bush’s “wiretapping plus immunity” bill. I voted for the Green candidate after that because Obama didn’t represent me, I wanted to help 3rd party candidates grow, and voting Green wasn’t about to shift California over to the Republicans. Voting Nader in 2000 (and other times) was my (and others) way of saying that we weren’t going to support a Democratic party that didn’t represent us (and we all know how well *that* worked out, even those of us in Calif.) and, for a while, with Obama’s campaign and Al Gore’s “reinvention” it seemed as though the Democrats had gotten the message, “Abandon us, and we’ll abandon you.” And then Obama started once again down the Clinton path of assuming we were in his back pocket and “reaching out to”-i.e. practically surrendering to-the Republican party. So now we’re left in a quandary for this election. Do we:
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A. Vote for the Democrats to keep things from getting worse under the Tea party’s favored? Would this tell Obama and the Dems. that they can do whatever they like and we have no choice but to vote for them? (i.e. the Clinton years)
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or
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B) Sit out this election (or vote third party.) If that leads to a Tea party/Republican victory, will that cause them Dems to surrender to them even more, or realize that abandoning their “base”/”the left wing”/whatever we’re called this week will never work as a strategy. It sometimes seems as though they are incapable of learning this, which is why I wish that more people on all sides would take more looks at third parties.
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Basically, we have few, if any good choices, and think the reason why, “If the Tea party is so stupid, why can’t more people do what they are doing” argument doesn’t work is that I see the modern day Fox demogogues as the equivalent of Father Coughlin. It’s comparatively easy to run on sheer bigotry and hatred. Eloquently providing an alternative is much harder. (and I don’t buy any of that, “I’m not racist, I just want a smaller government/my country back” bûllšhìŧ. If you want smaller government, the party of the Patriot Act, torture, wars built on lies, occupations, wiretapping, and bigger deficits under every Republican president isn’t the way to go.)
I’m saying it isn’t enough to work at the top. Work at the bottom.
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Frankly, presidents get tens of millions of votes and your one vote isn’t much of a factor. Even pooling resources with like minded people isn’t enough, except in a once in a lifetime situation like Bush/Gore/Florida.
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But at the primary level you can do a lot. Your influence is far greater than it is at the top.
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The problem is that the far left has only one goal–beat the republicans–and doesn’t have the stomach to demand any more from democrats than that. Democratic candidates have to worry about being beaten by republicans. republican candidates have to worry about their opponents…AND their base. Guess which party is more likely to listen to its base?
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But at this point I would not recommend leftists sit out the election because the conventional wisdom is that this is a bad year for Democrats so if they are defeated there will not be any real opportunity for progressives to say “See, that’s what happens when you blow us off.” That kind of thing has to be made clear early on. And if the Democrats do well it won’t be seen as thanks to progressives, it will be seen as the Tea party going too far.
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There’s always 2012. But trust me, a vote for Dennis Kucinich won’t change a thing. And it’s a whole lot easier and more likely to see success if you try to change one of the existing parties than to make a new one. The two parties have stacked the deck pretty well against that threat.
Bill, I consider myself very far left, and I have several goals beyond, “Beat the Republicans” and demand a hëll of a lot more from the deomcrats, (which is why they almost never get my vote.) Most of the leftists I know personally (and the organizations I see in action) have several more goals. I agree with Andrew Vachss (he doesn’t toe a party line, he’s solely a child protector) that the left wants to do to many things to be focused: save the whales, save the libraries, save the schools, save the museums, save the parks, save the bay, etc. etc. We’re the ones pounding the pavement over medical marijuana and ending drug prohibition, legalizing gay marraige (I don’t mean to discount the libertarians on those three) protesting the dealth penalty and trying to get innocent prisoners released. We’re the ones protesting against torture and wiretapping committed and covered up by both parties. I find your definition of the far left wholly inaccurrate.
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I don’t think sitting out an election year is ever a good idea. Vote for *something* to make your voice heard. otherwise your lack of a vote could represent apathy or laziness to those in charge instead of disagreement and opposition. I still think it would provide an attempt to teach the the Dems, I just think that voting for others is better.
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At the promary level, i worked for Obama. i got burned. I’m not discounting it, but I’m also not relying on it. Personally, I disagree that a vote for someone like Kucinich or third parites won’t change a thing. Even if that candidate loses, it teaches the one who wins (and I think *somewhat* taught the dems for a short term) that a votes supported a specific platform, e.g. peace over continued war. And I think that third parties are growing in power and numbers and that it’s a worthwhile long-term goal, while having the short term goal of affecting the two larger ones. I don’t think that they can stack the deck forever; I’m looking for a Lincoln.
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(I also disagree with Rene that people don’t take left-wing protesters seriously. It’s difficult to prove cause and effect, but I think the Anti-War protests grew in power over time, along with W’s excuses looking weaker everday.)
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Laslty, the biggest successes I’ve seen (and been involved in so far) have had to do with protect.org’s goals and campaigns. I hate to type it, but it looks like lobbying mostly works.
Obviously, Jonathon, I’m making a pretty broad generalization of what the “far left” is. But you have to admit it’s a far kinder generalization than saying, as you did, that the Tea Party people are racist.
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I think one reason the anti-war protests did not gain much traction is that they were seen not as true anti-war protests but just as anti-Bush protests. The fact that the wars are still going on but the protests have dwindled since a Democrat has become the one calling the shots seems to bear this out.
“But you have to admit it’s a far kinder generalization than saying, as you did, that the Tea Party people are racist.”
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Hey, be fair, I said bigotry *and* hatred. I’m willing to admit that stupidly letting the Koch brothers run the show to show how “independent” one is of the big two can be caused by sheer,unreasoning, “Government BAD!” feelings (while ignoring the Republican’s role in all of that.)
I thought that saying that “I don’t buy any of that, “I’m not racist, I just want a smaller government/my country back” bûllšhìŧ.” pretty straightforwardly implied that you did, in fact, think they were racists. If I say to someone that I don’t think they are not a racist am I not saying I think they are one???
People just don’t take left-wing protesters that seriously anymore. They’re just part of the scenery. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s become chic to see the 1960s and 1970s agitations as a failure, because the promised Utopia never came? (Though I’d not say it was a failure, as a whole lot of things and changing social mores came from 60s-70s unrest).
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In any case, there is an in-built cynicism, even from people from the Left. PAD himself is fond of mocking and attacking political correctness, right? So, except if we get some trully massive left-wing protests, people will just shrug them off as a bunch of arrested teenagers, aging hippies, and annoying PC weirdos.
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Right-wing protestors, conversely, seem to be noticed, at least.
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Think you can get some activism going in your sister state to do something about this guy?
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/06/demint-defends-statements-single-women-gays-public-school-teachers/
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Nice. A Republican openly running on a pro-discrimination platform. Of course, he’s running against Alvin Greene so I guess he feels he can say stuff this stupid and still get elected.
Looks like a jáçkášš. But yeah, against Alvin Greene it’s pretty hard hope he loses.
It’s not that the guy is a bigot that disturbs me. It’s that he is either crazy or a expert at Orwellian double-think, able to hold two mutually exclusive worldviews simultaneously.
I still don’t understand how any Republican can get away with saying they’re against government interference and then advocating forbidding people from teaching on public school on account of their private lives. WTF?
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The dude says that government should not endorse particular behaviors. And then he says: “We need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our values.”
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WTF?WTF?WTF? And WTF again for good measure.
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Saying you’ll not hire a pregnant single woman isn’t endorsing a particular behaviour?
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I wish to hëll that Conservatives would just decide if they’re hardened individualistic libertarians or stalwart defenders of christian values. You can’t be both, people! If you believe government has not the right to interfere with people’s lives, then you can’t try to pass laws to interfere with people’s lives. Duh!
So how did it happen?
How did we come to the point where we are so vehemently opposed to one another?
I’m a conservative. I am against what Obama has been doing. I am against much of what the Democrats keep trying to do as a party. I am against how poorly the Republicans have been representing us.
I know most of you on the left say I’m racist, but I’m not racist by any reasonable meaning of the term that I know. I don’t dislike people because they are Black or Jewish or Hispanic. Because I don’t want to have a double standard does not, to me, mean I am racist. But that’s what the Democrats seem to say.
