Washingtonpost.com:
The Gadsden flag, which flew proudly over the 2010 midterm elections, now lies in tatters — rent by internal disagreements, losses among its most visible standard-bearers and a growing sense that the tea party movement, which once looked like it could transform American politics, will soon be nothing more than a blip in the country’s collective memory.
The movement’s journey from boom to bust is the story of American politics writ large. The tea party’s ups and downs (in 2012, mostly downs) highlight some of the key forces shaping today’s battles — from the fissures that threaten to destroy the Republican Party to the perils of a leaderless or multi-leader effort to the difference between proving a point and winning.
I never liked the idea in the first place. I recognized some of the old crowd who were were just putting on different hats. I don’t trust groups that have no head. If they screw up, i want to be able to go to someone to complain. Failure to provide any kind of structure just proves to me that the group wanted to avoid assuming any responsibility.
Now those folks who got into office on a wish and a prayer are holding the rest of us hostage. They don’t carry the wishes of the American people, yet they hold us all hostage to their antiquated, outdated way of thinking. They cannot return to the past.
Tea party, time to sit down and get out of the way of progress. Enough is enough. You will not win.
Your political point is destroying my economic security. Therefore, I consider you my enemy. I stomp on your stolen flag.
Your unlimited spending without holding those doing so responsible, is destroying the economy. Obama has been in office for four years. The Senate has been controlled by Democrats for 6 and done nothing constructive for the economy for 4. The House has been in GOP hands for 2 years. The conservatives/Tea party are in charge of nothing.
The House GOP compromises…and the Senate says, not only no, but…hell no, we won’t compromise. And Obama says the same thing.
Go ahead…keep blaming the Tea Party. But the country committed economic suicide by re-electing a corrupt socialist as President, who only cares about political power for his party. Its either that, or he’s the most inept and idiotic President that we’ve ever had.
Your enemy is yourself.
Nice bail. Isn’t working. The entire country sees what is going on. As for Obama, give me a break. He dragged this country out of a depression. Spending? Socialist? Bwaaaahahahahahahahaha. Don’t make me laugh. BTW, Obama has compromises so many times he is about ready to get in trouble with his own party.
It’s good to know I hit a nerve. That’s quite a mouthful of hate to be spitting out all at once.
I certainly do blame the tea party and Grover No-quest for this one. Have I left out anyone? I even feel sorry for Boehner.
The issue is with the Tea Party’s refusal to compromise at any point – Krauthammer called for the Republicans to make the case for “restrained, rationalized and reformed government”. No one really wants two liberal parties in the US – in all things, balance theory succeeds.
The Tea Party leaders don’t accept that.
Let’s start with the fact that the tea party came along like a gang of thugs, shouted over people at town hall meetings, and then ran off all the moderate Republicans. They elected a bunch of know nothings to congress who have absolutely no understanding of the country’s economy.
They are in charge of NO. They caused economic problems back in 2011 over the debt ceiling–something else they didn’t understand.
My problems are NOT Obama, who by the way is one of the least party connected presidents in history.
I think they served their purpose. I read an article about second parties in Mexico when the Ruling party had been the only party for decades. No other party could rise and challenge their strangle hold on the country. What the ruling party did was to adopt and adapt the challengers platform plankS so that they would continue to garner the most votes. The challenging parties therefore caused the rulers to modify their positions. The Teaparty has done much the same. The DEMS AND REPUBS WILL, FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, NOT FORGET WHAT THE USURPER TEAPARTIERS DID AND WILL TAKE MEASURES TO SEE THAT THEY DON’T DO IT AGAIN BY ABSORBING THEIR POSITIONS. (sorry about the caps but to lazy to re-type)
I hope you are right. I hope they get off the dime and stop those tax cuts from expiring.
It is going to kill me if it happens.
I actually like a little balance. However, what the tea party has to offer is not what I call balance.
For example, I don’t want to round up everyone’s guns. I think there is a lot of room for compromise there. Additionally, I want to keep some tight boundaries on drug use. I just don’t want to keep people imprisoned for life for smoking week. I want to know who is in the country and I don’t want foreign criminals running lose. Nor do I want immigrants tortured.
I don’t want to pay for someone to sit on their lazy ass. I also don’t want children starving and invalids going without food and shelter.
Like I said, balance.
It’s too bad that so many Democrats feel so much more hardened and unwilling to compromise because the Tea Party dared to speak up. It doesn’t give me much hope that there will ever be a viable third party in the US to challenged the long-entrenched do-nothings on both sides of the aisle. I don’t care which side you’re on–if you’ve been in office since the 60’s or 70’s, you’ve probably been there way too long and your primary interest is not your constituents but your retirement package. Those are the real “usurpers” when one bothers to take one’s inside-the-Beltway blinders off.
