That darling of the nativist crew, Tom Tancredo, opened the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend with a litany of insults towards President Obama, John McCain, and the culture of multiculturalism (whatever that means).
ABC news reports:
The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House … Barack Hussein Obama.”
Tancredo did not stop at the Democratic president — ripping McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, for shaping up to be a repeat of “Bush 1 and Bush 2.”
“Thank God John McCain lost the election,” he said, voicing his belief that McCain would have presided over big budgets and lacked a tough stand against immigration.
Tancredo served 10 years in the House of Representatives and made a name for himself with his ardent opposition to immigration. He believes the 2008 election served to galvanize the right.
“This is our country,” he told the crowd. “Let’s take it back.”
Is anyone else uncomfortable with Tancredo’s words? Calling the president of the United States a “committed socialist ideologue” is disturbing. One wonders who he means when he says ‘our.’
Tancredo further described the American electorate as “people who cannot even spell the word vote, or say it in English.” Additionally, he called for a culture war in the name of preserving “Judeo-Christian principles whether people like it or they don’t.”
His rhetoric is unacceptable to many Americans. Hopefully the Tea Party people or whatever they want to be called will reject this kind of political mentality. It certainly doesn’t represent MY America. It is still unclear exactly who these folks are or what they want. To the best of our knowledge, and looking at who seems to identify with them, the Tea Party folks seem to be to the right of Republicans. Tancredo, Bachmann, Beck and Palin would fit this description. However, Scott Brown does not. It is expected that they will kick him to the curb now he is no longer needed to prove a point. Brown seems far too moderate and more like John McCain or William Weld.
Many of our contributors defend the Tea Party with their last breath. How do you see the Tea Party? What is their cause? Are they simply a grass organization? If so, why are there so many groups? Are they a populist group similar to the Perot people? Is there one definition of this group or does each splinter group have its own persona?
I’ve talked about this at length with some friends elsewhere; I’ll keep it brief. Tancredo showed himself as a maniac. His paranoic world view is not one that many people can relate to. On top of that, he happily stomped around and displayed zero political acumen or common sense.
I could go along with literacy tests for voting. I want to send a clear strong message to illegal immigrants that they are not welcome, and that we are not a bilingual nation. But Tancredo is not the guy to sell that, or much of anything else.
Despite an ugly rash of immigrant bashing that had I had expected to subside, and despite the Sarah Palin extremists who embarrassed the McCain campaign and have now become the Tea Party, I had expected the Republican party to update itself to the 21st century, not only with regard to web technology, but also with regard to philosophy. Now I am not so sure.
Many of my former colleagues tell me they are cautiously optimistic about the Tea Party because it has galvanizes the Republican base. Some even attribute recent electoral victories to the rise of the Tea Party. I do not. But all of us agree that, if the Tea Party continues to dictate the Republican platform, whatever seats we gain in Congress will come at too great a cost, namely, the soul of our party.
The more media coverage they receive, the more frenzied and frenetic the Tea Party fanatics become, and the more cowed and browbeaten Republican leaders become. If indeed Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party envelop the GOP, there will be no possibility of winning the White House for the rest of my days, and for decades thereafter.
That political pendulum sure is swinging these days, back and forth, back and forth.
Rick, I was sort of shocked that Tancredo would talk like that. I probably shouldn’t have been.
I am very strident about voting and having to show ID and all that. I think we as a nation simply wave too many people through. However, they are not necessary people who should not be voting. I just think voting registration ought to be more ceremonious or something. People should have to prove citizenship to register to vote and they should have to prove who they are, within reason, when they go exercise their right to vote. Having to show a government issue ID is not what I consider a hardship. I don’t think that makes me a redneck and I also don’t think that is what Tancredo meant either.
Well, by the time Obama gets finished with his four years, I’m not so sure the position of President will have much importance any more. He could very well weaken the office to nothing. Congress is where the power is, and the way things are going right now, there are only two choices, unbridled prosperity with the right, or total third-world ruin with the left. The first would take decades to build, but the second one wouldn’t take decades at all. It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure!