I know they try to say that the Republicans are so hateful, so cruel, so spiteful … but I see the same thing, only 10 times as strong, from the Democrats toward the Republicans.
People talk about how hateful Rush is, or Beck is, or Hannity is … and there are things I hear them say that I feel they go too far, and end up pushing things too much — but it is still less than what I see from the left.
And yet … from Rush and Beck (not as much from Hannity, it seems), it seems like I see more light-heartedness, more of a sense of humor, and yes, more compassion, then I ever see from higher up on the left.
Just in the responses to this blog post, it seems like what I see is almost entirely rabid unwillingness to deal with the other side from EITHER side.
We conservatives think that, when it really comes down to it, a majority of the country is with us. You liberals think the same thing. The elections don’t necessarily prove anything in the short term. You killed us in 2006 and 2008. I suspect we’ll kill you in 2010 and 2012. Really, it isn’t that surprising. Seems to me that the trend of flopping back and forth between the two extremes has been going on for quite a while.
But is it my imagination, or has it been becoming more and more angry over the years? More and more hate-filled? I find myself wondering, is there any way for us to become a united country again? Or has it gotten so bad that there is no longer any solution except self destruction?
I’m worried because I can’t seem to see any way back together. Ignoring the details of the silly jokes that have been going around, sometimes I do wonder if this country needs a divorce along political lines.
I don’t know … it really no longer seems possible to have any sort of good solution to this mess. But I have to admit it saddens me.
I think it just seems that way. Go back and look at other elections in times gone by and you’ll see plenty of bile, mendacity, invective, etc. What’s changed is that the culture is now far more tolerant of crude talk so it seems like it’s gotten worse, in my opinion.
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Yeah, if the GOP does well this cycle you’ll hear some liberals talk about succession and/or moving to a country without a history of bad electoral decisions, like Germany, but it’s all just talk. They ain’t going anywhere and the big blue states are going to be too busy going bankrupt to fund a serious succession move. Plus, they’d all kill each other arguing over the name, flag, and national anthem.
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I do know people who refuse to have friends of different political persuasions (or limit said friends to me because they think I’m doing some kind of performance art or something). Dumb move, some of my dearest friends are political opposites. Losing those people would hurt nobody but myself.
I don’t think that the attacks have gotten worse, but that the hyperbole has gotten greater.
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One side says that the other candidate is a person who avoided military service by leaving the country. Then, that side accuses the other of election tampering. Then, the first side fires back that the other lied about his actions in Vietnam. So, the other side says that their opponent allowed terrorist acts to happen. Which escalates to the first claiming that the other is an anti-American terrorist.
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It is the same thing, just with stronger verbage. With more emotionally charged language. Honestly, you can take the last 20 years of presidential politics and distil it down to a half-hour schoolyard insult session.
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What I think is sad is that these tactics worked for so long that they have taken over the discourse. As I recall, and I’m willing to admit that I may be looking at it through the rose-coloured glasses of time, but I seem to remember that the mud slinging was second to the discussion of policy and promises when Clinton challenged Bush in 92.
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But, when McCain and Obama tried desperately to discuss policy and to make promises, the media kept coming back to “too old and sick to be expected to survive the term with a crazy VP pick,” versus “Muslim terrorist with no birth certificate who has a crazy Christian minister.”
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I worry that if we were to ever have a candidate to solely run on issues, without trying to demonize the opponent, that person would never get air time and would have no public recognition when it came time to vote. Thus proving that Americans don’t care about issues, we only care about drama and name-calling.
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Theno
Well, Sharron Angle seems to know who we need to take our country back from, although somebody might want to check to see if she’s been sniffing glue:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101007/ap_on_el_se/us_nevada_senate_angle
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Do tea party members really believe and support BS like this? Or was that just a waste of keystrokes to ask that question?
Democrats planted a “tea party” candidate in NJ.
[i]…he will appear on the “NJ Tea Party” line on the ballot.[/i]
http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20101008/NEWS01/10080330/Dems-picked-spoiler-candidate
Dirty tricks.
this is exactly what i’e been trying to get across to people for a year or so. it’s total crap. like he said, their merely pissy they lost an election
Perhaps if things go badly for the Democrats they will have the opportunity soon to demonstrate how to lose an election with dignity and grace.
If they lose, there will be political backbiting, I’m sure. That’s business as usual. I doubt there will be the race baiting we’ve seen ever since Obama was elected, however.
Well, race baiting can be in the ye of the beholder. Would you consider what Loretta Sanchez pulled on her Vietnamese opponent racist? If a white politician made as naked a plea to whites as Obama is making toward his minority base they would (quite possibly fairly) get holy hëll for it (and to be clear, I don’t find Obama’s pleas to be de factor racism–he is appealing to the one group who still holds him in overwhelmingly high esteem.).
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Lawrence O’Donnell’s racial insult to Michael Steel nothing unusual, black conservastives get called Uncle Tom or worse all the time. What was unusual was that O’Donnel had the stones to admit it and apologize.
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Of course, most minority politicians are Democrats so you are probably correct that there will be less race baiting if the (mostly) white republicans get elected. Unless you consider articles about “how white America lost its mind” to be racist in which case it has already begun.
conversely, if some conservatives were to attack Obama in exactly the same manner, tone and degree of invective that some on the left attacked Bush, it would probably come off as racist, even if their intent was merely to be hateful.
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Nice…
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So a black writer writes a piece about how “white people” have lost their minds and he’s “courageous” and the people who praise his article “get it” rather than him being an idiot and them being his fellow idiots. Beyond the fact the the things he points to about whites and their views on Obama also apply to blacks, Hispanics and Asians in this country is the simple fact that, using his Obama-is-a-Muslim example, the vast majority of whites in America don’t believe that he’s a Muslim or of foreign birth. Yet somehow his writing this stuff in the framework of whites being crazy and whites being against Obama is “relevant” and “courageous” according to his readers and some media critics.
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Of course, had he been a white writer who wrote about the words and actions of Sharpton, Jesse Jackson JR, Malik Zulu Shabazz, and other black “leaders” while writing it in the borderline them VS us style he used and naming the piece “How Black People Lost Their Minds” we would see him crucified in the court of public opinion, fired and labeled a racist.
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Gotta love the “progress” we’ve seen in this country sometimes.
Oh, there are idiots who say stupid, racially-charged things on the Democratic side, no doubt, and I’m sure more examples will pop up. Will we see the equivalent of the semi-organized birther movement, or laws enacted like the Arizona stop-them-if-they-look-too-Mexican fiasco?
Well, we already have the “truther” movement which merely claioms that George Bush is the one who actually brought down the twin towers. Which is just a but worse than claiming a guy is hiding the place of his birth, if you ask me (just in case there is any doubt, I think both positions are nuts. One is a bit nuttier, though really, once you are insane it really doesn’t matter if you are a little less insane than the other guy.)
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The Arizona law is actually favored by more than just some conservatives, as witnessed by the fact that it has single handedly made it likely that the unpopular governor of Arizona will probably ride it to an easy re-election. One NBC poll showed that Fifty percent of Democrats said they support the law provision allowing police to question anyone they think may be in the country illegally.
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/05/two-national-polls-show-arizona-immigration-law-very-popular.html
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Only 34% of all respondents said they were somewhat or strongly opposed to the law. It has actual bipartisan support. So I don’t know if that was a great example. (full disclosure–I’m not a huge fan of the law, though I think the opposition to it has been largely poorly argued.)
I won’t disagree that there is idiocy with the 9/11 truthers, but that’s not racially motivated, and that’s what the subject of discussion is.
As for Arizona, I’ll give you that it appears that the state as a whole is insane at this point.
Actually, that was a national poll so you would have to extend the “insane” diagnosis to the country as a whole. Which I’m sure many on the left will be happy to do. That’s why I am amused by any suggestion that liberals will handle defeat better than Republicans; experience shows they are just as likely to go through all the stages of grief:
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Denial: “We did not lose! they cheated!”
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Anger: “This country sucks! It’s going straight to hëll and I will laugh, laugh as it happens! I hope they’re happy when (insert some terrible fate), because I will be laughing”.
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Bargaining: “Ok, if we can get all of our remaining people to stick together and get a few of theirs to flip…”
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Depression: “How can so many people be so blind? How can they not see what is so obvious? The system is broken. Why bother?”
