Definition of Tea Party: We Have a Winner
In a comment to this NMC post about the Tea Party movement, Anderson gives the best definition that I've seen to date of the Tea Party:
people who sat through unprovoked war, massive deficits, and NKVD torture methods, only to flip out when a black man might raise taxes so more people can see a doctor.
I have tried to write a post on the Tea Party, but have not published it because I haven't been able to articulate what bothers me about it. The above definition captures it nicely.
Where was the Tea Party during the Bush administration? How does returning a Republican to the White House address massive deficits and government spending? Is the Tea Party intellectually honest? Is it angry white people who aren't even honest with themselves about what they are unhappy about?
To me this quote paints with a very wide brush and adds nothing to the political discourse. I personally see this as another example that often the most effective way to attack something you don't like is to label it as being the work of a bunch of racist angry white folks. But if that is not bad enough, these tea partiers also apparently condone torture and killing people for no good reason. Why use facts and logic when politically charged buzzwords do the job so well.
That being said, and while I do not personally identify myself with the tea party, I think it is accurate to say that the Tea Party is largely a spin off or outgrowth of the Ron Paul presidential campaign. In my experience, the people who supported Ron Paul are libertarian leaning. They are noninterventionalists as opposed to being "people who sat through an unprovoked war." They were concerned about massive deficits and massively unfunded government promises long before Obama took office. So I am very skeptical that race is a factor for most. But of course I could be wrong as there is no way to prove that they are not really just a bunch of angry white men who are only mad because we have a black president.
Mr. Cory, on your theory, the Tea Party folks should've been out on the streets no later than 2003. But they weren't.
Getting the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the corresponding savings, do not appear to be their priorities.
Instead, as the name "Tea Party" means to suggest, their focus is on allegedly excessive taxation, though they seem to've forgotten the "without representation" component -- perhaps a refresher viewing of Schoolhouse Rock! is in order? And the signs typically seen at their meetings, depicting Obama as the equivalent of Hitler or Stalin, really are worth 10,000 words each.
It seems like the Tea Party has hijacked Ron Paul's agenda for other reasons. How can they blame Obama more than Bush for the current fiscal condition of our county? Doesn't Paul criticize our occupation of Iraq, which could pay for healthcare reform many times over?
Shouldn't Tea Party people be saying we don't like Obama, but Bush was much worse for getting us into Iraq? But they don't. They love people like Sarah Palin who are just like Bush.
It looks intellectually dishonest to me.
Anderson, I don't think what I said about the origins of the tea party is a theory. While it probably does not speak well of the Ron Paul campaign, it could do no better than asking me to serve as the chairman of the campaign in Mississippi. So I was watching the grass roots tea party movement as it got started.
I certainly agree with Philip that the tea party has to a large extent been highjacked by the far right (which is why I do not identify myself with the tea party). But I do know many people who are active in the movement who are true to the original intent, and who are intellectually consistent. But that is not a side that gets any media attention.
As for defending Bush's record, that is a job for someone else as I think he was fiscally irresponsible along with most of the congress. But while Bush is more than fair game in my book, that is not a defense to the even bigger spending that is now being done by the current administration.
My intent in posting was was not to defend the Republicans or attack the Democrats. Rather, it was to state my personal opinion that the quote represents to me the type of sophistry or demogogory that gets in the way of intelligent debate.
As for the questions you ask, and that Philip asked, they are certainly worthy of discussion in my view.
Quit [#**^!@#] lying.
The tea party types opposed the bailouts. The calls ran 300-1 against. DIdn't friggin matter as Congress ignored the people anyway. The tea party members DID oppose Bush's policies, they stayed home in 2006 and 2008 at the polls. Conservatives opposed no child left behind and medicare drug expansion even while Rove attacked them and bought off corporate American with drug subsidies, something they now wish they hadn't done.
Go ahead, play the race card. I like NMC but when it comes to terrorists, he thinks anything that might make them feel uncomfortable is torture and that every soldier on the battlefield deserves a lawyer and trial when we didn't even give the SS the same rights.
I like NMC but when it comes to terrorists, he thinks anything that might make them feel uncomfortable is torture and that every soldier on the battlefield deserves a lawyer and trial when we didn't even give the SS the same rights
Kingfish, it's rhetorically ineffective to accuse others of lying and then go on to, well, lie. NMC has never said any of the things you claim.
As for the Tea Party folks, your speculations are worth their weight in pixels, but the fact remains: where were these demonstrations during the Bush administration? Where are the signs depicting Bush as a socialist? Why do the protesters carry signs suggesting Obama should "return" to Kenya?
Every side has their nutjobs. I could smear Democrats and Liberals with the whackos of Code Pink or Iron Rail if I wanted to. I've yet to see anyone here denouncing SEIU for its violence last summer at health care town hall meetings. Didn't see you cryin racism when they beat up a black man yet when the Tea Party protests against Obama, you call them racists and everything else you can think of. As I said, the protestors DID protest the bailouts during Bush's last year in office and if you remember, Bush had to fight his own party to pass them.
As for NMC, he had no problem with the NY Times outing the identities of military interrogators.