DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on April 20, 2010, 09:37:37 PM
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Here's the low-down on the Tea Partiers and their dyed-in-the-wool Republican roots.
Teabaggers are just embarrassed Republicans
http://www.dailykos.com/ (http://www.dailykos.com/)
by Jed Lewison
Tue Apr 20, 2010 at 07:50:03 AM PDT
<<Over at 538, Tom Schaller asks Perot movement expert Ron Rapoport of William & Mary to compare the tea partiers of 2010 with the Perotistas of the 1990s:
<<The Perot movement is inherently different. It was formed around a candidate during a presidential election campaign. This explains the support by Perot supporters for a third party which tea partiers at present lack. The major difference is that Perot movement was a total rejection of both parties, while the tea party movement is a total rejection of only one party--the Democrats.
<<Whereas only 5% of tea party supporters said that they usually or always voted Democratic, fully one-third of Perot supporters had voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 and slightly more had voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.
<<In the New York Times survey, 54% of tea partiers rated the Republican Party favorably. Only 17% of Perot callers rated either party as “above average” or “outstanding” and 43% rated both parties as “below average,” or “poor” with 8% rating the Republicans as “above average” or “outstanding,” and 9% rating the Democrats as “outstanding” or “above average.” Sixty-nine percent rated the Republicans as “below average” or “poor,” with 64% saying the same about Democrats.
<<The level of favorability among tea partiers for George W. Bush is extraordinarily high—far more than in the population as a whole. Fifty-seven percent of tea party supporters rate Bush favorably, and only 27% rate him unfavorably (for the sample as a whole the corresponding percentages are reversed 27% favorable, 58% unfavorable. On the other hand Perot supporters rated both Geroge H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton unfavorably, Bush moreso than Clinton.
<<Rapoport's analysis underscores the extent to which tea partiers are really just embarrassed Republicans. Actually, putting it that way is a bit of an oversimplification. I should say: tea partiers are really just embarrassed Republicans -- unless they think that the Republican Party is too liberal for them. But there's nobody in the tea party movement who thinks that the GOP is too conservative. And there's nobody who is angry at GOPers but not Dems.
<<Tea party sponsors like Fox have eagerly pushed the claim that teabagging is a bipartisan thing to do, but there's no real evidence to support that myth. Instead, we've got a bunch of conservatives who think that the best response to the failure of their ideas is to rebrand conservativism as tea partyism instead of Republicanism.
<<They'd be better off rethinking their ideas.>>
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Rapoport's analysis underscores the extent to which tea partiers are really just embarrassed Republicans.
Seems like Rapoport is on the outside looking in and applies values to movements he does not understand.
And if memory serves correctly the Perot movement was more predominantly white than the tea partiers and therefore racist.
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Seems to me like Rapoport had a pretty convincing explanation for the numbers, and his explanation was that the Tea Partiers were just pissed-off Republicans trying to look like a non-partisan third party movement, probably (IMHO) because the GOP brand is still toxic.
I notice that apart from trying to brand the ol' Rapster as an outsider looking in (a curious observation which seems aimed at delegitimizing any criticism of the Tea Critters that doesn't come from within their own ranks) you seemed to have no valid substantive criticism to make of the Rapster's take on them, which indicates to me that he is right on the mark.
I won't really comment on your attempt to brand the Perot movement as racist, it's just too transparent a deflection to be worth the effort, apart from saying that they might have been racist but the more effective criticism of the movement is that its leader turned out to be nuts. Unfortunately so, because before he started foaming at the mouth, I was effectively in his corner, and the two American cousins of mine whom I have the most respect for politically were prepared to vote for him.
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Resolved: The tea party movement is no different than the netroots movement except for positioning on the political spectrum
Discuss.
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Netroots? They still around? I thought they died of AIDS or some . . . oh, sorry, that was Ted Rall.
Well, I dunno. Does anyone still remember netroots? Maybe someone could post a video of an angry netroots mob with racist signs, I forget what they looked like.
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And maybe someone could actually post a video of an angry Tea Party mob, with a whole host of racist signs. Or is the best we're gonna get is some congress critter who said he heard the "n word", from somewhere, that not one micropone or phone camera could capture..........anywhere
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Well, I dunno. Does anyone still remember netroots? Maybe someone could post a video of an angry netroots mob with racist signs, I forget what they looked like.
