Tag: tea party

Not Conservative Enough

danielholter:

A Come to Jesus Moment for American Religion

The Republican Party in the United States—15 months before the next presidential election—has already burdened itself with an array of front-running presidential candidates […] [and] it now seems a necessary qualification for the Republican nomination, at least at the present primaries stage, to be a born-again fundamentalist Protestant. Yet in the United States the majority of the electorate is not fundamentalist, evangelical or Protestant.

This last bit is key. If we assume that the economic situation gets no worse and, perhaps, even improves a bit between now and 2012, and we further simply take the polling of the GOP field as it stands today (giving the nomination to Perry in a walk), it’s very hard to see how he beats Obama. So: Perry gets crushed in the general election. In the inevitable “we lost because we weren’t conservative enough” aftermath, how exactly does one make that case? Because that’s the case that will be made. The “message of the American voter” in delivering a massive tidal wave of support to 2012-Obama will universally be seen to have been a clear, ringing demand for lower taxes on the rich, a dismantling of the social safety net, and that the poor and out of work should just go die in the streets already.

Perhaps you just blame Boehner. You’ve presumably lost some House seats (but retained the majority). Cantor wants to be Speaker, so you spin it as “Perry only lost because Boehner was too easygoing on radical urban liberal Obama.” Seems impossible that anyone would buy it, but then most of FOXnews’ more successful narratives seem pretty unlikely when viewed in the abstract.

Party of Terror

Talking Points Memo reports:

[Pentagon shooter John Patrick] Bedell even railed against the concept of public education. “Government control of the schools that shape minds is pervasive in today’s world,” he said. “The imperative to defend the freedom of conscience must lead us to eliminate the role of the government in education and leave parents and communities free to raise their children as they see fit.” He denounced public education as “no more legitimate than a government-run church for universal religious training.”

They also includes the audio of his manifesto. One wonders just how many of these events it will take to have an impact on the broader political discourse.

Sadly, though, I anticipate that the primary impact will be people like Palin parroting the “government takeover of schools” line as a trope against education within the week, all the while using the construction as a dog-whistle meant to hail this fuckwit as a brave, patriotic man as opposed to the half-baked, fully lunatic, execrable little domestic terrorist that he was.

Based not on a subjective assessment of the Tea Party’s viability or [NYT reporter David Barstow’s] opinion of its desirability but only on facts he knows about the state of politics and government since Obama’s election, is there any substantial likelihood of a tyranny replacing the American republic in the near future?

Jay Rosen
asking an excellent question about the editorial content (or lack thereof) in this piece. The ongoing and steadfast refusal to reflect objective reality, even when uncomfortable, is a major problem.

Is the world round? Opinions differ.

Pity Poor Iowa

Iowa representative Steve King thinks the terrorist attack on the IRS building in Austin was completely justifiable, perhaps even legitimate:

KING: It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back.

As with returning the colonies to Her Britannic Majesty, nothing would make me happier than exempting Iowa from compliance with the IRS and from the painful reality of receiving any of those pesky federal dollars:

Iowa taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, Iowa citizens received approximately $1.10 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 24th nationally and represents a rise from 1995 when Iowa received $1.06 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (then ranked 26th nationally). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending they received per dollar of federal taxes paid were: Minnesota ($0.72), Wisconsin ($0.86), Illinois ($0.75), Missouri ($1.32), Nebraska ($1.10), and South Dakota ($1.53).

Seriously. Let’s get the “thumb” out of their back once and for all. I’m sure they’ll be much happier. Any other states care to apply? Maybe they’d like to watch the example of Iowa first.

Are you an American who was earning less in 2007 than in 2000? The document has nothing to say to you.

  • Did you lose your home or job or savings in the crisis of 2008-2009? Blank to you.

  • Are you worried about the loss of your health insurance – or how you will pay for nursing care for your aged parents – or what 20% youth unemployment will mean for your newly graduated child’s life chances? Not our department.

  • Do you wonder whether we are winning or losing the war on terror? Do you want an explanation for why it took so long for a conservative administration to react to military disaster? No answers here.

  • Do you generally agree with conservatives – but wonder whether there is room in the conservative world for nonwhites, or the disabled, or the secular-minded, or the gay? The statement does not say “no,” but it does not say “yes” either.

  • What about the environment? Economic competition from China? The moral implications of the biotech revolution? Illegal immigration? Educational standards? Well – what about them?

The document answers one question and one question only. If you agree that Barack Obama is engaged in a deliberate and relentless attack on the American constitutional order, well be assured: the conservative establishment is on your side. But if you think those worries are a hysterical distraction from the country’s actual problems? To you, the conservative world says: go away. We have nothing to offer you.

David Frum, a Conservative I Can Believe In, discussing this
nonsensical Mt. Vernon Statement

1776

We fought the British over a 3 percent tea tax. We might as well bring the British back

–William Temple of Brunswick, Ga., perhaps marginally better known as the fellow appearing at tea-party events dressed in his trademark three-cornered hat.