Let me just say this about Tom Tancredo, he tends to be a bit over board when he…. when he…. what the hell is that sound?
(From the abyss…) era, era, era Hell-Boy! Era, era I’ve heard you like Scott Brown you SOB!
Oh dear god, sorry, I’ve got to go down there and take care of this right away…. Hell-boy, AWAYYYY….yyyyy…..yyyyyyyy………yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Tancredo’s speech was something else. The man is dead accurate with his assessments, I gotta give him that.
Slow, you certainly have a binary view of the world these days. What has happened to you?
You are going to survive. All those people who thought George Bush was going to destroy the country were wrong, just as you will be proven wrong.
ERA? Equal Rights Amendment? Now who would be calling out those forgotten letters?
(loud stage whisper to her audience) M-H is glad Hell-boy has found a personal crusade rather than just being snarky and pesky.
Forget that Nashville meeting, forget the Palin speech, and forget Tancredo. I’m telling you that the real Tea Party Movement is not a political group or collection of groups. It is a state of mind;and no group, political party, or PAC or anything else, can claim to be at the head of the pack. No one is going to be able to claim that he or she is riding this horse and has control of the reins.
The birth mother of the movement was Obama himself in consort with the more extreme elements of his party in the current Congress. However, the fiscal and economic mistakes of George Bush were also a big factor in the original conception. The Obama people misread the 2008 election as a total mandate to do whatever they wanted without a concensus of the people; and they found out over the past year that they are very poor readers of the public will. You cannot deny that they were flabbergasted and shocked by the angry voices raised against the current health care reform proposals. They never saw it coming or even cared to look.
The goal of the movement is to move this country back to a less extreme and more reasoned governance based on the constitutional principles which have so long guided us. It is a call for a return to respect for the rule of law and for the opinions of the people who hired the politicians in the first place. It is a call for a return to fiscal and monetary sanity and for the politicians to let the people who are the integral cogs of our economic engine do what they do best: work hard and build without undue governmental interference. It is not a call for political anarchy or chaos. It is a call for a return to common sense and national comity.
Both parties, Democratic and Republican, would do well to run scared, because both of them have gone off the rails in the past decade. This movement is out to bust up a lot of bloated egos and bring the self-centered and self-aggrandizing politicos of whatever stripe back to earth and back to a realization that they are servants of the people, not some sort of House of Lords. The tools of the movement are voices raised in protest in accordance with the constitutional right to petition one’s government for redress of grievances plus the almighty power of the voting booth. Political party labels will be of no help to politicians who continue to ignore the movement and act like they have a divine right to rule. The movement wants these politicians to stop their private inter-party fights and address the critical issues facing the entire country by listening more closely to the voices of the people and then engaging in genuine bi-partisan solutions to those problems — solutions which do not benefit one sector of the population at the expense of another, thereby perpetuating internal societal antipathy.
There is anger out there in the hinterland; and, the longer both parties play their partisan and unproductive games in Washington, the hotter and faster the pot will boil. These politicians had better sit their sorry asses down and negotiate in good faith some non-ideological, equitable, and common sense solutions to our problems ASAP, or a large number of them are going to become retired politicians in 2010 and 2012. The wheels of this great republic are spinning out of control, and the People do not like that one bit.
And one personal note for Last Best Hope: Your a good man; but you have to realize that “our party” — your party — blew it six ways to Sunday over the past few years. The Tea Party movement will not let Republicans think they can get away with politics as usual anymore than the Democratic Party can. The movement is not seeking to apply hard and fast answers to the platforms of either party. All we are asking is for all of the poiticians to listen first and then get in there and come up with some answers that meet the expectations of as many of the rest of us as possible. Cut the crap and get to work, or your next pay packet may have a pink slip in it. We have had enough of the wheel spinning.
Thanks for sharing your opinion, Wolverine. I think more people would be inclined to agree with the Tea Party if you were in charge and what you said is what things were really about. Look how many people, myself included, claim to be an Independent. I think many of the things you said just explained why.