Every time you read the Huffington Post or the DailyKos you are hanging with the netroots.
But you knew that.
and the netroots are still a force to be reckoned. They almost derailed the ObamaCare bill because it didn't go far enough. Sentiments you most certainly shared with them.
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I attended the Cincinnati Tax Day Tea Party rally as a speaker. But it was more interesting to be an observer.
First, here's what I didn't see. I didn't see a single racist or bigoted sign or hear a single such comment. Nor did I see any evidence of "homegrown fascism." Though in fairness, such things are often in the eye of the beholder, now that dissent has gone from being the highest form of patriotism under George W. Bush to the most common form of racism under Barack Obama.
But I did see something a lot of people, on both the left and the right, seemed to have missed: a delayed Bush backlash.
One of the more widespread anti-tea party arguments goes like this: Republicans didn't protest very much when Bush ran up deficits and expanded government, so when Obama does the same thing (albeit on a far grander scale), Republican complaints can't be sincere.
This lazy sophistry opens the door to liberals' preferred argument: racism. "No student of American history," writes Paul Butler in the New York Times, "would be surprised to learn that when the United States elects its first non-white president, a strong anti-government movement rises up."
Butler, a law professor and author of the no-doubt-seminal "Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice," speaks for many in the media when he insinuates that nearly unprecedented stimulus spending combined with government takeovers of the health care, banking and automotive industries are dwarfed in importance by Obama's skin color.
I speak for many who have actually spoken to tea partiers when I say that is slanderous hogwash.
But how, then, to explain the relative right-wing quiescence on Bush's watch and fiscal Puritanism on Obama's?
No doubt partisanship plays a role. But partisanship only explains so much given that the tea partiers are clearly sincere about limited government and often quite fond of Republican-bashing. So here's an alternative explanation: Conservatives don't want to be fooled again.
Recall that Bush came into office promising to be a "different kind of conservative," and one of his first legislative victories was the No Child Left Behind Act, sponsored by Teddy Kennedy.
Throughout his presidency, Bush's "compassionate conservatism" surrendered -- either rhetorically or substantively -- to the assumptions of welfare state liberalism, i.e. that your decency was best measured by your commitment to large, inefficient government programs. "When somebody hurts," Bush insisted, "government has got to move."
Many conservatives disliked this whole mind-set and the policies behind it, from comprehensive immigration reform to Medicare Part D.
Many conservatives muted their objections, in part because they actually liked the man personally or because they approved of his stances on tax cuts, judges, abortion and, most important, the war on terror (we can see a similar dynamic with so many antiwar liberals who still support Obama).
Conservatives didn't necessarily bite their tongues (remember the Harriet Miers and immigration fiascoes), but they did prioritize supporting Bush -- often in the face of far nastier attacks than Obama has received -- over ideological purity. Besides, where were conservatives supposed to go? Into the arms of John Kerry?
The 2008 GOP primaries compounded conservative frustration. Because there was no stand-in for Bush in the contest, there was no obvious outlet for anger at Bush's years of pre-surge Iraq bungling or his decision to outsource domestic spending to Republican congressional ward-heelers. Then, as a lame duck, Bush laid down the predicates for much of Obama's first 100 days, supporting both a stimulus and Wall Street bailouts. As one participant of the D.C. Tea Party rally told the Washington Examiner's Byron York, "George Bush opened the door for Barack Obama and the Democrats to walk in."
According to last week's NYT/CBS poll of tea party supporters, 57 percent have a favorable view of Bush, but that hardly captures the nuance of tea party feelings. For instance, when Bush's face appeared on the Jumbotron in the arena, the Cincinnati audience applauded. When speakers criticized Bush and the GOP for "losing their way," the audience applauded even louder.
Going by what I saw in Cincinnati, second to a profound desire to rein in government, the chief attitude driving the 39 percent of tea partiers who describe themselves as "very conservative" isn't partisanship, racism or seizing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. It's "we won't be fooled again." In the near term, that spells trouble for Obama and Democrats. In the long term, that lays down a serious gauntlet for Republicans
Tea Partiers a Delayed Bush Backlash? (http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2010/04/21/tea_partiers_a_delayed_bush_backlash)
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<<Every time you read the Huffington Post or the DailyKos you are hanging with the netroots.>>
Ahhhh, OK. So where are the racist slogans and "I Got Mine" attitudes of the Hufpo/Kossack mobs? Or the leftist equivalent thereof? Nope, I don't think netroots are the left equivalent of the Tea Parties. Not only are they completely lacking in the hate-filled "back to the 19th century" attitude of the Tea Partiers, they seem to be pure rationality, as opposed to the sheer irrationality of the crypto-fascist Tea mobs.