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Acceptance: “Oh well. There’s always 2012.”
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regrettably, some will never get out of stage 1 and many get trapped in a lifelong state of stage 2. But the smart ones will move on.
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It’s a measure of the times we live in and the influence of the web that some liberals are already going through the stages and the dámņ votes have yet to be counted! Hëll, most have yet to be cast! A lot can happen in a month.
But I have no doubt there will be lots of stories about racist actions, even if they have to be made up from whole cloth. have you heard that Mark kirk is being accused of insensitivity for using the word “jigger”?
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I saw that one. I thought that the Kirk people were overreacting at first because I saw the somewhat more reasonable Democrats speaking in the first few articles I read and on the one thing I heard about it. The objection, stretched as it was, was that he was insinuating that minority districts were going to be ripe for shenanigans just because they were minority districts.
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Take this quote from Freddrenna Lyle: “For him to insinuate that there is some vote fraud going on in these communities is just an insult to the hundreds and hundreds of people who serve as election judges on elections. I find it disgraceful and insulting”
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Seems reasonable. Then I saw this one later from the same @$$hat.
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“He said what he meant. He may not have meant to say it in that manner, but he said it, and it’s offensive”
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Didn’t make since.
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But along came Rev. Albert Tyson!
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“The problem I had is that it sounds so much like another word.”
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Followed by a report that many Democratic activists are complaining that Lyle and others were offended by Kirk’s use of the verb “jigger” when talking about regions heavily populated by black voters.
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Oooookay…
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Race Baiting 101 and getting really old. I hope they lose that election and lose it hard because of this crap.
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Uhm… Didn’t make sense.
Let’s see, how Democrats have “lost” an election:
Al Gore concedeing, Singing “God Bless America” with the Republicans after 9/11, saying, “I didn’t vote for Bush but I stand with him after this attack on our country.” Peter David supporting Bush in attacking Afghanistan.
How Republican lose an election: Criticizing the President after claiming that anyone who criticizes the President is endangering the country, calling Obama the biggest threat to this country after Nazi Germany, Claiming that Obama’s health care plan (the one Republicans proposed) makes him Hitler, Stalin, and is full of “death panels.”
Yeah, that’s *exactly* the same as calling Bush a Nazi after he trashed the constitution, implememted torutre, and attacked other countries on false pretenses. Way to go with the false equivalencies people.
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Nice Jonathan…
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To show how the Democrats lose an election you cite two specific people as examples, but to show how the Republicans lose an election you simply say “the Republicans” and talk in generalities. Hëll, I can understand why you would do it. It’s much easier to pretend you’re right when you can cherry pick examples for your argument and broad brush the other side.
Pardon me Jerry:
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Singing “God Bless America” with the Republicans after 9/11, saying, “I didn’t vote for Bush but I stand with him after this attack on our country.”
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You’re absolutely right, I only pointed to two specific people who Sang “God Bless America” with the Republicans. Of course I was deliberately leaving out everyone who did that and said, “I didn’t vote for Bush, but I support him” instead of tracking down and listing everyone who said it. How can you ever forgive me?
Not to mention:
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“Yeah, that’s *exactly* the same as calling Bush a Nazi after he trashed the constitution, implememted torutre, and attacked other countries on false pretenses.”
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Again, that must have been one of those “specific examples” I “cherry-picked” instead of painting only one side in a broad brush. Nice to see you comment on y comments without reading them clearly. Hëll, I can understand why you would do it. It’s much easier to pretend you’re right when you can rewrite what I typed rather than address it.
Jonathon, he isn’t asking you to name all the people who sang God bless america…which had nothing to do with the election anyway. he is saying it is a poor comparison to name two people who supported Bush on one thing, and not even the same thing, and then just throw out unspecific charges against all republicans in some kind of comparison.
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There’s so much wrong with your post you should thank jerry for being kind. You start out strong–Gore was indeed gracious in defeat. As was McCain, as I recall. So we have a wash there. Certainly there were some Republicans who wer less gracious than McCain in 2008 but I’m sure I don’t need to point out that there were some Democrats who acted likewise in 2000 and 2004. So again, a wash.
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It is also true that democrats sang God Bless America and PAD supported the war in Afghanistan after 9/11. To make any comparison with republicans we would have to see how they react should we be attacked during Obama’s presidency. I hope we will have to forgo ever fully knowing how that would turn out.
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Not all or even most republicans think that Obama is Hitler and Stalin all rolled up into one, so when you throw that out there without even attributing it to some specific person you have to expect it to fall flat (especially after mentioning 2 Democrats by name). Then, when jerry points that out you think that he is asking you to list EVERYONE who sang God bless America…I think you’re letting your passions get ahead of you here.
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If you’re upset over the upcoming Democrat debacle there are a few things to keep in mind: A- it might not happen. B-if it does it isn’t the end of the world and C- these things go in cycles and only fools and pundits (but I repeat myself) talk about how any election is some kind of permanent development.
Bill, what gets to me is what I see as false equivalencies. I hate to say it, but I’ve seen a lot of that in your posts about how Democrats/liberals deal with losing elections the same as conservatives/Republicans.
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Why I disagree, (and I’m just listing those I remember in my lifetime.)How did Democrats deal with losing to Reagan (twice?) Was there any attempt to impeach him? Was there any Whitewater-style investigation that was going to show how corrupt his office was that didn’t result in a single resignation? Were there ongoing accusations that he murdered a staff member? Do you remember accusations over terroist attacks in Beirut (among other places) that this proved that Reagan wasn’t tough on security? Did George Bush Sr. or Jr. ever face a Whitewater-style investigation or threats of impeachment?
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After the Republicans retook Congress, New Gingrich told Clinton that they were going to run him out on a rail. After the Dems retook Congress, Pelosi and the Dems took impeachment “off the table.” When Obama became the front runner, how many conservaties chorused in that he wasn’t born born in America and wasn’t eligible? How many Liberals/Democrats claimed that McCain wasn’t eligible because he truly wasn’t born in America? How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously? When Bush was compared to Hitler, it was for invading Iraq on false pretenses, instituting torture, detention, kidnapping, and ignoring civil liberties en masse. When Obama is compared to Hitler and Stalin, it’s for health care. So of course I’m going to call bûllšhìŧ.
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That’s some of the stuff that gets me about the “liberals/Dems handle defeat the same way Republicans/conservatives do.
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On a related note, you asked me in the past how I thought things would turn out when and if the Democrats get thumped this November. At the time, I didn’t have an answer. After thinking about and reflecting on the past, I think that most likely answer is that Obama will take a page from Clinton after he lost congress: meet with the Republicans, try to throw them an olive branch or two, and steal their thunder/issues as Clinton did on China, Haiti, business over human rights, law and order etc. Basically what Obama has already been doing on health care and more. If history repeats itself (and I agree with the sentiment that history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes) this will be met by nothing but more rage and hatred from the Republicans, Obama will sqeak to vitory in 2012, lose even more progessives, and face various removal attempts, drummed up invetigations, and maybe even an impeachment attempt, will he wil weather at a cost, and in the Presidential election after that, the next Democrat will suffer a huge loss of support as Gore did for what the Democrats did during the Obama years. Will progressives be resigned to the Dems, figuring that another Bush is too much to risk? Give up on the Dems entirely for always selling out? (I have.)
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Of course, I don’t expect history to repeat exactly, and columnists I’ve checked have pointed out that most Presidents’ terms haven’t been defined this early. God knows what wil happen next. If I’m pìššëd øff about this election it’s because I think that progressives are going to be screwed by Obama/the Dems, either we’ll be taken for granted and ignored, or written off and ignored; either way Obama will keep “reaching across the isle” moving further to the right, just as Clinton did. This is one of the many reasons I vote third party (and deal with my other voting friends constant laughter over such.) I’m gonna go nurse a beer.
I also disagree that McCain was gracious in defeat. This article (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/11/mccain-201011) mentions a few examples, this is another one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGeUE1hQ_F0&feature=related
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and this is one of my personal favorites:
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_12_18.html#018213
I also disagree that McCain has been gracious in defeat; two articles that produce examples:
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http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_12_18.html#018213
and:
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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/11/mccain-201011
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Jonathon, again you’re mixing and matching things here. You’re also reaching pretty far back to make comparisons to today.