If Obama is the engine drivine the train, then many other people have certainly gotten a by on that one. I watched the same drum beat with Clinton. By the time people stopped screaming about him, he looked like Stalin incarnate. I expect the same thing was done to George Bush Jr.
However, what the American people see on the news and read in print is not what you have stated. Instead, we see Tom Tancredo and Sarah Palin. Yours becomes a voice in the wilderness and that is a shame. I would far rather hear you than one of those clowns, and to me, both of those people I just named are clowns. (and there are many others)
Most people just start to shut down over it. I grew so weary of hearing people beat up on Clinton, then on George Bush, that I just shut all sources down. The same thing will happen over this president.
I can’t say I buy Wolverine’s reading of the “birth” of the birthers and other extremist movements crowding the Republican party from the fringe right.
Policy? Hardly. The people who attended the Palin rallies in 2008 didn’t know what Obama’s policy proposals were any more than they knew what McCain’s policy proposals were. The market hadn’t crashed, no one cared about unemployment or even the deficit. For these people it was simply a culture war, and Sarah was playing them into a frenzy of paranoia over William Ayres and countless other irrelevancies that had nothing at all to do with policy.
As I see it, the Tea Party and the Tom Tancredo types are are essentially the children of the Republican electorate, not that they are young in years, but in terms of sophistication, they are, let’s just say, in the developmental stage. “Children should be seen but not heard,” as the saying goes. And in the business of politics, it is best for all involved if this voting block is heard (at the polls) but not seen by the public as the face of the party.
McCain’s sensible positions on the core issues made him the best candidate in the field, on both sides of the aisle, but they also enraged the fringe right, and there were some who wrongly feared that the children would not come out to play, i.e. vote, unless they had one of their own on the ticket. My argument at the time was that they would come out to vote against Obama, if not to vote for McCain. But, despite an illustrious list of statesmen who might have met this criteria (and I don’t agree it had to be a woman), we somehow ended up with a VP candidate who was twice as arrogant as George Bush, and less than half as bright. To make matters worse, Mrs. Palin encouraged the children in the party to think and say foolish, sometimes hateful things on TV, just about every day. When McCain was not victorious, the children could not blame themselves, because that is not what children do. No, they blamed McCain despite the fact that he was and hopefully still is the kind of Republican we need, not only to win national elections, but also for the good of the country.
Still, the blame and the anger were palpable, and so, people with a lot of passion and not a lot of judgment endeavored to take over the party. Apparently no one had any better ideas, and here we are.
Tom Tancredo is crystal-clear proof that much of the opposition directed at Obama is based on race. He does not respect the fact that a majority of Americans elected Obama. It is good that he quit Congress.
The Tea Partiers want Obama to fail in his quest to bring jobs and affordable health care to Americans. This is why the Tea Partiers are anti-American. They also never have anything good to say about our country.
Sarah Palin is nothing but a celebrity out to make money for herself. She has no concrete solutions for solving the problems of unemployment or the high cost of health care. She laughs at people who are unemployed.
One more thing about Tancredo – there are rumours circulating that he is a closet homosexual.
We’re in a more binary world these days. Bush was a Republican who acted like a Democrat-lite, pretty much in the middle making both sides mad. Now we’ve swung violently to the left, and the reaction is hard right. I feel certain I’ll survive, I’m not too worried about that. I just hope freedom survives. And the fact that people who thought Bush would destroy the nation were wrong, you are correct. But they were wrong by design. It is the destiny, the lot in life of those people to be consistently wrong about everything.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present……Starryflights!!
Here’s another interesting item about a candidate in the Texas gubernatorial race. Her name is Debra Medina. The Tea Party folks have loved her. But she was outed as a 9/11 Truther by – of all people – Glenn Beck!
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/021210dntexmedina.425478b.html
I think the Tea Partiers are coming unravelled.