I have another problem with netroots, especially with the Kossacks, if they are a part of that movement: I think they are WAAAAY too complacent with Obama's war and torture policies. They should be screaming for war crimes trials, not only of the Bush administration torturers, but the U.S. Murder Corps thugs videotaped in the leaked tape of the New Baghdad Massacre. (See how fast THAT story vanished from the MSM!!)
<<But you knew that.>>
Alas, BT, you give me far too much credit.
<<and the netroots are still a force to be reckoned. They almost derailed the ObamaCare bill because it didn't go far enough. Sentiments you most certainly shared with them.>>
Didn't go far enough, eh? Who are we kidding here? It was a total sell-out to the financial interests that share Obama's bed.
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And maybe someone could actually post a video of an angry Tea Party mob, with a whole host of racist signs. Or is the best we're gonna get is some congress critter who said he heard the "n word", from somewhere, that not one micropone or phone camera could capture..........anywhere
And Tee fails, yet again to address a serious debate forum inquiry. Credibility? ahhh, that's so overrated, right? ;)
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hhhh, OK. So where are the racist slogans and "I Got Mine" attitudes of the Hufpo/Kossack mobs?
Is patronization that much different than racism? I don't think so. Both are based on presuppositions of inferiority.
Are you speaking of the level of hate emanating from either group? As your hero Ted Rall admitted, the left has nothing to be proud of.
And the real difference between the tea party movement and the Perot movement is obvious.
One was based on a cult of personality, much like the trail Obama took and the other is based on ideals.
I'll stick with my assessment, the tea party movement is a mirror image of the nets roots movement.
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<<Is patronization that much different than racism? I don't think so. Both are based on presuppositions of inferiority.>>
I don't buy that netroots is patronizing anyone, but even if I did, I'd have to wonder how many lynching victims were killed by patronization?
<<Are you speaking of the level of hate emanating from either group? >>
Nope, I'm speaking of racism and irrationality primarily. And the propensity to resort to violence, as evidenced by the gun-nuts and gun violence signs seen at the Tea Parties.
<<As your hero Ted Rall admitted, the left has nothing to be proud of.>>
Ted Rall surprised me by finding that there was as much hate coming out of right-wing groups as left-wing groups. He made no attempt to compare the objects of that hatred to see which were the more deserving of it. There isn't much more to be made out of Rall's findings.
<<And the real difference between the tea party movement and the Perot movement is obvious.
<<One was based on a cult of personality, much like the trail Obama took and the other is based on ideals.>>
Perot the object of a cult of personality? That's rich. Perot was a cranky old man, a little too glib and arrogant for my liking. Perot's logic and his charts were what convinced me and a lot of others that he was on the right track, not his personality. That plus his guts in speaking out against the established order.
<<I'll stick with my assessment, the tea party movement is a mirror image of the nets roots movement.>>
Good luck widdat.
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And yet again with the tactic of lack of evidence (racist Tea party folk, complete with the mind set of advocating violence & lynchings) as proof positive (of racist Tea party folk)
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I don't buy that netroots is patronizing anyone, but even if I did, I'd have to wonder how many lynching victims were killed by patronization?
So now we have a yardstick.
Pray tell, how many were lynched by tea partiers?
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<<So now we have a yardstick.
<<Pray tell, how many were lynched by tea partiers?>>
Since I was responding to the distinction you drew between racism and patronization, the question you asked is obviously irrelevant to my last post. The only relevant questions would be, how many were lynched by racism, and how many by partronizaiton?
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Watch how fast the backpedaling goes........though the accusation will again stop at lack of evidence/proof as proof positive of the accusation
The template must be adhered to, regardless of how irrational & illogical it may be
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The only relevant questions would be, how many were lynched by racism, and how many by partronizaiton?
Actually that is not the question, because with your insistence that the tea partiers are racist, and that lynching is a symptom of racism, it follows that if the tea partiers are racist, they would have lynched someone.