Maybe some of that would stop by getting rid of the retirement packages. Why can’t congress have what the rest of us have?
I think we need some old lions of the senate around. I actually was not a Kennedy fan. He was far too liberal for me. However, he served a purpose…maybe as a figurehead for all the young pups coming along. Same with Strom Thurmond.
The Tea Party didn’t just speak up. They tried (and continue to try) to drown out everyone else and force their will upon us. I won’t get over June 2011. That was so absurd.
I also saw that some of the tea party was just old retreads like Randall Terry, wearing a different hat. All the BS about it being all about money. Such bs. Many TP-ers tried to sneak back in just not mentioning those social issues.
Now this is small and petty, but I resented the mock outrage over the term tea bagger. After calling themselves that for weeks, all of a sudden someone slams an urban definition down. It was not a term many people were even familiar with….and all of a sudden *I* was a dirty rat. Well, I wasnt the one running all over hell and half acre with tea bags swinging off me saying I was a tea bagger.
I had a professor who tried to teach us that you need to vote the bastards out after two terms, even if they are your bastards. After two terms, a politician owes something to somebody for staying in office and no longer is in a position to make independent choices.
I think that is the companion notion that I espouse: All politicians are whores. It costs so much to run for office that everyone is owned by someone.
I have never been a big fan of term limits. Everytime I have agreed with them, someone comes along that I want to keep. Its hard enough to find a politician who doesn’t piss you off. Why shouldn’t you be able to keep someone you like if everyone else likes them?
I agree that the Tea Party started off as a necessity but was hijacked by some extreme cases (Judson Phillips) and amoral businesses (Koch Bro). It was a major step forward toward a viable third party and it will happen. It HAS to.
There’s a large void for Americans who don’t subscribe to the hard extremes in either party. And I think that’s a pretty big group.
Right now the tea party has Speaker Boehnor by his privates. He is afraid of them. He wants to cut a deal but he is afraid to lose his chair. He couldn’t even get his own members to support his deal. The House has been totally dysfunctional for two years.
The Tea Party will force the House to continue to be dysfunctional. It’s been a tick on the neck of the Republican Party for a couple years. It hasn’t enough money to become a viable third party at this point and the regular Republican Party has scared off too many voters to win without Tea Party votes.
New Effort in Congress to Extend Disputed Farm Bill
By RON NIXON
Published: December 28, 2012
WASHINGTON — Hoping to stave off the expiration of dozens of farm programs and a return to an antiquated 1949 farm law that could lead to a doubling of the price of milk, Senate and House leaders worked Friday to devise legislation that would extend the current farm bill.
The most recent farm bill, passed in 2008, expired on Sept. 30. If a new bill is not passed or the current one extended by Tuesday, farm programs would lose billions of dollars in financing and would revert to the 1949 law. The old law would reintroduce higher government price supports for milk, corn, rice, wheat and other crops and could lead to higher consumer prices and federal spending.
Congressional aides say the extension could be for a year, giving farmers, who have been battered by the worst drought in 50 years, a reprieve after lawmakers were unable to come up with a new farm bill.
The Senate passed a farm bill, but the House failed to bring up its version for a vote after Republicans split over the size of the cuts to nutrition programs.
The rush to get an extension comes after Senate and House Agriculture Committee leaders failed to get the White House and Congressional Republicans to include a new farm bill as part of a deficit deal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/us/politics/new-effort-in-congress-to-extend-disputed-farm-bill.html?_r=0
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, expect your grocery bills to rise significantly if no deal gets done. Thanks, Tea Party.
@Lyssa I submit that the status quo has been far more dysfunctional than the Tea Party. Sure, the TP message was expressed inelegantly, but it was a start. I think a lot of true conservatives were initially turned on to the TP message, because they felt the Republicans had abandoned them.
@Moon-howler In fairness, the whole “teabagger” thing happened because some Florida retirees who are not generally cued in to Urban Dictionary used the word and yes, wore the teabags around their hats. That’s a poor excuse for so many on the left to go apeshit in mocking well-intentioned elderly citizens trying to get involved. Those who so sneeringly used that term meant it exactly in the Urban Dictionary way, so their feigned innocence of just repeating what the TP’ers say about themselves is laughable.
That being said, I never understood why my parents and many of their friends became such ardent Tea Partiers. My dad has done quite well for himself in retirement (starting at age 55!), managing to make more in retirement than he ever did working. They have nothing to worry about.