On Sarah Palin:
“http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/02/sarah-palin-is-fucking-retard-forget.html”
But in her brief, hand-scripted Q&A after, swear to god, the Rude
Pundit couldn’t figure out what the fuck she was saying on a very
basic English language level. Read this shit about her litmus test for
endorsing candidates: “But if they feel that they’ve been taxed enough
already and that they make us a commitment that they are going to do
something about it and if they just believe in that constitutional
limited government that the federal government has got to start
abiding by, a lot of the things that perhaps the details, the things
on the periphery that perhaps I wouldn’t agree with every single
aspect of their agenda that they would like to implement, they have
got the basics down, I think it would be wise for us to be
supportive.” What the fuck is that? Palinonics, a language that only
makes sense to people dazzled by the shine off her glasses. She makes
George W. Bush seem like William F. Buckley.
Agree that Tancredo sounds like a hard core bigot, who sees America as invaded by non-whites who can’t spell “vote”.
“All those people who thought George Bush was going to destroy the country were wrong” – well he DID do more harm than even his worst enemies thought possible.
The Tea Party seems to have the same identity crisis as the GOP. Some intelligent people interested in conservativism mixed together with abject imbeciles who can hardly spell “vote”, held tenuously together by not much more than fear of liberals.
I think I’m going to be saying farewell. No offense to anyone, but this blog just isn’t my cup of tea. (pun intended) There is just too much focus on Sarah Palin, Fox News and Tea Parties for my tastes. (Of the 15 stories on the front page, 6 are about Palin, Fox News or Tea Parties, 5 about the snow storms, 3 about state issues and one about the school roof problems.) There isn’t a single story about policy changes within the Obama Administration or pending legislation in Congress.
I know that everyone has different tastes and I’m the type that would much rather read a copy of Roll Call than watch The View. But this focus on what a former Congressman or the former Governor of Alaska say to a crowd of their supporters isn’t for me. Particularly when important stories (like that the projected debt for FY11-FY21 increased by $1.6 trillion dollars between October 2009 and February 2010.) aren’t deemed newsworthy. Or even that come January there will not be a member of the Kennedy family in Congress for the first time since 1947. It’s just that it feels like these “If I ain’t local, it’s Palin” stories crowd out more newsworthy subjects for discussion here.
Please keep in mind that this is meant as an explanation for my departure, not as criticism. You are free to host discussions on whatever topics you would like and it is to the credit of most everyone here that the discussions are generally civil. And there is nothing wrong with having a blog that focuses on the exploits of Palin, Fox News and the Tea Party crowd. It’s just not a blog I’d choose to participate in any more than I would participate in a blog about 18th Century Chinese poetry. I suppose the proper thing for me to do would be to start a blog of my own with subjects I wanted to discuss, but I do not have the time to commit to that.
In any case, I wish all of you the best. Take care, and have fun! And remember the most important rules in politics are “Sic Transit Gloria” and “This too shall pass”
The tea party movement is a conglomeration of people upset with what is happening now, but I don’t think they’ll ever gel into a long term party. They are composed of very different people who would have too many serious disagreements to ever form a party platform. For the most part, they are fairly average people who were fed up. Of course there are a few nuts in the bunch just like all movements, but most of the people at the rallies seemed like they could be anybody. However they are effective at being a big group of “we’re not going to take it anymore” activists. My prediction is once the government starts to slide back towards normal middle of the road (slightly conservative), then most of them will start to peel off. If you aren’t mad anymore because things are better, you aren’t going to go to a tea party rally because you are working and living your lives.
Of course they will be a few die hards who hold on and try to keep a group growing, but once the majority of people isn’t so mad anymore, the movement will just die on its own as it should. There isn’t anything wrong with that and it doesn’t mean the tea party people were wrong. Instead it means they were certainly effective enough to get what they want and then most of them are happy to go back leading their normal lives.
Well, what an interesting mornings read.
Scary even. I found myself agreeing with Rick.