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<<Actually that is not the question, because with your insistence that the tea partiers are racist, and that lynching is a symptom of racism, it follows that if the tea partiers are racist, they would have lynched someone.>>
Your theory only makes sense if all racists are lynch mob members. It's bullshit because not all racists are lynchers, although all lynchers are racists.
I'll illustrate: how many blacks were lynched by Trent Lott? By Strom Thurmond? By Senator Macacawitz? By Bull Connor? By Lester Maddox?
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All lynchers might not be racists. They may simply be prone to violence and caught up in the mob.
A while back in NYC there were a group of blacks roamig Central Park beating up people. They called the phenomena wilding. Was race the determining factor, or was it a combination of things including peer pressure and rebellion?
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probly race is a factor but it`s still not racism ,because thier black.
but it`s still ok to say it`s bigoted ,but that word is rarely used today.
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<<A while back in NYC there were a group of blacks roamig Central Park beating up people. They called the phenomena wilding. Was race the determining factor, or was it a combination of things including peer pressure and rebellion?>>
Actually, your facts are a little out of date. "Wilding" turns out to be an invention of the NYPD dicks who beat the coerced confessions out of the black teens falsely convicted of the rape. But I'm sure in your topsy-turvy view of the world, there was nothing racist in the NYPD's conduct, just a sincere desire to see justice done. Any white college students from any white middle class family would have faced similar arrests, beatings, forced confessions and railroad justice. That the girl was white and the suspects black I am positive would never have entered into the minds of any of those fine upstanding police officers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case)
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April 19 was known to have been a night when such a gang attack occurred, in which the suspects had entered the park in Harlem with over 30 acquaintances.
Are you saying because there were procedural difficulties in the specified rape case that these youth did no enter Central Park and beat strangers? That this wild thinging was just made up bragging?
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<<Are you saying because there were procedural difficulties in the specified rape case that these youth did no enter Central Park and beat strangers? That this wild thinging was just made up bragging?>>
I am saying that the word "wilding" was not part of any of these kids' vocabularies, that it was made up by the NYPD and entered into the language through the racist tabloid reporting that lapped up every word those racist pigs fed to it. It made for sensational copy.
Whether those kids were choirboys or not, I don't know. They may have been muggers. Given the socioeconomic disadvantages they were forced to endure in racist America, it would not exactly shock me if they were. Might even surprise me if they weren't. What we know for a fact now is that none of them raped that girl and none of them crushed her skull with a brick (or any other weapon) despite all the racist lies and bullshit and perjury of New York's finest. Just chalk up four more young black men railroaded into serious criminal convictions by racist cops, courts, judges and MSM. Just another day in God's country.
Incidentally, I gotta say that I love the spin you throw for the racist bastards - - coerced confessions and wrongful convictions are just "procedural difficulties." BRAVO, BT! Goebbels would be very proud.
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Wilding was a misunderstanding of the term doing the wild thing based on a tone loc rap. from your wiki article
As if misunderstanding patois gives you a get out of jail free card.
Either they roamed the park like a pack of wolves or they made it up. Were they lying?
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<<Wilding was a misunderstanding of the term doing the wild thing based on a tone loc rap. from your wiki article>>
"Misunderstanding" my ass. That word entered the language like wildfire and no attempt whatsoever was made by those racist pigs to correct any "misunderstanding" that helped the MSM to vilify those boys.
<<As if misunderstanding patois gives you a get out of jail free card.>>
"Misunderstanding patois" - - another racist spin that would do Goebbels proud - - is not what got them the get out of jail free card. Being framed with coerced confessions by racist pigs is what did the trick. Good spin, though.
<<Either they roamed the park like a pack of wolves or they made it up. Were they lying?>>
I dunno. First show me where they said "We roamed the park like a pack of wolves." Then I'll tell ya if they were lying or not. A pack of wolves would leave a pretty bloody trail in Central Park, though, so I'm kind of inclined more towards the view that you're just parroting more racist bullshit to replace the crap that was already shot down in flames.
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According to a police investigation, the culprits were gangs of teenagers who would assault strangers as part of an activity that became known as "wilding." New York City detectives said the word was used by the suspects themselves to describe their actions to police.[4] This account has been disputed by other journalists, who say that it originated in a police detective's misunderstanding of the suspects' use of the phrase "doing the wild thing", lyrics from Tone Lōc's hit song "Wild Thing".[5][6] April 19 was known to have been a night when such a gang attack occurred, in which the suspects had entered the park in Harlem with over 30 acquaintances
From your wiki article.