Your parents are lucky! I don’t know why they would go TP either. Have they gotten over it yet?
I honestly hadn’t heard that expression. I think a whole lot of people hadn’t and just didn’t want to admit to it.
Any time someone gets a goat, it is going to continue. ” You didn’t make this” ran the same track other than it wasn’t vulgar.
@Moon-howler
One of the least party connected? From the Chicago machine> hahahahahaha!
Since its the spending that is going to send us over the real cliff, of course the TP is saying NO. Its called hitting the brakes.
Actually if you knew much about democrats or the Chicago machine, you would know that Obama is really fairly independent of them all. Its easy to fall into stereotypes though. That’s probably the reason I think most current Republicans are flat earthers and that only the older ones like the Bushes and the Doles have any brains.
Fox News anchors were holding up tea bags as a symbol to the Tea Party – they should have known better.
Calling the Tea Party a grass roots organization, is like saying a Big Mac is healthy because it has lettuce on it.
bwaaahahahahahaha! Good one Pat. I had forgotten about the Fox News anchors and their tangling participles…err tea bags.
You know, as a tea drinker. Tea bags are tea bags. Those people do not represent anything but flat earth.
@Emma
They captured my attention but what happened in Michigan changed my mind. And the more I read about Koch Bros.
When you’re paying 8 bucks for milk in a couple weeks, you can blame the tea party. Good job.
I knew you’d be the first one here one to buy that line of BS. Thanks for not letting me down.
@Starryflights
Report in how you like it, Emma.
No it’s not bs. You will find out soon enough. What you tea baggers don’t get is that it is not enough to yell “Duh, we should cut spending!” That’s not a governing philosophy. You have to be specific. If you don’t want to spend money on programs like farm subsidies, you had better be prepared for the consequences. They can be severe.
You don’t read well, do you?
@Starryflights
I don’t read well. That has already been discovered by Cargo. If I read better I would agree with him.
This is for you, Starry. Just something to help you increase your vocabulary a bit:
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Cursing-Match-Profanity-Generator/dp/0762435755/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356876367&sr=8-1&keywords=curse+generator
@Moon-howler
If you read better, you would be reading what I’m actually writing, instead of construing alternate meanings, finding “hate,” or acknowledging double standards.
Not agreeing with me.
nah, I recognize hate when I see it. REading you loud and clear.
I heard what you wrote about the Prez. I can say with a clear conscience I would have never spoken of Pres. Bush that way.
@Moon-howler
Yes…I wrote about President Obama lying. If a President lies, you SHOULD call him on it. And if his policies seem to follow one or another political philosophy…. you should say so.
But you seem to be a mind reader if you see hate. Pretty good gig. After seeing what you write about conservatives in Congress…all I can say is, “Project much?”
I have nothing but distain for the tea party types in Congress. They are destroying the country, in my opinion. Call it what you want. There are plenty of us with those feelings, as can be evidenced by the election.
Oh and what has the president lied about this time, in your eyes.
How about this, hot off the press from the NY Times:
Negotiations to reach a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year broke down, at least temporarily, on Sunday after Republicans requested that any deal include a new way of calculating inflation that would lower payments to beneficiaries programs like Social Security and slow their growth.
I guess it was too important to figure out a way to screw senior citizens–the people who are the most vulnerable. By all means throw them under the bus in favor of the wealthy.
Distain just turned to rage.
I guess there are some that want to take their ball and go home. Too bad it is the final game of the season. I will not be surprised if the US is downgraded again.
After the 2004 election, Bush and his team claimed a mandate, even though he only won by a small margin. Can Obama claim a mandate with a larger election win??
The R’s need to get off the high horse of no taxes no matter what. You cannot tax your way out of our mess, you cannot cut spending our way out, or spend our way out – it takes a balanced approach, and the R’s do not want balance.
Not only will the average Joe Blow take a hit on employment, sales of his product or stock, or his retirement account, but the wealthy will as well. The GOP god, Grover Norquist, and the House clown show will see to that. How’s that gonna sell in 2013 or 2014?
These assholes need to be run out of town on a rail. They are destroying the country.
It makes you wonder why the 98% are being sacrificed for the rich. What kind of country do we live in that protects the rich at the expense of those who are on social security.
Let me just tell you how petty this is. The social security raise in my house was a wopping $26 bucks. $26 effen dollars!!!!!! And some son of a bitch wants to cut that back because the howlers are getting rich off the government?
Yes you are you you PUBLIC SERVANT you…….nurses, teachers, firefighters, cops…..if you don’t generate money your not of importance.