Formerly Anon, good bye and good luck. you should start your own blog. You have some good information. However, working with that kind of information takes time and skill. As you can see from reading this blog, time spent is often unrewarding. I probably don’t have the skills either. Too bad AW Cheney doesn’t still have her blog. It was well reseached and dealt with much more cerebral topics than I do.
As for the topics of Palin, Tea Parties, Fox News and snow storms, Those are the entities that pretty much drive discussion, especially political discussion. I am sad to say.
Anona, I am concerned that everyone seems to define normal as where their own pendulum stops on the political spectrum. Now why would the middle of the road be considered slightly conservative? Why wouldn’t it be neutral if it were the middle? Other than those couple of points, you might very well be correct other than in my life, I can’t remember a time when people weren’t hugely mad about something. I don’t think they were always as rude as people are now though, but perhaps I don’t remember well.
I’m a simpleton.
I am simply sick of tea parties.
You will probably be a lot sicker of them before all is said and done.
Try coffee klatching. What you want to talk about?
@Moon-howler
Oh don’t take it as criticism on the topic, MH. It’s certainly current and necessary. I’m just sick of the movement and the crazies it attracts.
As for coffee parties, I am not sure what they will accomplish, but I applaud the efforts to bring forward other opinions. I just hope extremists won’t infiltrate that movement as well.
I agree Pinko. Extremist regardless of persuasion just muddy the waters and quickly become tiresome.
The boiling lava of the Tea Party movement will act as a magnet for
marginilized wackos like Tancredo until it starts to harden around
a coherent plan of action. Right now it is all raw emotion. I’m
mad – I feel dissed and government, banks, immigrants, liberals, DINOs
etc. are the fault. The old “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going
to take it anymore!”
The problem is, Rick, that the Tea Party does not have an identity crisis. They know who they are. They know who they fear. They know where they want to go, and it’s in the wrong direction for the Republican party and for the country. It’s the intelligent people interested in fiscal conservatism who are suffering the identity crisis. If we say something publicly that alienates the Tea Party, we lose in the primaries, or, we lose in the general because we don’t have enough of an electorate. The real Republican party is at a low point right now. The Tea Party is taking advantage of a weakness they helped to cause, and the more influence they have on Republican messaging and tactics, the weaker the party will become. How much longer can our conscience endure this hate and fear-based fun house touring the country and pushing us around while we paint a smile on our face and pretend we like it? I’m sick of it.
The “real” Republican party has brought America down over the last decade … if the Tea Party forces them to the right, and helps to give Americans a choice on issues, then that’ll be a real service. I wish them godspeed. But I can’t pretend that Tancredo’s speech isn’t a big embarassment. Or find their courting Sarah Palin to deign to speak to them for $100,000, to rail on Obama for using teleprompters while she scribbles notes on her own hand, isn’t absurd.
The Republican Party of George W Bush and John McCain is the worst of both worlds.
co-sign with Poor Richard
” Huey campaigned furiously around the state, speaking at dusty
crossroads and in shaded courthouse squares, his voice raucous and
confiding, his arms pumping up and down, his seersucker suit stained
with sweat. The poor white farmers – lean, leather-faced, rawboned men,
surly and proud – crowded to see him. …. The oligarchy bewailed his
uncouthness, his vituperation, his lack of dignity …. the ambitious
young politician from the sticks, making his way to the top by rousing
the boobs and denoucing the interest. … In 1928 Huey Long was elected
Governor of Louisana.”
The Politics of Upheaval
Arthur Schlesinger, 1960
The Tea Party movement — variations on a theme?
I can’t help but think that the Tea Party people with whom I have some sympathy are really ordinary people. I think this convention is an example of an attempt to highjack a movement that has some legitimate concerns.
People who search for power will always gravitate to a grass roots popular movement in the hopes that they find their relevance as “leaders” of the movement. As I recall, most of the Tea Party people stayed away because the convention was going in a direction they didn’t want to go.
I think people will make a mistake to criticize the movement because of a convention that does not necessarily reflect the movement or for “leaders” who may in fact be opportunists rather than true leaders.