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“How did Democrats deal with losing to Reagan (twice?) Was there any attempt to impeach him? Was there any Whitewater-style investigation that was going to show how corrupt his office was that didn’t result in a single resignation? “
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I don’t know, how did Republicans deal with losing to Carter? Did they try to impeach him? Did they Whitewater him? Other than a few exceptions you don’t have a lot of the same power players in Congress in either party that you had when Carter and Reagan were in office. If you want to talk about what the people who are there now will do then talking about the people who were there 22 to 30 years ago isn’t really of great value outside of discussing how some of the dirtier players now were groomed and where they developed their ideas that the old ways weren’t dirty enough.
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Politics got a little more focused in the dirty pool department when Newt and crew came into power, but it was never that clean a sport.
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“Were there ongoing accusations that he murdered a staff member? Do you remember accusations over terroist attacks in Beirut (among other places) that this proved that Reagan wasn’t tough on security?”
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The accusations about murdering staffers was promoted largely by people who never held elected office. It certainly got a large amount of play in talk radio by talk show hosts i.e not elected officials. If that’s the standard then, yeah, we can talk all night about similar comments.
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There were talkers, bloggers and writers on the left who engage in all sorts of wonderful speculative fiction while W. was in office. They said that he was still drinking and doing drugs while in the White House. His political adversaries grabbed hold of a story about an accident Laura was involved in and some twisted the story as a young and reckless Laura basically murdering her friend all those years ago. And, of course, there were the ones who claimed that Bush was behind the murder of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 and essentially murdered every person who died in the wars started because of that.
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There was a New York Times non-fiction best selling novel written by Vincent Bugliosi titled The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder that lays out his case for prosecuting W, for the “murder” of 4000 soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis. Bush was described as so evil for his crimes we even got murder fantasies about him. We got a movie while he was in office that was about the murder of George W. Bush in office.
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Can you imagine how ballistic the same left that was mostly accepting of this film would go if someone did a film about killing Obama? Can you imagine the screams of racism?
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Oh yeah… Racism.
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Remember so many on the left blaming blaming Bush for Hurricane Katrina and then citing his poor performance on not caring about black people? West was the first person to really get the spotlight for saying it, but he had a nice little chorus spring up behind him saying that he was right. Bush didn’t react to Katrina because he didn’t care about the loss of life since it was pretty much just black people. You even had some on the left put forward the notion the Bush, Cheney and Rove liked what was happening because it was thinning out the Democrat’s voting block down there.
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See how much fun you can have pointing out the idiocy of the Left when you mix and match elected leaders with just any of the people who said something stupid in the same way you did when discussing the Right?
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“Did George Bush Sr. or Jr. ever face a Whitewater-style investigation or threats of impeachment?”
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Threats of impeachment, yes. W. was threatened with it several time, but the resolutions didn’t pass. The first ones because you had a Republican majority and the later ones because of a combo of smart Democrats and cowardly ones.
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“How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously?”
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Few claimed that specific examples of things like that made Bush weak on terrorism and security. However, many claimed that Bush made us less safe in general and a greater target of the terrorist. MSNBC brought their ratings out of the gutter by playing to the left audience with just such claims amongst other things.
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And let’s not forget the aftermath of the 2004 elections while we’re at it. The Democrats lost so gracefully that we got never ending stories about rigged voting machines. We were even told that there was proof that the machines were being rigged by the Bush administration in the run up to the 2006 elections just like the rigged them in 2004. Story kinda faded fast when the Democrats won that election though.
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I’m sorry, but the liberals and conservatives out there act pretty much exactly the same. The only thing that can be said about the Republicans is that they often show more discipline and unity when they go on the attack. They also have a stronger echo chamber since they have far more of the talk radio market. They’re better at getting the message and the smears out, but their messages and the smears aren’t much worse than the Republicans.
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Okay… This is interesting. My comments aren’t going through. I’ll try again with this one. Apologies if later on two of them pop up.
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Jonathon, again you’re mixing and matching things here. You’re also reaching pretty far back to make comparisons to today.
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“How did Democrats deal with losing to Reagan (twice?) Was there any attempt to impeach him? Was there any Whitewater-style investigation that was going to show how corrupt his office was that didn’t result in a single resignation? “
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I don’t know, how did Republicans deal with losing to Carter? Did they try to impeach him? Did they Whitewater him? Other than a few exceptions you don’t have a lot of the same power players in Congress in either party that you had when Carter and Reagan were in office. If you want to talk about what the people who are there now will do then talking about the people who were there 22 to 30 years ago isn’t really of great value outside of discussing how some of the dirtier players now were groomed and where they developed their ideas that the old ways weren’t dirty enough.
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Politics got a little more focused in the dirty pool department when Newt and crew came into power, but it was never that clean a sport.
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“Were there ongoing accusations that he murdered a staff member? Do you remember accusations over terroist attacks in Beirut (among other places) that this proved that Reagan wasn’t tough on security?”
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The accusations about murdering staffers was promoted largely by people who never held elected office. It certainly got a large amount of play in talk radio by talk show hosts i.e not elected officials. If that’s the standard then, yeah, we can talk all night about similar comments.
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There were talkers, bloggers and writers on the left who engage in all sorts of wonderful speculative fiction while W. was in office. They said that he was still drinking and doing drugs while in the White House. His political adversaries grabbed hold of a story about an accident Laura was involved in and some twisted the story as a young and reckless Laura basically murdering her friend all those years ago. And, of course, there were the ones who claimed that Bush was behind the murder of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 and essentially murdered every person who died in the wars started because of that.
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There was a New York Times non-fiction best selling novel written by Vincent Bugliosi titled The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder that lays out his case for prosecuting W, for the “murder” of 4000 soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis. Bush was described as so evil for his crimes we even got murder fantasies about him. We got a movie while he was in office that was about the murder of George W. Bush in office.
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Can you imagine how ballistic the same left that was mostly accepting of this film would go if someone did a film about killing Obama? Can you imagine the screams of racism?
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Oh yeah… Racism.
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Remember so many on the left blaming blaming Bush for Hurricane Katrina and then citing his poor performance on not caring about black people? West was the first person to really get the spotlight for saying it, but he had a nice little chorus spring up behind him saying that he was right. Bush didn’t react to Katrina because he didn’t care about the loss of life since it was pretty much just black people. You even had some on the left put forward the notion the Bush, Cheney and Rove liked what was happening because it was thinning out the Democrat’s voting block down there.
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See how much fun you can have pointing out the idiocy of the Left when you mix and match elected leaders with just any of the people who said something stupid in the same way you did when discussing the Right?
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“Did George Bush Sr. or Jr. ever face a Whitewater-style investigation or threats of impeachment?”
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Threats of impeachment, yes. W. was threatened with it several time, but the resolutions didn’t pass. The first ones because you had a Republican majority and the later ones because of a combo of smart Democrats and cowardly ones.
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“How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously?”
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Few claimed that specific examples of things like that made Bush weak on terrorism and security. However, many claimed that Bush made us less safe in general and a greater target of the terrorist. MSNBC brought their ratings out of the gutter by playing to the left audience with just such claims amongst other things.
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And let’s not forget the aftermath of the 2004 elections while we’re at it!
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The Democrats lost so gracefully that we got never ending stories about rigged voting machines. We were even told that there was proof that the machines were being rigged by the Bush administration in the run up to the 2006 elections just like the rigged them in 2004. Story kinda faded fast when the Democrats won that election though.
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I’m sorry, but the liberals and conservatives out there act pretty much exactly the same. The only thing that can be said about the Republicans is that they often show more discipline and unity when they go on the attack. They also have a stronger echo chamber since they have far more of the talk radio market. They’re better at getting the message and the smears out, but their messages and the smears aren’t much worse than the Republicans.
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Now if only this one goes through…
I also disagree that McCain has been gracious in defeat; two articles that produce examples:
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http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_12_18.html#018213
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That’s a story about McCain criticizing Al Frankin. It has absolutely nothing to do with how he handled defeat in his quest for the presidency.
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and:
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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/11/mccain-201011
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An article talking about how McCain does not like Obama and has changed his positions. Nothing about how he handled defeat in his quest for the presidency.