Pitt, David E. (1989-04-22). "Jogger's Attackers Terrorized at Least 9 in 2 Hours". New York Times. "The youths who raped and savagely beat a young investment banker as she jogged in Central Park Wednesday night were part of a loosely organized gang of 32 schoolboys whose random, motiveless assaults terrorized at least eight other people over nearly two hours, senior police investigators said yesterday. Chief of Detectives Robert Colangelo, who said the attacks appeared unrelated to money, race, drugs or alcohol, said that some of the 20 youths brought in for questioning had told investigators that the crime spree was the product of a pastime called wilding."
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Lotta people brought in told the police a lotta things. Who'll ever know what was beaten out of them, what was what the kids thought the cops wanted to hear and what was even true?
The only thing we know for sure is that racist pigs coerced confessions from about four young black men who were then convicted of rape and aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury and did serious time for crimes they did not commit. Someone else later confessed to the crime and the confession was backed up by DNA evidence.
Were the boys who were originally framed for the crime choir-boys? Did they have blameless records? We don't know that and frankly it's not important. If in fact they did commit other crimes that night, let the police come forward and charge them appropriately, otherwise it's just more meaningless racist BS added to the already monstrous pile of racist crap that accompanied the original sham trials and convictions.
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A pack of wolves would leave a pretty bloody trail in Central Park,
9 people were attacked that night. But hell, these are just black boys, products of the ghetto, government wards, police can have them crapping in their pants anytime they want. Make them cop any plea. Because they really don't have it in them to be real thugs, being mamas boys and all.
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<<9 people were attacked that night.>>
Please define "attack" otherwise you are just spouting meaningless drivel. While weeping and moaning about the "attacks" of unspecified nature, but presumably minor enough that NONE of them warranted headlines at the time, your indifference to the railroading of innocent black youths by racist pigs into forced confessions, sham trials and wrongful convictions on serious charges makes apparently no impression whatever on you. Typical of all white racist oppressors, you are hyper-alert to the wrongdoing (or in this case, even the POTENTIAL for wrongdoing) of young black males and totally indifferent to the injustices committed upon them by racist pigs and court officers.
<<But hell, these are just black boys, products of the ghetto, government wards, police can have them crapping in their pants anytime they want. Make them cop any plea. >>
As it turns out, that is pretty much how it went down.
<<Because they really don't have it in them to be real thugs, being mamas boys and all. >>
Maybe you know something that I don't. DID any of them turn out to be "real thugs?" Like the KKK? Like those rednecks who dragged a black man chained by the ankles to their pickup truck down country roads till his head came off? Because if you're looking for 'real thugs" I think you better get off your high horse and quit the speculative chase after these kids, convicted of actually NOTHING and start looking at some REAL thugs, the rednecks and crackers all around you. THEM, you don't have to speculate about.
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Maybe you know something that I don't.
No you know it to. The kids admitted to mugging people in Central Park that night. What they did was recant the rape.
You think being black is an excuse to mug your daughter?
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<<No you know it to. The kids admitted to mugging people in Central Park that night. What they did was recant the rape.>>
Mugging is a relatively minor crime compared to rape and bashing in somebody's skull. These kids or some of them may have been petty criminals. (I didn't see the confessions, and I don't know if they apply to all the kids framed by the racist pigs.) It does not make them monsters and it does not justify the cops framing these kids on forced confessions. That is abominable. The mugging can be explained (though not excused) by socioeconomic factors for which neither the kids nor their parents are responsible.
<<You think being black is an excuse to mug your daughter?>>
It's not an excuse to mug anyone, but if it happened, (and it actually has,) I'd know enough not to focus the blame and the anger exclusively on the perps. Whitey had a lot more to do with their being muggers than they themselves did. So did capitalism.
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It's not an excuse to mug anyone, but if it happened, (and it actually has,) I'd know enough not to focus the blame and the anger exclusively on the perps. Whitey had a lot more to do with their being muggers than they themselves did. So did capitalism.
What is your take on free will?
Does it exist?
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<<What is your take on free will?
<<Does it exist? >>
I really don't know. I've heard all the arguments, and I just don't know. That's one of the toughest philosophical problems I've ever had to wrestle with.
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That's one of the toughest philosophical problems I've ever had to wrestle with.
I get the impression from your rhetoric that you don't believe in free will.