By the way, I have never been to a gathering called a tea party nor have I been inclined to go. But I do have some similar concerns that are reflected in the premise of the movement.
By the way, I think it is a mistake to view the Tea Party movement as a “republican” party.
I would wager that blue dogs are also part of the movement and those are identified with the “democratic” party.
Now that’s one of the more intelligent things I’ve seen written about the Tea Party movement.
History repeats itself, as you’ve often pointed out in your historical posts which I always enjoy. Some things never change….
Rez, what do you think separates the current Tea Party movement from other populist movements?
I haven’t heard of any blue dog Democrats involved yet. Operative word here…heard of..
Any thing written with nasty words like that shows the intelligence of whoever the author is – which is obviously not very intelligent. It’s one thing to express a strong opinion, it’s another to use nasty words and things like retard and name calling. When you don’t have anything smart to say, start name calling. That works every time. Makes me wonder why this piece from some other blog or something was posted here! There’s plenty of other much SMARTER anti-Palin commentary to be found!
I would say too, that transcript was made purposely to be run-on sentences. Again, they lost any chance they had of winning me over when I saw the language in the URL, and the 4-letter word laced rant.
You can’t win someone over with language like that. But I parsed what she said, if you separate it out into sentences you can see what she’s saying. Transcribing an off-the-cuff remark like that, it can definitely be written to sound like a very confused long run-on sentence. I’m sorry, the writer is biased and uses expletiives and other things, and if you ask me he/she purposely made Palin sound like she speaks in confused run-on sentences.
I’d like to see the Q&A and see if that’s how she really spoke. Even if she did, I’d like to see other people try and stand up and speak off-the-cuff. It is very hard, I do it all the time at customer reviews and know I speak in run-on sentences too when being asked technical Q&A’s. This clearly shows the writer’s bias and unintelligence since the writer of that blog entry (the original blog) chose to express himself/herself very very unintelligently – but probably shows their IQ level is not high.
The “Rude Pundit” – not only rude but filthy if you ask me. Rude Pundit needs his/her mouth washed out. I’m not interested in visiting that blog if that’s an example of the level of writing style over there. Very nice! Pulitzer-prize winning material for sure – that blog needs to get nominated right away!
” The combination of the two shocks – the swift passage from black
discouragement to exaggerated optimism – left the people, or at least
volatile minorities among them, excited and vulnerable…. a diffuse
and indignant political activism now appeared, compounded of
chaotic but passionate yearnings for recognition, salvation,
and revenge.”
“The Rise of the Demagogues – 1934”
The Politics of Upheaval
Arthur Schlesinger, 1960
Ah, I took a look at that website. Indeed, a very angry angry angry person writes it, who hates hates hates conservatives. It is laced with foul language. I can’t believe anyone would read that blog on a regular basis. Anyone who doesn’t believe me – go to the link in the post further up. And they say the Tea Party folks are angry….. This person sounds like he/she belongs in an insane asylum. I’d be afraid to encounter that person on a desserted street – he/she really has it in for the conservatives! What an angry soul…
I did not mean purely elected officials. I am speaking of people who consider themselves blue dog democrats or simply put, fiscally conservative people who identify with the democratic party.
That’s what I thought you meant. You don’t have to be an elected official to be a “blue dog democrat” even though a group of fiscally conservative democrats in congress coined the term. I’m sure there’s people out there who self-identify as blue dog democrats, and wouldn’t surprise me a bit of some were at the Tea Parties.
I do think that many of us in places like Northern Virginia live in a sort of “isolation bubble” marked by our advanced educational resumes and a life of professionalism. Many, many of us, no matter what our geographical origins,, are involved either directly in government or with companies which feed off of government contracts. Over time, we lose whatever intellectual connection we had with our places of origin. I can count myself as a resident of that isolation bubble. I take Loudoun County, for example. For years we have had unemployment levels anywhere between 2.5 to 5 percent. We understand from our reading and other news sources that there are severe problems elsewhere, but we are sort of insulated from that in many ways — except that the failures of many small businesses and the spike in housing foreclosures have brought us just a bit closer to reality this time around.
