Wow. That’s a lot of words to say that the man is a egomaniacal sociopath who is pandering to a group of people he probably makes fun of behind closed door. Ted Cruz is not a dumb man. It will hurt us in the long run if we don’t remember that. This is all about money. The man is running a long con on the rubes who follow him to separate them from their cash. Think Elmer Gantry with a Harvard pedigree.
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Hoodwinking morons is no Herculean task.
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"the policy proposals of President Barack Obama galvanized grassroots conservatives. "
Bullshit. I can’t even start to take this analysis seriously when this is the kind of bullshit premises (which are simply not supported by the facts or reality) are what it is built on.
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And started less than a month into the President Obaama’s first term in office. To claim this was in response to the Obama Administration polices doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
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What about this:
“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.”
or this:
"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. "
or this:
“There is no contradiction, then, between being a Washington insider and being a “Tea Party” conservative, as long as the candidate is untainted by a willingness to compromise.”
or this:
“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:
“The shift will not represent an insurgency against a Republican establishment, as the Tea Party is often wrongly described.”
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Well, remember that the initial explosion was set off by Santelli’s rant about helping “losers” save their houses amid all the stimulus/auto-rescue stuff. So while it wasn’t yet about health care or immigration, and it was massively fueled by inchoate rage at the Kenyan Muslim socialist usurper, the proximate cause was actually policy-related.
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Exactly, while there was some consternation about the TARP bank bailout of 2008, it wasn’t until the newly-installed Obama administration suggested using some money for foreclosure relief that the goons started marching in the streets.
Also, I don’t share some of the criticisms made here. I think this article is pretty spot-on, and while it’s not as blunt as some would like, its description of the Tea Party as a realighment of the GOP along the line of no-compromise is correct.
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Exactly, the rise of the Tea Party had nothing to do with policy or principled opposition. It was a war cry against the new President.
It’s tragic that so much of the media went along for the ride.
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There was a great article in alternet some months ago about the newt gingrich-initiated braindrain back in the 90’s. Really frightening stuff, conservatives hamstringing better than a generation of capable, intelligent and well intentioned civil servants.
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You mean Bush policies, right?
(wry grin)
“Instead, the Tea Party will have served to benefit a particularly conservative strain of the existing Republican leadership, and a scorched-earth approach to politics that is fundamentally incompatible with governance.”
So much depends on defining "governance", doesn't it? Governance, for the GOP, is often the act of not governing. And it's their right to define it thus. Likewise raising a child can be done many different ways. You can micro-manage and monitor their every move, or at the other end of the spectrum turn them loose with little guidance. I've seen good and bad kids result from either method. Republicans will argue the government does too much micro-managing and monitoring and everything will turn out well with a lot less of both. Less governance. I think constructing a critique alleging a Tea Party approach of intransigence and "saying no" as being presumptively wrong might alienate people you're trying to influence otherwise.Of course, up to a point; but Obama really did propose improvements (ie, expansion) in the housing part and the auto rescue, and the stimulus was all his. As I said, the reaction to Obama himself definitely put the crazy on steroids, but the writer isn’t wrong. Too drily academic, and missing some flesh I’d have put on the bones, but not inaccurate.
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I would agree that Gingrich’s style – much more than Reagan’s – was a precursor to the no-compromise, take-no-prisoners style now favored by Republicans.
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Terrific, important story. Too many people don’t know the history: far from some new aberration, the right-wing destruction of the norms of governing has been decades in the making. Thanks for the link.
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Yes, the Republican Party was demoralized by the abject failures of the Bush-Cheney administration, which left amid an economic crash that was still unfolding well into 2009.
That they lost in 2008 to a suave black Democrat added a new dimension to their outrage, and an urgency and focus to their new organizing tactic as an insurgency of pissed-upon rabble. Unfortunately, Obama the man provided the ideal focus for all of their rage and economic anxiety, and he’s been their punching bag and bete noire ever since.
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The emergence of the Tea Party, neocons, John Birch Society, Heritage Foundation etc. are the natural result of the underlying fundamental nature of conservatism.
By design, all of conservatism’s intellectual and political arsenal is directed at the futile cause of fighting change and progress. Corporate kleptocrats, vulture capitalists and robber barons are drawn to conservatism because of they want to increase and protect their wealth at the expense of the taxpayer. The religious fundamentalists and socially bigoted are drawn to conservatism because they want to defend their anachronistic and absurd belief systems and hateful actions.
It is no surprise that the Republican party has to evolve and create a new and more intense flavor of stupid, ignorant and hateful to represent the aspirations of their base.