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You gave Al Gore conceding as an example of Democratic largess. McCain conceded. True, he has been quite critical of the president since then…are you of the opinion that Gore never had a harsh word for Bush after his concession? Because you would be most assuredly wrong.
You mean like…
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“Gore said media who challenge Bush and Cheney’s claims of a link are intimidated by the administration.
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“The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts (Emphasis mine) who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops,” Gore said. The term “Brown Shirts” refers to Nazi supporters in the 1930s and ’40s.”
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Al Gore, June 25, 2004
http://articles.cnn.com/2004-06-24/politics/gore.bush_1_al-gore-gore-rips-bush-bush-nor-cheney?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
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Couldn’t resist dropping the Nazi ref in there it seems.
I’ve has similar difficulty posting recently, so we’ll see if this one goes through. I think that some of this conversation is going round and round so this will probably be my last on the subject.
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“I don’t know, how did Republicans deal with losing to Carter? Did they try to impeach him? Did they Whitewater him? Other than a few exceptions you don’t have a lot of the same power players in Congress in either party that you had when Carter and Reagan were in office. ….”
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John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Ðìçk Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,The People behind the Project for a New American Century etc.. One doesn’t have to be in Congress to be a “power player” in the party. Especially when you’ve got Steele kowtowing to Limbaugh, The Koch brothers heading up the Tea Party, along with Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. How did the GOP deal with Carter? By claiming that the Iran hostages were proof that he was weak on terrorism, even when he launched a rescue operation. Did we see similar condemnation of Reagan by Democrats for pulling out of Beirut after a terrorist attack?
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“The accusations about murdering staffers was promoted largely by people who never held elected office. It certainly got a large amount of play in talk radio by talk show hosts i.e not elected officials. If that’s the standard then, yeah, we can talk all night about similar comments.
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There were talkers, bloggers and writers on the left …”
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On the right we had a hugely funded effort to prove that Clinton murdered Foster. (see, “The Hunting of the President.” We had Scaife and Falwell backing this, major power players in the movement. We had Dan Burton, an elected official, claiming this. (along with Christine O’Donnell, who now apparantly represents the majority of Republican primary voters in Delaware) We had Rupert Murdoch-funded talk show hosts with millions of viewers spewing this. On the left we have… talkers, bloggers, and writers. Not a comparable audience of viewers, funders, and sponsors. Show me George Soros funding a murder conspiracy movement. Another false equivalency.
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Why did so many people on the left (and not on the left) blame Bush for so much of the disaster for hurricane Kartrina? Maybe because he put an unqualified person in charge of FEMA which led to greater disater. I don’t see how justifed criticism belongs in the same paragraphs as claims of with-hunts. Same thing with Vince Buglisoi (and how exactly does one write a “non-fiction novel?”) he looked at the legality of proven evidence tampering that led to war (which, by the way was not authorized by Congress, despite Bush’s claims to the contrary. He claimed a specific bill gave him the power “to do whatever was necessary” but congress can’t rewrite the constitution without ameding it.) Another false equivalency.
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“Threats of impeachment, yes. W. was threatened with it several time,”
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He had one or two Congressionals make a motion that almost no one supported. He was never in danger of impeachment. The new Speaker of the House went out of her way to make it clear that there would be no impeachment. Clinton was impeached, which took a ton of votes. Again, the two were entirely different.
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“How many liberals/Dems claimed that trying the shoe bomber was proof that Bush wasn’t tough enough on terrorism, and how many Conservaties/Repubs claimed that trying the underwear bomber was proof as Obama of not taking security seriously?”
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“Few claimed that specific examples of things like that made Bush weak on terrorism and security. However, many claimed that Bush made us less safe in general and a greater target of the terrorist. MSNBC brought their ratings out of the gutter by playing to the left audience with just such claims amongst other things.”
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So in other words, lots of people (including military personel who are paid to know this stuff) made fact-based claims that Bush made things more dangerous (resurgence of Al Quaida, birth of Al Quaida movements in Iraq, creation of new terrorists worldwide because of the Bush Administration’s actions at Guantanemo, Bagram, Abu Gharib, and “black sites” worldwide) and this is somehow equivalent to hypocritcal claims that Obama’s allowing a trial was more dangerous than Bush allowing a trial? I’m getting worn out with all of the false equivalencies here.
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“I’m sorry, but the liberals and conservatives out there act pretty much exactly the same.”
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Bûll-fûçkìņg-šhìŧ.
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“The only thing that can be said about the Republicans is that they often show more discipline and unity when they go on the attack.”
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Which is a huge difference. One or two Democrats called for impeachment for W. A majority did for Clinton.
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“They also have a stronger echo chamber since they have far more of the talk radio market.”
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And who supports that? Who gives them the audience? On the right you have Limbaugh and others claiming that Clinton murdered Vince Foster (to huge ratings) and on the left, you have …what? Keith Olberman? A man who actually apologized when Jon Stewart called him on his rhetoric? When has anyone on the left who has the standing of someone like Limbaughon the right accused Bush of bumping off an underling. Calling Bush a murderer based on his bombing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t even come close. (and if you want to call Obama the same, for the same, I’ll completely agree.)
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“They’re better at getting the message and the smears out, but their messages and the smears aren’t much worse than the Republicans”
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I’ll assume that the final sentence was supposed to read Democrats, and as I’ve shown here and in other posts. This isn’t true. Bush faced attacks (and the dreaded N-word, Nazi) based on torture, the deaths of tons of civilians, ignoring the constitution, illegal wiretapping and kidnapping etc…in other words, criticm based on his *actions* If Republicans and conservatives were calling Obama Hitler/Stalin based on bombing civilians, continuing illegal detention and wiretapping etc..I’d agree with them 100 percent. Who is condemning Obama for this? Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, The Pink Ladies, The progressives I meet every week
at the San Jose Peace and Justice center who show documentaries on civilian casualties of Drone Aircraft under Bush and Obama. All fact-based. How many Republicans spread and believe the lie about Obama being secret Muslim/Atheist/Radical Christian/Socialist/Facist/Communist/etc. based on what? Health care? Newt and Beck’s claims.
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On the idea that Repub and Dems, Lib and Conservs. are the same because we can find a few crazies on either side, I’ve shown that these are part and parcel of the Repulican establishment. I rest my my case.
and Bill, my point about linking to the two John McCain articles is to show that:
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1. John McCain has responded to his defeat by becoming unhinged to the point that he makes attacks on Franklin for *folllowing proper procedure* and falsely claiming that this procedure had never been used before, when he himself has used it.
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2. It’s one thing to change your positions. It’s another to try to pretend you’ve never had the earlier ones (to the point of even trying to deny that he’d ever claimed he was a maverick, and ignoring his earlier position on the Arizona fence, among others.)
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3. As those and other articles showedm he has abandoned the “reach across the aisle and get things done, play peacemanker” role he once sought.
So if I’m understanding you correctly it is perfectly ok to call Obama a Nazi as long as it is because one thinks that he is continuing too many of the policies of Bush.
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I would find it hard to work up much outrage on that premise. “How DARE you have the AUDACITY to call President Obama a nazi over his health car policy! He is a nazi because of his use of drones over Pakistan, refusal to close down Guantanamo, issuing assassination orders against American citizens who have not been convicted of any capital crime, selling out the public option to corporate interests, strengthening the NSA wiretaps…AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!!!
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You know what? You’re blind in your Left eye.
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You see the bad stuff the right does and you bemoan the horrible nature of it, but you choose to not see the Left’s similar actions in the same light or simply not see them at all. And if presented with them in a discussion you simply sidestep the actions being discussed and insert your own version of the argument being made to discuss that.
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Case in point:
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“Why did so many people on the left (and not on the left) blame Bush for so much of the disaster for hurricane Kartrina? Maybe because he put an unqualified person in charge of FEMA which led to greater disater. I don’t see how justifed criticism belongs in the same paragraphs as claims of with-hunts.”
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Your comments here might have been relevant if I had been defending Bush from charges of incompetence during Katrina, but that’s not what I brought up. I brought up the various voices on the Left, from West on a fundraiser for the victims right on up to MSNBC hosts and their guests and a whole slew of people in between, who said that Bush’s poor response was based in large part because he didn’t care about the deaths because the were black. I brought up the people who went even further and claimed that Bush and crew were actually happy with these deaths because it reduced the area’s Democratic voters.