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<<I get the impression from your rhetoric that you don't believe in free will. >>
You can believe in greater or lesser degrees of determinism in people's lives without going all the way to a final decision on free will. I mean even if there is free will, it's capable of being influenced by external factors.
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Flip Wilson got rich with the line "The devil made me do it"
But nevertheless i am intrigued by your forgiveness of muggers but not of racists. Both behaviors influenced by external forces and I am not sure why one practitioner is held accountable but the other isn't.
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Racism is the indirect cause of muggers. Stopping racists in the long run will also stop or cut down on muggers.
Stopping muggers won't stop racists, who will just generate more muggers.
I see racists as evil bastards who are causing a lot more suffering than muggers are. Muggers affect only their victims, whereas racists can affect whole populations.
Racists killed about six million Jews in the span of about six years. They raped and lynched all over the U.S. for well over a century. What the hell are muggers in comparison to racists? They're a petty annoyance at most. You need some kind of sense of proportion here, BT. Your question is really naive.
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Racism is the indirect cause of muggers.
Doubtful. Else there would be no white muggers.
Poverty and drug addiction would probably be more likely causes for someone going for the easy buck.
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I didn't mean that racism caused all muggers. When you mentioned poverty and drug addiction, sure, but racism feeds into them too, without being the cause of every case. Racism is one of the cancers eating into America, capitalism is the other. Between them, you could explain most of the poverty, drug addiction and street crime. Do the two cancers cause ALL problems? Probably not, only 98% of them.
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poverty and drug addiction
magic words
many people think this is voluntary so racism is not a factor any more.
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many people think this is voluntary so racism is not a factor any more.
Drug addiction cares less about color.
And using drugs is voluntary prior to addiction.
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<<Drug addiction cares less about color.
<<And using drugs is voluntary prior to addiction.>>
Ai yi yi, you got to read what I'm writing more carefully. There isn't just one cancer at work in America, there are two. Between them, racism and capitalism will account for most of the problems that the country is experiencing, INCLUDING drug addiction. Capitalism contributes in many ways to drug addiction, race is certainly also a factor in non-white drug addiction.
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Is non white drug addiction different than white drug addiction?
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IN the sense that racism could be a contributing cause to a non-white's addiction but not to a white's addiction, yes.
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IN the sense that racism could be a contributing cause to a non-white's addiction but not to a white's addiction, yes.
How patronizing. As if whites can't feel oppressed.
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The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country?s most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina. . . .
?The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt,? Walker said. ?The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina.?
?All true,? Sawhill, a budget official in the Clinton administration, concurred.
?To do nothing,? Butler added, ?would lead to deficits of the scale we?ve never seen in this country or any major in industrialized country. We?ve seen them in Argentina. That?s a chilling thought, but it would mean that.? . . . The unity of the bespectacled presenters was impressive ? and it made their conclusion all the more depressing. As Ron Haskins, a former Bush White House official and current Brookings scholar, said when introducing the thinkers: ?If Heritage and Brookings agree on something, there must be something to it.?
Yet that is not how leaders of either party talk.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238.html)
The tea party folks don't want the US to suffer the fate of Argentina.
Opponents of the tea party folks, do.
It really is that simple.
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The worse it gets the more the "need for bigger government"
no?
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<<The tea party folks don't want the US to suffer the fate of Argentina. >>
Yeah, I noticed how agitated they got over the issue of the military torturing its prisoners. I saw how distressed they were when Bush ordered surveillance of American citizens. I was impressed by their fury over Obama ordering the military to assassinate an American citizen without charges, trial or verdict.
You gotta be a little more specific about "Argentina" - - the Tea Partiers have no problem with a fascist America, it's their ideal. What they might not like is the idea of Argentina pulling itself OUT of fascism, and in fact, as they did a day or two ago, sentencing one of their former rulers, a certain General Bignone, to 25 years in prison for torture. THAT'S the only Argentina that scares the shit out of the Tea Party.
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<<The tea party folks don't want the US to suffer the fate of Argentina. >>
You gotta be a little more specific about "Argentina" - - the Tea Partiers have no problem with a fascist America, it's their ideal.
Good thing you're too mentally traumatized to respond. It's ignorant garbage like that that demonstrates just how squat credibility you have Tee.
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Tea party: Why the left doesn't get it
Posted: April 22, 2010
"Hello, fellow racists."