I think that one of the by-products of that isolation bubble — and I count myself as one of the frequent violators in that regard — is that we begin to look down on those in the hinterland who do not share our bubble. I think that is reflected in two prinicipal ways: (1) a tendency to believe that the “average Joe” out there in protest really doesn’t have the level of knowledge or the intellect to understand what is going on in Washington; and (2) a tendency to focus too much on the extremists and to conclude that the entire populist movement out there is somehow under the guiding thumb of those extremists — like some sort of ignorant puppets ready to follow any Pied Piper. In effect, we, on an intellectual plane, have picked up some of the same attitudes as the politicians which I declaimed against in my previous post.
I had a stroke of luck. Once out of the government milieu, I got involved in genealogical and family history. This meant that I had to exit the bubble and go back into close contact with my origins, past and present. I myself came out of a union family — U.A.W, to be exact — in an industrial Midwestern town. I grew up on a diet of union talk and Walter Reuther and George Meany and everything which that entails. I am the “black sheep” of that family in the sense that I escaped from that mileu and entered this isolation bubble. Much of my family, included even those with advanced educations and professional careers elected to stay there and lead their lives amindst their strong blue collar origins. Did I mention the unemployment levels in Loudoun County? In my hometown the base unemployment level is over 15 percent. You have to add to that (1) those who have given up; and (2) the working poor, who still cannot make it despite clinging to the few service jobs which may be left. Restaurants long a fixture in that town are closing. Shopping malls are virtually empty and almost to the point of collapse. Food banks, rescue missions, and other charities are pleading for dollars from those of us who are still basically untouched by the current problems. I can guarantee you that there is anger out there in a place where not even a vaunted 900 billion dollar stimulus package raised the economic tide enough to make much of a difference. And that anger can be found in Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics –the three major segments of the population.
My intellectual pursuits have led me elsewhere as well — to the High Plains, to the Mountain States, to the Deep South, and to the West Coast. I have found that anger everywhere. And it is not partisan anger,e.g., Democrat vs Republican. It is a general anger. One fellow, far from being an extremist of any kind, even stated that the unemployment has begun to hurt so much and raise tempers to such a degree that he would not be surprised if some sort of violent protests are not far off. Another described the downward fall of the tourist economy in Vegas and Reno and the leaving of so many people with nowhere to go, to a point where they are experiencing such things as frequent armed holdups of convenience stores and other business of the sort not seen in living memory. To the anger is added fear — including the fear of living out in the rural areas and being caught off-guard.
But one other thing. Do not make the mistake of denigrating the knowledge and understanding of those people out there. I have matched my multiple college degrees, my travel throughout the world, my understanding of how Washington works, and my intense study of foreign cultures against many of these people back home, and I have discovered that I don’t know jack about so many aspects of real life. These people know how to build things, how to fix things, how to run businesses, how to grow food, and how to raise livestock. It is my conclusion that, if this country ever suffered a major catastrophe, they would be the ones to survive and I would be the one who went under. In effect, I have regained a healthy respect for the places from which I and my spouse came. I will no longer underestimate those people when their anger surfaces. They know a bad deal when they see one. They know a dishonest politician when they see one. They know a bullshitter when they see one. They were preoccupied before with making this country work, but now they are waking up and looking in this direction. And they are not happy with what they see. It is not a matter of political parties or PACS or anything politically organized. It is, as I said before, a state of mind.
Sarah bombs at Houston motivational seminar –
After her Tea Party Convention speech this weekend, Sarah Palin flew to Houston to continue campaigning for herself. The news focused on her appearance at a Rick Perry rally, but Palin also appeared at another event in Houston: a “motivational seminar” at the Toyota Center at which she was the featured attraction.
A reporter writes:
“I wasn’t motivated” one man said to me in the elevator as I left the speech, “she sounded un-prepared and erratic and focused an awful lot on her script.”