The same sort of evolutionary selection takes place in virulent diseases for which treatments are developed. You get drug-resistant pathogens.
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Nice choice of French expressions there…
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Except that it takes a lot of energy. To keep the front lines active, to dissemble 24/7, to find new meat to feed them, new ideas to turn into monumental outrages - takes a certain kind of constant manic energy. Watching Cruz speak, his cadences, his voice lifts, his mania driving the barely-in-control display seems like there’s a meth-fueled energy behind it that only pure narcissism can create. It’s tiring to watch him pontificate and obfuscate with such drive.
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Well, here’s the thing. The “Tea Party” is and has always been the same as the republican party. They are the same outfit, supported and staffed by the same folks. They are nothing new, just a rebranding of the same tired old rejected rhetoric. That’s why they can support and elitist like Cruz with a straight face. In truth, they always have.
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Fox News Channel commentator Juan Williams has said that the Tea Party movement emerged from the “ashes” of Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential primary campaign. Indeed, Ron Paul has stated that its origin was, on December 16, 2007, when supporters held a, 24 hour record breaking, “moneybomb” fundraising event on the Boston Tea Party’s 234th anniversary,[83] but that others, including Republicans, took over and changed some the movement’s core beliefs. Writing for Slate.com, Dave Weigel has argued in concurrence that, in his view, the “first modern Tea Party events occurred in December 2007, long before Barack Obama took office, and they were organized by supporters of Rep. Ron Paul”, with the movement expanding and gaining prominence in 2009.
Journalist Jane Mayer has said that the Koch brothers were essential in funding and strengthening the movement, through groups such as Americans for Prosperity. In 2013, a study published in the journal Tobacco Control concluded that organizations within the movement were connected with non-profit organizations that the tobacco industry and other corporate interests worked with and provided funding for,[88][89] including groups Citizens for a Sound Economy (founded by the Koch brothers). Al Gore cited the study and said that the connections between “market fundamentalists”, the tobacco industry and the Tea Party could be traced to a 1971 memo from tobacco lawyer Lewis F. Powell, Jr. who advocated more political power for corporations. Gore said that the Tea Party is an extension of this political strategy “to promote corporate profit at the expense of the public good.”
Early local protest events
Members of Hoosiers for Fair Taxation stage one of the country’s first local Tea Party protests against mayor Bart Peterson on July 28, 2007 by putting their tax assessments in an oversize tea bag and dunking it into the Broad Ripple Canal. The Sam Adams Alliance awarded organizer Melyssa Hubbard (née Donaghy) the first annual tea party prize for staging these protests.
In September 2005, Birmingham, Al talk show hosts Russ and Dee Fine led a large scale “Tea Party” protest against illegal immigration in Birmingham, AL. On January 24, 2009, Trevor Leach, chairman of the Young Americans for Liberty in New York State organized a “Tea Party” to protest obesity taxes proposed by New York Governor David Paterson and call for fiscal responsibility on the part of the government. Several of the protesters wore Native American headdresses similar to the band of 18th century colonists who dumped tea in Boston Harbor to express outrage about British taxes.
Some of the protests were partially in response to several Federal laws: the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,[96] the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and a series of healthcare reform bills.[99]
New York Times journalist Kate Zernike reported that leaders within the Tea Party credit Seattle blogger and conservative activist Keli Carender with organizing the first Tea Party in February 2009, although the term “Tea Party” was not used. Other articles, written by Chris Good of The Atlantic and NPR’s Martin Kaste, credit Carender as “one of the first” Tea Party organizers and state that she “organized some of the earliest Tea Party-style protests”.
Carender first organized what she called a “Porkulus Protest” in Seattle on Presidents Day, February 16, the day before President Barack Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. Carender said she did it without support from outside groups or city officials. “I just got fed up and planned it.” Carender said 120 people participated. “Which is amazing for the bluest of blue cities I live in, and on only four days notice! This was due to me spending the entire four days calling and emailing every person, think tank, policy center, university professors (that were sympathetic), etc. in town, and not stopping until the day came.”
Contacted by Carender, Steve Beren promoted the event on his blog four days before the protest and agreed to be a speaker at the rally. Carender also contacted conservative author and Fox News Channel contributor Michelle Malkin, and asked her to publicize the rally on her blog, which Malkin did the day before the event. The following day, the Colorado branch of Americans for Prosperity held a protest at the Colorado Capitol, also promoted by Malkin. Carender held a second protest on February 27, 2009, reporting “We more than doubled our attendance at this one.”
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