Discussion for article #234682
Not a single mention of Astro-turf.
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The salient feature of the Tea Party is contempt for power that it does not control.
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This is a horribly ignorant portrayal of the Tea Party movement, isn’t it? The entire fucking thing was a concocted, ginned-up Outrage-o-thon organized, funded, and lavishly promoted by Armey and his pals, FoxNews, and the rest of the financial interests within the GOP, who collectively realized that they could combine the Evangelical Christianist Bible-thumpers with the paranoid nutty descendants of the John Birch Society to get a comically gullible and jaw-droppingly ignorant group of white people who would reliably vote their anger and fears.
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The term Tea Party is mere marketing. The same loons in the party before the Tea Party are still there now. They just brilliantly drew a circle around the loons and started calling them the Tea Party. It gives media something to talk about and they now get air time and treated like they’re some sort of insurgent populist movement. It’s worked out well and they have been able to drag the GOP far to the right and the media have happily joined in on the scam. These Tea Party people we once called John Birchers. Fortunately, the right-wing nuttery is not palatable to the country on a national stage.
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Funny, I basically wrote the same comment at the same time. So I agree.
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Moreover, a policy of non-compromise results in austerity by gridlock, just the outcome that pleases the Tea-Party-funding elites that want a government unable to regulate their industries.
And this will be the biggest, most important legacy of the modern day republican party. By starving the beast they drive all the smart people out of government service and make the bureaucracy a employer of last resort populated by fools, incompetents and grifters. It will end up re-creating our society in the image of the banana republics.
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People have conveniently forgotten that FoxNews, particularly Hannity, breathlessly promoted the impending “Tea Party” rallies for weeks before they occurred. Grass-roots my ass.
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Yep, they organized this effort. It was really a brilliant scheme that’s worked out well for Fox News. The longterm play is probably not as great for the GOP, but ratings are doing great at Fox News.
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Cruz’s unelectability will help shape a more moderate and electable GOP candidate. Cruz’s place isn’t in the WH, its continuing to battle it out in the senate.
I agree with you on that. In some ways, this article almost sounds like she’s trying to be too cute by half. She’s making some kind of academic treatise out of something which I think is simpler in nature. You don’t need to be a PhD candidate to see what’s happened. I disagree with this in particular,
The shift will not represent an insurgency against a Republican establishment, as the Tea Party is often wrongly described.
I think the teabaggers ARE an insurgency against what was the GOP establishment. Well, now that the teabaggers been thoroughly coopted, you can’t tell the difference but, at one time, the Birchers and the fundie nutjobs were pretty much sidelined and used when necessary. As you said, they’ve now been merged together to serve the interests of the 1% as a cudgel against the rest of America.
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“To understand Cruz’s role in 2016, one must recognize that the Tea Party
in Washington today is a not an insurgency from below. It is a
realignment within the Republican establishment that has committed the
party to a position of extreme non-compromise.”
It is exactly the ability to compromise that makes our system work.
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I liked the Tea Party better when they referred to themselves as “Tea Baggers” … and before they learned the sexual connotations of tea bagging.
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Ignorant? Check
God-botherer? Check
Shows no other purpose in life other than trying to piss off liberals, only to step on his party’s dick in the process? Check, check and check
Yep, that’s their guy.
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“Slice-ification.”
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This is a Cafe piece, FYI…
Further evidence that calling this site “left-leaning journalists” is one part lie, one part barely true.
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Spot on. And btw, you and @bluestatedon basically summarize the piece:
Let’s remember: The Tea Party, more than an organization or even a movement, was a political moment. In early 2009, the person and the policy proposals of President Barack Obama galvanized grassroots conservatives. But, after the exceptionally unpopular President Bush left office, the Republican brand was toxic and the party leadership was in disarray. Encouraged by conservative media, rank-and-file Republicans built ad hoc local “Tea Party” groups to oppose the new president’s agenda. There was plenty of room at the top for any Republican who could seize the “Tea Party” momentum.
At the national level, those who profited were rarely actual newcomers. Instead, longtime conservative insiders like Dick Armey and Jim DeMint became “Tea Party” leaders. Although the adoption of the Tea Party name and symbolism gave a sense of novelty to this intra-party realignment, there is nothing new about the rightmost wing of the Republican Party except its ever-increasing authority.
Written by an academic, so less vivid than we’d have done (no use of the word “astro-turf,” eg, and yes, underplaying the financing); and omitting the Santelli rant that kicked it off (which did ignite the grassroots; the money and the media turned it into a “movement”). But nonetheless a terrific piece. Worth sending around.
EDIT: And to me, its key point is the reminder that the “Tea Party” isn’t some new thing, but just a new label for the same old hard-right Republican base that’s been ascendant in the party since the 1970s. (See “movement conservatism.”) So electing, say, the “moderate” (!) Jeb Bush won’t mean they’re suddenly capable of governing in the people’s interest. (A point that dovetails nicely with the “president as a thing” piece, actually.) Important stuff to share with the less politically obsessed.
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“Tea Party Darling” = Smartest man on the short bus
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There is no such thing as the “Tea Party”. It is not some humble grassroots movement. The Tea Party was created by the Koch Bros and is just a front to promote their own destructive agenda without getting dirty. Anyone that isn’t a Koch Brother or on their payroll that claims to be a Tea Party Member is an ignorant stooge being manipulated by them and their rhetoric.
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