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Your response is to say that the criticisms were fair and just because Bush did bungle things from before day one. Oh, okay. So in your world it’s okay to peddle the idea that he hated blacks so much he was more than fine with their deaths in emergencies like Katrina or even maybe happy about it because it thinned the Democrat herd so long as you point out that he did some other stupid stuff too.
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Like I said; you’re blind in your left eye. You’re like many of those who protested Bush and demanded that Bush and Cheney be tried as war criminals for their actions in the war. You’re like many of the people who demanded that Bush and Cheney be arrested for violating the Constitution with their heinous crimes against America.
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These people claimed that they were demanding this and protesting because of what was right and moral. And then Bush went away and Obama came in and Obama actually chose to continue many of the things Bush started. So of course these people kept protesting, right? No. They mostly went *POOF* and went away. A few people stuck to there morals, but most seemed to have forgotten their cause when the partisan component went away. It went from the greatest evil of our time under Bush to being kinda bad but something they could live with under Obama.
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You kinda remind me of people like that.
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Your reply to Bill just shows this even more. You pointed out that Gore was gracious in defeat. Bill points out that McCain was gracious in defeat as well. You point out (with fairly weak examples) that McCain has changed his tune. It’s pointed out that Gore did the same.
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But it’s not the same in your world. You’re the equal-but-opposite number to the average Rush callers and commenters on Conservative blogs. They cry and moan that the evil, dirty, cheating Left and there lies are so horrible and question the heavens as to how anyone can get away with things like this. But point out the things the Right does that’s just as bad and they claim it’s not the same, they say it’s actually justified or they dodge the point and substitute their own before going back to bemoaning how anyone can be as bad as those evil Lefties out there.
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You are a Dittohead for the left. Their Side is always more evil and worse than Your Side ever was and ever could be; even when both sides are often equally crappy in their own special ways.
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Your world and you’re welcome to live in it for as long as you want. I’ll stick to the real world where I can see out of both eyes just fine.
Well I had hopes.
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Bill, my point was that if one is going to call Obama (or Bush) a Nazi, or evil, it makes sense that one would point to examples of them doing similar things, e.g. the slaughter of civilians. If someone says that a person is Hitler and Stalin because of…ummmm national health care, that person is báŧ-fûçkìņg insane and impossible to take their view seriously. If this become the rallying cry for a significant segment of the anti-Obama crowd, it is hard to take the “merits” for the case seriously, and what one should take seriously is that such disturbed people are a significant part of what passes for Tea Party/GOP philosophy. I mean aren’t *you* a little disturbed to think that such people are setting the agenda for one of the main parties. I know that I am.
As for you Jerry, enjoy your ad hominems, regardless of whether they match with reality. I’m blind in my left eye, I’m a dittohead for the left….because I agree that Obama is a war criminal along with Bush…because I think that Clinton and Albright should face a war crimes tribunal for starving 100,000 Iraqi kids…because I don’t see Kayne as having the same influence as Limbaugh or Glenn Beck…and speak up when I see Clinton and Obama continue trade with China when it ignores human rights…all that makes me a dittohead of the left who can’t see what my suppposed side is doing, even when I protest it. Right. Logic.
It seems to me that if you think that Barak Obama, the President of the United States, is a war criminal, then the fact that the Tea Party people are unfairly maligning him on some other issue ought to be mighty small potatoes. You seem far more worked up by John McCain acting like just another phony politician then by the War Criminal in Chief.
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I think that if I actually thought that badly of the guy I would welcome even unfair attacks…what, I want to make sure a war criminal is treated fairly?
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Well, if it’ll make you feel batter I could just say that you either have some reading comprehension issues and that you seem to be unable to actually discuss what someone actually says to you rather than what you would rather insert into what they said. That list, lovely as it is, has nothing to do with why I said you were basically blind in your Left eye. You inserted your list of reasons in place of what I actually said much as you ducked the race issue (twice now since you only reference West and not the chorus of voices, amongst others some on the largest websites that the Left was popularizing at the time and some that hosted MSNBC’s highest rated shows, who supported his assertion) and argued something I didn’t say.
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But like I said; it’s your world and you have fun in it.
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Er… Feel better…
Browser ate my posts twice now. Once More:
“It seems to me that if you think that Barak Obama, the President of the United States, is a war criminal, then the fact that the Tea Party people are unfairly maligning him on some other issue ought to be mighty small potatoes.”
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If people are ignoring the real issues, it means we’re not going to have real solutions. Throwing Nixon out because we didn’t like his haircut wouldn’t have led to any reforms. Calling Obama Hitler/Stalin over health care isn’t going to lead to any restoration of civil liberties, especially from people who didn’t even bring them up under Bush.
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“You seem far more worked up by John McCain acting like just another phony politician then by the War Criminal in Chief.”
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Yeah right, I just pointed out that claims that he’s handled his defeat with grace don’t hold water.
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“I think that if I actually thought that badly of the guy I would welcome even unfair attacks…what, I want to make sure a war criminal is treated fairly?”
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I want the voters to pay attention to the constituion and the reasons that candidates come and go, and how these “strategies” work. Jerry can live in a world where a few months of claims from MSNBC that W was a racist are equal to the billion dollar huntings of the Democratic presidents. The rest of us have to deal with real world problems and solutions, and correctly identifying the problems are vital.
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“Yeah right, I just pointed out that claims that he’s handled his defeat with grace don’t hold water.”
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But you insist that Gore, who acted much as McCain did with the passage of time, handled his defeat with grace and dignity and acted, in your words, “gracious in defeat.” Both men lost to their opponent, both men conceded defeat in a civil manner and then both men went back to partisan politicking for their side at a later date. So the only standards by which you stated that Gore handled defeat gracefully also apply to McCain. Yet, somehow, when both go on the attack at a later date it’s only the side you dislike most that is the bad one who is not acting “gracious in defeat.”
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See the ever so slight disconnect there? But, of course, it’s someone else’s comments on the matter that don’t hold water.
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“I think that if I actually thought that badly of the guy I would welcome even unfair attacks…what, I want to make sure a war criminal is treated fairly?””
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“I want the voters to pay attention to the constituion and the reasons that candidates come and go, and how these “strategies” work.”
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Uhm… You may need to have your sarcasm detector sent in for its scheduled 10,000 mile maintenance. It’s not working properly.
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“Jerry can live in a world where a few months of claims from MSNBC that W was a racist are equal to the billion dollar huntings of the Democratic presidents. The rest of us have to deal with real world problems and solutions, and correctly identifying the problems are vital.”
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yawn
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Yeah, done with you now. When the weapons in your arsenal are replying to things not actually said to you because doing that is easier for you, equating apples (McCain criticizing Franken) to watermelons (the claim you tried to back with that link) and constantly cherry picking stuff to contrast and compare issues with then you’re entertainment value drops rapidly.
Aw, Jerry, you never needed the magic feather to be entertained; all you needed was confidence in your ability to deny reality. Now fly, little elephant, fly!
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To be fair to the Truthers (and oh how I hate you right now for making me type those words) they don’t all claim that Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened. I’ve seen and met far more of them that believe in the shadow government concept and believe that little groups in our government did this without everyone else’s knowledge. Still, you do have a good chunk who do.
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Still bat$&!^ crazy though.
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Likewise, not all of the Tea Party are racists or act in a racist manner. Many of the regular people on the ground are certainly are not. However I am starting to see a game being played more openly by some conservatives bigwigs in the Tea Party, The Republican Party and the punditry to appeal to the racists and the ignorant out there. For example- I would not have labeled Newt a racist and a bigot before and would still be hesitant to do so now; however, his recent actions have definitely been geared towards appealing to that fringe and the ignorant. And some in the Tea Party and some of the most public Tea Party supporters are embracing his garbage instead of denouncing it.
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It’s basically guilt by association, but it does create a stronger impression of racism on a larger scale in the Tea Party when so many public figures connected to the Tea Party embrace the “He’s black, he’s Muslim, he’s Kenyan- He can’t be one of us!” tactics rather than denouncing them.
I’m not sure how fringe the Truthers really are. There was a poll a few years ago, and I seem to remember that a majority of Americans don’t believe in the official government explanation for 9/11.
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Though I think most people believe Bush and co. knew of it and let it happened, instead of being the actual perpetrator.