That's how I greeted the gathering at the Tax Day tea-party rally in Sacramento, Calif. Several people dropped their hoods and sheets in laughter. After a thorough search, I can report that I detected no secret handshake, security guards or minority-sniffing German shepherds to alert blacks that our presence was unwanted.
An MSNBC reporter at another tea-party rally actually asked a black man whether he "felt uncomfortable." "No," he laughed. "No, these are my people ? Americans." The man appeared far too polite to ask, "You ever felt uncomfortable working for MSNBC?" I once appeared on a television show where a black pundit accused former President Ronald Reagan of racism. When I asked for proof, he said that Reagan "was uncomfortable around black people." I replied, "I'm uncomfortable around you. What does that make me?" So in the black tea partier's case, his presumed discomfort around whites made them racist. In Reagan's case, his presumed discomfort around blacks made him one. It does get confusing.
A more serious criticism of the tea-party movement goes like this: When George W. Bush and the Republicans controlled the House, Senate and Oval Office, where were the complaints about spending?
One TP critic put it this way: "During these tea-party protests, conservatives are showing why the word 'hypocrite' should be part of the dictionary definition of conservative. They said nothing and did nothing while Bush and the Republican Congress were getting the country into deeper and deeper trouble. The conservatives who organize the tea-party protests sat on their hands and did nothing. They did nothing when the balanced budget was destroyed, nothing when Bush exploded the deficit, nothing when Bush cut taxes instead of raising them to pay for the war he started."
As to Bush's non-defense, non-homeland security domestic spending, people did complain ? lots of them and frequently. Why isn't this more widely recognized? When a conservative criticizes Rush Limbaugh, that's news. The left hates Limbaugh. When a conservative criticizes Bush's spending, that's not news. The left loves domestic spending. For liberals, Bush's No Child Left Behind program "wasn't fully funded." The prescription bill for seniors contained a "doughnut hole," which made it insufficiently generous.
Conservatives, pundits and talk-show hosts routinely blasted Bush for domestic spending. In 2003, after the passage of the Medicare prescription bill, a member of The Heritage Foundation said, "The president isn't showing leadership, and conservatives are angry." Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said, "The conservative, free-market base in America is rightly in revolt over this bill."
In 2003, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., made a bizarre accusation, condemning Bush for "undoing the New Deal." That December, I wrote: "Does she not see the steam blasting from the ears of principled conservatives flatly astonished by President George W. Bush's and his Republican colleagues' willingness to spend, spend and spend? During Bush's term in office, excluding defense and homeland security, non-war government expenditures increased at a rate faster than under former President Bill Clinton. By this time in his term, Reagan vetoed over 20 bills, Bush none."
So if people were unhappy with Bush's spending, then why are folks only now assembling, carrying signs and holding rallies in opposition to bigger government?
Fair question. Better late than never. More importantly, things are much, much worse. Government bailouts, "stimulus," Obamacare, etc., now push the nation's deficit to record non-World War II levels and debt to an all-time high.
Bush-bashing left-wing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman inadvertently explained why today things are different. In March 2006, he wrote about Bush's (nonexistent?) conservative critics who were "rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Bush." But he pointed out that a lot of Bush's increased domestic spending came from entitlements on automatic pilot. He accused Bush's critics of creating a "false impression" that Bush was a "big spender": "The great bulk of this increase was accounted for by increased spending on defense and homeland security, including the costs of the Iraq war, and by rising health-care costs." In other words, as to increased domestic spending, Krugman argued that Bush wasn't as bad as his conservative critics claimed.
Bush, the so-called fiscal conservative, irresponsibly increased domestic spending, including the decidedly non-fiscally conservative prescription benefits bill. But under Obama, the Democrats and some unprincipled Republicans, Americans now bear dramatically increased, brand-new domestic spending. With Obamacare, taxpayers now support 30 million people who are guaranteed health insurance. Taxes must go up, and the middle class is not spared. Economics adviser Paul Volcker, along with others, even floats the idea of a European-style value-added consumption tax ? on top of the current taxes.
Tea-party supporters, at least many of them, did complain about the size of government pre-Obama. Now things have changed ? for the worse. Government is larger than ever ? with no sign of abating unless and until this administration is stopped.
As Vice President Joe Biden so eloquently put it, "This is a big f---ing deal."
Ignorance is indeed bliss to leftist radicals like Tee (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=143805)