Indeed, William, why don’t we? The Brits are at least having a truth-commission of sorts that aims to get to the bottom of (but not prosecute those involved in) their complicity in the lie-laden run-up to the Iraq folly. Likewise, the Brits enjoy (and broadly support) their National Health Service, which, I might add, routinely outperforms American healthcare in any outcome metric you might reasonably choose to look at and costs half as much (as a share of GDP) to operate. Conservatives in Britain strongly support NHS. Wouldn’t think of privatizing it. Furthermore and finally, the Brits actually have a functional parliamentary system, as opposed to our functionally parliamentary system in which nothing can get done. In scary, scary Britain, when your party wins an election, you get to set the policy and set about governing. Imagine that. If the public broadly disapproves of your outcomes and prefers the platform of the shadow cabinet, then, hey what do you know, those folks get elected and start governing. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s what we in the Big City call “representative democracy.”

So count me with the Tea Partiers. Let’s ask Big Daddy Britain if we can just come back and all is forgiven.

Connections

A: Many of the tea-party organizers I spoke with at this conference described the event as a critical step in their ascendancy to the status of mainstream political movement. Yet with rare exceptions, such as blogger Breitbart, who was reportedly overheard protesting Farah’s birther propaganda, none of them seems to realize how off-putting the toxic fantasies being spewed from the podium were.

B: Perhaps the most distressing part of all is that few media observers bothered to catalog these bizarre, conspiracist outbursts, and instead fixated on Sarah Palin’s Saturday night keynote address. It is as if, in the current overheated political atmosphere, we all simply have come to expect that radicalized conservatives will behave like unhinged paranoiacs when they collect in the same room.
(http://www.newsweek.com/id/233331/output/print)

Why are you so popular?

Andrew Sullivan is worried about Sarah Palin, perhaps most especially because:

She can electrify a crowd. She has the kind of charisma that appeals to the sub-rational. and she has crafted a Peronist identity – utterly fraudulent, of course – that is political dynamite in a recession with populism roiling everyone and everything.

and yet the payload of that charismatically delivered speech:

was and is pure sophistry – a string of crowd-pleasing slogans with no content whatever, except for an endorsement of a global war on Islam, tax-cuts, populist attacks on Wall Street, a subtle but scary attempt to politicize the military as belonging to one party, cooptation of one religion in America, and, with the exception of nuclear power […] a desire for more carbon energy, not less (as long as it’s developed in the US).

Michael Wolff comes to a similar overall conclusion, but notes:

Now partly what this means is that all the things that make her so compelling are the things that will keep her marginal.

The problem with that is that she is not in any way marginal. The mainstream media reports on her comings and goings to a far greater degree than they do those of, say, Joe Biden or even their beloved St. John McCain. There were 200 credentialed media at this idiotic event, which boasted a total paid conference attendance of ~600. Does Obama pull 200 media credentials when he visits Elyria, OH or some other purely political stump?

And that gets us back to the key problem. The media will simply report her speech. It happened. Here’s what she said. Without context, it’s difficult for the low-information voter to grasp any useful information beyond “they’re reporting it, so they must think it’s important.” Likewise, when Palin appears on MSM shows, they refuse, categorically refuse to ask potentially illuminating questions. Witness this exchange:

WALLACE: Would you say that you’re more knowledgeable about domestic and foreign affairs now than you were two years ago?
PALIN: Well, I would hope so. Yes, I am.

which was followed by this incisive, hard-hitting prober:

WALLACE: I know that three years is an eternity in politics. But how hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?

Keep in mind, Chris Wallace is FOXnews’ investigative arm. Howsabout asking what the Bush Doctrine is/was? Who were the primary “combatants” in the Cold War? Where is China located? Asking “are you improved at…” simply begs the follow-on of “then prove it.” But, of course, this never happens. She will never be stopped until it starts happening. And Chris Wallace, being home court as he is, would be precisely the person to do it. But he clearly doesn’t care to. And neither does anyone else. So much better to report whatever maunderings have turned up on Palin’s Facebook than to, you know, actually do some work and break what would be a cataclysmic, career-making story in the process. Dog-bites-man, to be sure, but Palin: as dangerously ignorant as ever would sell truckloads of paper.

Even more depressing, though, is Bob Somerby’s entirely accurate summation:

To defeat Palin and Palinism, we’ll actually have to do a hard thing: We’ll actually have to build and promote a winning progressive politics. […] In the place of developing actual politics, [Olberman and these other] well-trained ad salesmen invent inane claims—shriek, clatter, mislead and howl.

Yep.

[Tea Party members] are people who’ve been gouged for years by the deregulated banking, mortgage lending, and commodities trading business, and when Obama sends down very weak, watered-down regulations to deal with those problems, they howl that he’s against “private enterprise” because that’s what they’ve been told to think by the Glenn Becks of the world.
Did you [tea partiers] know that insider trading isn’t even illegal in the commodities trading business? Do you honestly think gas prices were high in 2008 because we weren’t drilling enough in the Gulf of Mexico?
You idiots are being used. Think for yourselves. If the Fox Network believes it so wholeheartedly, how could it possibly be in your interest? They’ll take your ratings, sure, so they can sell you Charmin and $5 footlongs. I mean, Jesus, how can you not see that? If you had real allies that powerful, don’t you think someone would have taken care of you by now?

Matt Taibbi