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Likewise, I think nowadays people who believe that the Kennedy brothers and MLK were killed by lone gunmen in incidents unrelated to anything else are the “fringe,” as far more people believe in the conspiracy theories proposed.
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“Though I think most people believe Bush and co. knew of it and let it happened, instead of being the actual perpetrator.
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I think there’s a slight difference in the two things you’re addressing, Rene. The 9/11 Truthers believe that 9/11 was planned and carried out by either a faction in the US government or by Bush and Cheney themselves (depending on just how fringe they are.)
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On the other hand there are a lot of people out there who believe that Bush “knew” something was about to happen due to the various intelligence warnings, including the now famous one that stated OBL was planning to strike America, but that he was more interested in the never ending vacation that he started his first term with. In that case they’re not expressing the belief that Bush knew about 9/11, simply that they believe that Bush knew something was going to happen and ignored the warnings.
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There are actually very few Truthers in the overall population, but the percentage of the second group is quite large. I’ve also seen at least a few sloppily done polls that mix the two by simply asking the polled if the believe that Bush/the Government knew about 9/11 ahead of time. That number tends to be larger because you have all of the Truthers saying yes and the people who merely believe that Bush was asleep at the switch.
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But, no, the Truthers are not really a large percentage of the population by any means.
of course, the main point that the truthers keep harping on is that fire can’t melt steel (steel being made, as we all know, by a combination of unicorn horns and fairy dust) so the Towers were brought down by a controlled demolition. And even they are not demented enough to suggest that somebody ran up the towers while they were burning and set the charges. So the charges had to have already been there. But of course there would be no point in doing that unless you knew that some reason to set them was on the way so the inescapable conclusion if you don’t believe that the aircraft fires brought down the building was that there was a massive conspiracy (most likely involving Jews, because, well, because!) to knock them down and blame a bunch of innocent radical Muslims who, as luck would have it, played along and took the credit.
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calling it crazy is an insult to crazy people.
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All of the truther stuff I’ve seen is clock full of nutty stuff like how airplanes fired missiles at the towers, there was no actual plane that hit the pentagon, etc. It’s a lot like creationist stuff–they find one unanswered mystery or question and throw out the 99% of the truth that makes sense just for that one inconsistency.
I support the search for truth in everything. A few of my friends could fall under the Truther moniker, including a few highly intelligent people. A few of those point out problems or artifacts in the video that, working in TV as they do, they should recognize. However, they see them as “evidence.”
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Now, do I believe we know the whole truth about the attacks? No. But, do I think there was some conspiracy in DC? No. But, when you see what was in the popular media around the time, everything from Wag the Dog a few years before to the series premiere of The Lone Gunmen, the mind could go places if left unchecked.
I would like to believe that the Tea Party Movement isn’t a racist organization. But, every Tea Party website, rally, function, or advertizement includes racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments. Some of them are merely offensive “jokes” but others are outright propaganda.
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I actually agree with most of the Tea Party’s stated goals. It is how they plan on achieving those goals that I disagree with. When I see that they say that they want to limit government spending, I agree. When I see that their plan for achieving that goal is to increase the deficit, my mind goes kablooie.
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When I see that they want to protect Medicare, I agree with them. When I read that their plan for protecting Medicare is to oppose government provided health care, I back away slowly.
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When I see that they oppose the bank bail outs and want to remove those responsible from office, I agree with them. When they claim that Obama and Pelosi are to blame for the bill signed by Bush in March 2008, I lose respect for them.
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When I read that the Tea Party wants to bring “change” to Washington, by opposing every reform proposed from health care, to banking regulations, to industrial safety regulations, I wonder when “change” started to mean “the same as before.”
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I feel like the Tea Party is, as a whole, a person looking to buy a new car. The car they have is a 2000 Chevy, and they have spent 10 years dissatisfied with it. They take it in to the dealer to buy a new car and say, “My father gave me this car when I graduated, and I hate it. It gets poor gas millage. There is no leg room. I don’t like that it has a temperature light instead of gague. I don’t like the arrangement of the dials and switches. And, the radio only has a cassette player and a broken antenna so I can’t listen to my favourite music.”
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So, the dealer shows them a new model Ford. It gets 36 mpg, compared to 28. It has a temp dial. It has greater leg room and head space. It has cruise control on the wheel rather than the arm. It has the dimmer switch on the arm rather thanthe pannel. It has a sat radio with CD player and mp3 capability.
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The buyer rejects the car, though. And, instead picks out a Chevrolet. The salesman says, “You do realize that the car you picked out advertizes only 25 mpg and mostly the same features as your old car?”
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“Yes, I saw that,” the buyer answers.
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“Then,” the dealer asks, “why do you prefer that one over the one I showed you?”
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The buyer says, “It may not be what I’m looking for, but at least it isn’t a Ford.”
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Theno
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“I would like to believe that the Tea Party Movement isn’t a racist organization. But, every Tea Party website, rally, function, or advertizement includes racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments. Some of them are merely offensive “jokes” but others are outright propaganda.”
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You know, I’ve seen Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m You” ad several times now just for the pure comedy value of it and I’ve somehow missed the racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments in it. Can you point them out to me? I suppose I’ve missed the offensive jokes in that one too unless you think that witches were really peeved that she kicked started the ad by joking about that she’s not a witch.
I should have said, “every … advertizement that I have seen.” Also should have included anti-hispanic while I was at it.
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And, while I have seen parts of the “I’m you” commercial, I haven’t seen all of it, and so wasn’t considering it.
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But, again, everything that I’ve seen from a pan through the crowd of a report on a rally, to an actual rally, to facebook pages, to fliers in my local coffee house has something racist in it.
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Maybe it is the photoshop of “ObamaCare” with the tribesman attire. Maybe it is a “send the Muslims back home” suggestion. Maybe it is a call to “take back America from the immigrants.” Maybe it is simply using the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” interchangably.
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But, here in Ohio, Tea Party candidate John Husted has publically distanced himself from the movement because he objects to the rampant racism on display.
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Although, to be fair, Rich Iott is being unfairly painted as a racist because of one of his hobbies. I haven’t seen any pro-Iott ads, so I don’t know what they include. I would hope that they are the exception to my experience, if only because of the accusations against him.
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Theno
But, every Tea Party website, rally, function, or advertizement includes racist anti-black or anti-Muslim sentiments.
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You make some good points but when you state something so over the top as that, you lose me. Every advertisement? really? the first tea party ad I found on google was this one: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/07/new-tea-party-ad-its-time-for-us-to-retire-bart-stupak/
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Nothing about blacks or Muslims.
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Fair enough, Bill. I meant to say, “every … that I’ve seen.”
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I’ve never seen that anti-Stupak ad. And, you are right, nothing offensive in it at all.
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And, now that I think about it, I’m going to take a step back and say, “every … that I can recall” because it is entirely possible that I’ve come across one or two here or there and in my memory they’ve just been drowned out by all of the others.
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But, that was really my point in the first place. Sure, there are Tea Party people who aren’t racist. Just as there are non-racist people who occasionally do or say racist things.
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But, in the case of the Tea Party, it has been my experience that the overwhelming majority appear to be if not racist, at least supportive of spreading racist ideas.
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Although, while I’ve been typing this and my reply to Jerry, I realize something. When Neil Gaiman was asked about comic book women wearing skimpy, revealing, or bondage-esque outfits, he pointed out that the ones who do are in the slight minority. Just that they are the ones people tend to remember, and the ones that tend to get used in advertizing.
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Considering that, I have to accept that maybe the Tea Party isn’t racist, but that the aspects that I see on tv, that I get via email forwardings, that I see advertized on Facebook, are the vocal minority. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the smallest segment of a group had the loudest voice.
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So, Bill, Jerry, I admit that I was wrong. And, I admit that it is unfair to describe the Tea Party as racist. And, since I do agree with parts of it, maybe I should do some investigating of my own. Maybe the other parts of it I disagree with are also from the minority.
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Theno
If you do that, please get back to me on what you find. I have to admit that my knowledge of the TP is limited to what I’ve seen locally, which is probably why I have been a bit annoyed when people have labeled the people at these things as racists–the ones I know are anything but. A few are genuine ex-hippies and most are distinguished mainly by the fact that this seems to be the first time they have gotten involved in politics to this degree.