[…]
Sarah Palin had another engagement in California later in the afternoon and didn’t have a minute to waste. The speech itself seemed more like a sermon, Sarah frequently attributed “God” and “Jesus Christ” to lifting her out of despair. She gave several long rambling examples of tough times in Alaska, during which she would occasionally lose her footing and immediately jump to praising the state for its beauty.
[…]
She ended by spending several minutes with her head down reading from the podium and gave a very abrupt and final “God Bless America” before departing the stage. As she left one man with a thick country drawl leaned over to me and said “you know, she’s not that impressive in person.”
“http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/exclusive-sarah-palins-debut- motivat”
Very insightful, Wolverine. And that was the discussion I hope would develope from this thread. Thank you.
It is strange how different people experience things. My father grew up in the north east and I believe his family had a fairly rough time during the depression. Not catastrphic but also not easy. My mother grew up in Charlottesville and her father was a civil engineer who at least during part of that time served as City Manager. She said she didn’t recall times being tough at all. Maybe people watched what they spent a little more but she didn’t suffer hard times and she knew where her next meal was coming from. What a stark contrast to many others.
Wolverine, are you suggesting that people aren’t angry over the same thing because of regionalism or occupation? Also, so much of this stuff that has cratered our economy didn’t start yesterday. Who are they blaming?
Wolverine, I spend a lot of time in parts of the country where people are less likely to have a college degree. They aren’t necessarily Tea Party sympathizers. They don’t even know about it. They are just focused on making ends meet and putting bread on the table. I think that most of the people going to these conventions and rallies are just hyper-partisan Republicans who, as many have said above, want the Republican party to take a hard turn to the right.
To me, this really means a U-turn into the past. It does make for a stark choice between the two parties, but I don’t think this is doing Americans any favor. Unless you are really way out there and believe the most ridiculous lies, also pointed out by many above, how can you support the Republican candidate? It gives most Americans in the middle LESS choice not more. If the Tea Party and the Republican Party unite as Sarah Palin wants them too, moderate and factually-oriented Americans will have no choice at all because Republicans will be completely outside the mainstream. I prefer to have a choice. Honestly, the Republicans were better under Bush. I really mean that. These Tea Party people can’t even let go of the birth certificate fairy tale. It’s really disconcerting and alienating to listen to these people talk.
@Wolverine
I commend you for your comments. There is so much that I agree with. The funny thing is that when I see a long post, I usually skim over it but in yours, I read it twice. That by the way was not a criticism of the length of the post as I sometimes write something I think is concise and I am amazed at how long it actually was.
I am completely in agreement with you about who would survive and who would have a hard time. I too am spending some of my retirement time doing genealogical research and I am amazed at what our forebears did as a matter of course in a day, even just a generation or two before. I know my father could do many of the things that I wouldn’t even try to do but they didn’t think anything of it because everyone just did it.
Anyway, thank you for your eloquent post and I hope people will take the time to read it.
Actually, that wasn’t all for Wolverine, I was responding to the general flow of conversation for the most part.
And what’s with the filthy mouth on the Rude Pundit? I guess I had assumed such language wasn’t allowed here.
Actually, the liberal potty-mouth is no real surprise….it’s about as deep as they get. Let’s see, how should we describe Starryflight’s coarse and vulgar display? How about “trend-setting”? Is that glorifying enough? I LOVE that Sarah Palin is going to be around to drive the left bananas. She knows that’s her job, and she’s AWESOME at it!
@Wolverine
Hey Wolverine! We’ve got a little in common!
I too come from a UAW family. My dad worked at Caterpillar in York, PA. I stood on the picket lines with him when the UAW would strike every couple years, and stood in line to pick up government cheese, too…..remember that? 🙂 I won a UAW scholarship to my first year in college with an essay about Walter Reuther. Man, brings back memories!
Ok, I am looking for the potty mouth and I don’t see it. Help me out here. I can’t do anything about it if it is invisible. I see a link. Don’t go to the link Starry left if it offends you.