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I guess that is what has fascinated me about the phenomena even though I find the movement a bit too simplistic for me (but then I’ve always been surrounded by politics so the gee whiz dewy newness of what they are doing holds no appeal). I hope the movement isn’t significantly racist since it would be a shame to waste a potentially interesting development like that.
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And, as a general aside, you are a true mensch.
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Yeah, to be sure there’s a lot of coverage about that and not all of in unwarranted. The idiots who who carry signs like the witch doctor picture or anything else derogatory that is designed around and can only work based on race and then wonder why they’re getting labeled racists certainly deserve to be made to look bad in the press. And, least we forget, it was the head of the Tea Party Express who got the rest of the Tea Party groups embarrassed enough to publically denounce him and claim that he was no longer allowed in their clubhouse after a series of racial charged and racist stunts.
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But the one catch to remember about the coverage is that controversy sells and gets ratings so that is what you’ll see the most of. The story doesn’t have in sizzle in it if it’s just a bunch of people peaceful protesting. Well, unless it’s Fox News. They’ll actually pretend that the racist stuff on display doesn’t exist at all half the time since the story they want to tell is even more unrelated to reality than the story the other side wants to tell is. There are a lot of really lousy people in the Tea Party movement and they certainly get their 15 minutes of fame at every rally.
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But you also have a lot of people who are not those jáçkáššëš. Like I said somewhere way above (Or was it in another thread at this point?) a lot of the people on the ground level, the regular folks from the neighborhood, are not those jáçkáššëš. Some to be sure, but not all.
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And, yeah, the Rich Iott thing is kinda cheesing me off right now as well.
Interesting column
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/25/tea_partiers_racist_not_so_fast_105309.html
“Tea Partiers Racist? Not So Fast
By Cathy Young
Ever since the “Tea Parties” gained national attention, the debate has raged on whether they are a grass-roots protest movement in the proud tradition of American dissent, or a hysterical mob driven by fear, intolerance and selfishness. Recently, two much-discussed surveys — a CBS/New York Times poll and a multi-state University of Washington poll — have been bandied about as proof that the leftist caricatures of the Tea Partiers as mean-spirited rich white bigots are accurate. Yet a look at the data suggests that this interpretation is highly skewed by political bias.”
They may not be racist, but I strongly suspect they’re mostly hypocrites.
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One reason I always distrusted and disliked young Marxist rebels here in my country is that most of those “anti-American” rebels are middle-class kids that wear American clothes, watch American TV, eat American food, and listen to American music all the while shouting about how alienated and colonized the rest of us are…
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Same thing with the Tea Partiers and other so-called “Libertarians.” They’re always complaining about government spending money on the poor or on minorities, but do they refuse to take advantage of government expenditure aimed at THEM? Somehow I don’t think so. What about that Rolling Stone article about all the Tea Party old geezers riding around in government-paid scooters?
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I don’t think they’re necessarily racist, they’re probably just regular human beings that want others to do the sacrifice for them while they come across as righteous and commited themselves.
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But people may get the impression of racism due to the simple fact that the Tea Party’s are a bunch of white old guys (mostly living off the government like old guys everywhere) while decrying government expenditure. And since they naturally blame “other people” for leeching off the government, naturally we imagine they mean non-white minorities, since they can’t mean themselves, right?
You may be right about the hypocricy…then again, if you pay your taxes wouldn’t you have to be willing to be a chump if you also refused to take advantage of any chance to have some of that money paid back to you?
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It would be like calling someone a hypocrite for opposing the Bush tax cuts but being willing to take the money that it saves them. And yeah, I’ve heard some conservatives say nonsense like that and it makes little sense to me.
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Now if you are all for lowering taxes, cutting government to the essentials but still want to get all kind of goodies from this now leaner government, yeah, THAT would be hypocritical.
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I think there are too many reducto ad moronium type arguments. “Want less taxes? Oh, so you don’t want roads or a military!” “In favor of letting the tax cuts expire? Oh, so you must want Sweden style 90% tax brackets on the wealthy!”
Yes, you’d have to be a chump to refuse any government largesse after paying your taxes, but it would make their protests more impressive if they showed themselves to have at least a fraction of willingness to make sacrifices.
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Otherwise, they end up looking the same as all the other “rebels” everywhere that live in comfort while “rebelling” against certain aspects of the society that gives them that same comfort, and somehow it’s always other people that are at fault for not having the backbone to follow directives that the members of the movement don’t follow themselves.
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I know it’s too much to expect that the Tea Partiers will be like Randian heroes, it’s just that it’s hard for me not to feel cynical at most political protest these days.
Perfect example of what I said above–Chris matthews trying and failing to make a coherant political spin out of the Chilean miner’s rescue: “If the trapped Chilean miners had subscribed to the tea party’s “every-man-for-himself” philosophy, “they would have been killing each other after about two days,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on his “Hardball” show Wednesday night….
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“You know these people, if they were every man for himself down in that mine, they wouldn’t have gotten out…. They would have been killing each other after about two days.”
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43592.html
If the Baby Jessica story were happening now, Fox would be holding it up as a metaphor for the Obama administration while MSNBC would be declaring that lack of oversight left over from the Bush administration was responsible for the well being accessible.
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PAD
For some people, the free market vs. government discussion is almost like religion. They get carried away.
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I can’t really understand or sympathize with either side.
Wow, there’s still a discussion going on here? (I hadn’t checked in on this column in a while.)
Well, I guess I’m kind of a libertarian nutcase in many ways, so I guess I might need to defend myself a little.
I have received some Federal benefits in my life– free school lunches, Pell grants, and right now I’m on Medicaid. I do feel guilty over that last one. I put off applying for Medicaid as long as I could stand to do so, and I did have my family trying to convince me to apply for the last few years.
I guess I do qualify as a hypocrite. I would prefer some other option, but I’ve been unable to find one. (I’m not one of those so-called ‘libertarians’ who liked the system we’ve had for the last several decades. Health care financing in this country has long been a horrendous mess, but it couldn’t be called a free-market, either. I would’ve preferred some sort of free-market solution, but I’m not certain there was one. I’m not sure the new ‘Obamacare’ is going to work well, either, but I don’t know enough about it to insist we get rid of it. I am willing to wait and see how things work out.)
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But in my defence, I’m primarily a libertarian in regard to personal freedoms– drugs, prostitution, stuff like that. And I’d love to see a great many laws and regulations repealed (even some that are innocuous when viewed on their own merits– because a lot of good laws can become bad laws when they’re all working together).
I’ve never been a huge critic of welfare programmes, although I think we should always be willing to make huge changes to the ones that don’t work well.
I’ve spent my whole life in poverty or close to it, as have most of the people I know, so maybe my perspective is a bit different from the more vocal upper-class libertarian-types. So I guess I’m more accepting of welfare programmes, but on the other hand I tend to get very angry over all the government actions that work to keep people in poverty, such as zoning laws that prevent people from operating businesses out of their homes (the only way most poor people can ever hope of starting their own business).
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With all that said, I do think we’ll soon have to find some way to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I don’t know for sure how they should be cut, and I’m scared that any cuts that finally do happen might really hurt me, but they are such a huge part of the Federal budget I don’t know how we could ever get out of debt without cutting them.
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I know nobody was asking me to defend libertarianism here, and I didn’t do a very good job of it anyway, but I thought I should give it a try.
Regarding personal freedoms, I’d consider myself a Libertarian too. Up to and including advocating the possession of guns by those who desire guns.
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I think we all have our little hypocrisies in everyday life. I’m no different in that. I think that is perfectly normal. It only bothers me when people get strongly involved with a movement. A serious activist or rebel should be held to a higher standard, otherwise they’re just imposters.
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Interesting to find out that you’ve been poor, Mary. Makes me respect you more, because in my experience, many libertarians are comfortable middle-class people that don’t need desperately government help (though many will take it anyway).
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Economically, I advocate whatever works in a given situation. I don’t consider myself learned or wise enough to have a definite oppinion of which is better: free marked enterprise or government enterprise. Intuitivelly, I think both have their drawbacks and they work better together. I am afraid many people choose one or another over philosophical reasons, instead of practical ones. And they just convince themselves that they’re being practical, and that bothers me.
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Nothing wrong with taking a philosophical stand, as long as you’re honest about it.