That’s pretty much the size of it. Mr. Howler wasnt any of those occupations but he didnt generate huge sums. I guess that’s the problem.
Yeah, moon, the repugs wants to stick it to seniors. Still no deal. But for now I am watching the Redskins!
I am too with a sick feeling, Starry.
Imagine anyone wanting to belong to a politica party that sacrifices its social security recipeints in favor of the rich.
SHAME!!!!
It makes you wonder why the 98% are being sacrificed for the rich.
Yep. I do wonder why the President is willing to sacrifice the economy in order to sacrifice the rich…or at least, get the GOP to declare that more taxes are the answer to the overspending. This is about political gain by the Democrats, not the economy.
you really have no shame about spin, do you? I would be embarrassed to say that!
We are aware of what’s going on and the Republicans are not heroes.
Maybe the news is clearer to those of us up here because of distance.
Cargo, pull your head out. People here are going to suffer and we don’t want to hear your zombie economics that you are regurgitating. Unless you have been lying to us, there is no reason for you to be protecting the rich.
@Moon-howler
You really are all about the envy of the rich, aren’t you? You really have filled up with the Obama Kool-aid about “fair share” and yet you STILL haven’t answered my question, “What is the fair share? How much is fair?”
You are aware of what’s going on, and yet you blindly follow the Democrat spin on their failures to lead or to even do their jobs. It was the PRESIDENT’S idea to put those draconian cuts into the “fiscal cliff” deal. The Senate refuses to write a budget and put no plan into the deal until Boehner showed that he was caving. This isn’t about the economy. This is about harming the Republicans for 2014.
Zombie economics? The only economic theory that I have described is the one that the Democrats support…Keynes. But the Democrats refuse to even follow that. They have NO economic theory other than spend money to buy votes. And the problem is that the GOP has the same theory…they just want to spend the money on different things. The difference between the two of us is that I’m willing to blame the GOP for its faults. You are unwilling to blame the Democrats and, especially, Obama, for anything.
My spin is no different than yours. Except that I listen to Obama and watch what he does. And he’s trying to tax the rich solely to set a precedent that its a taxation problem, not a spending problem. Every ideologue needs an “enemy.” For the Democrats like Obama…that’s the “rich.” Because you know as well as I do, that increasing the taxes on the rich does ABSOLUTELY nothing to improve the budget problems. Its all about ideology.
I’m so glad that you’re “not” an ideologue, but a “moderate” that wants to fix the economy and restrain our debt…oh. Wait. Never mind.
@CARgp
Don’t be absurd. I don’t have to answer your question.
right now, the most important thing to do is to keep the economy recovering. Slamming in ridiculous cuts enacted by clueless people will not serve any purpose and will only put us back into recession.
“Cut spending” “Cut spending” sounds like a parrot at this point. Not having wars is a good place to start. Gutting the military is not a good idea. Reducing vet benefits is not a good idea. Not improving the infrastructure is not a good idea.
Right now, any party that hurts the economy with their ideology is an enemy of mine and I will be relentless.
I will stop when they will stop. I at least am not being governed y fear that people wont vote for me.
So, why is the Democrat party not your enemy? ObamaCare and the other taxes have been a drag. The cronyism has been a drag. The incessant demonizing of business has been a drag.
And yet, you support the redistributor in chief.
If we don’t reduce spending now…when do we do it? When’s a good time? And since you won’t answer my question…probably can’t, because its a an impossible question to answer since its completely partisan and political by the Democrats, then why are you constantly saying that they need to pay “their fair share?” Face it. It’s all about envy.
I don’t recall repeatedly saying ‘pay their fair share.’ Face it, you really don’t know jack about me. Would it surprise you to know that I have a son who will very definitely be hating life over the new deal? He is a 2%-er. He has earned it. He rarely has a vacation and works longer hours than most people I know. I am not even sure he enjoys his money.
Our politics are not the same. We both have different turfs to protect. He is far more capable of paying at a higher rate than I am.
I happen to believe the principles of the Democratic party are more on target than those of the Republican party, especially this new breed who I simply think are dead wrong. Just out of curiosity, what Democratic taxes are you whining about in the above paragraph? I don’t believe they have cast any new taxes upon us lately, or for that matter, in many years. Incessant demonizing? Afraid I don’t see it. figment of your imagination.
Face it, you are just acting silly because your candidate Mitt didn’t win and your pets who have nearly destroyed the Republican party are becoming more and more irrelevant.
@Moon-howler
Really? You keep harping on the rich needing to pay more….you’ve used the phrase “fair share” quite often.
Of course you don’t see Obama’s demonizing of business. In your eyes he can do no wrong.
New taxes? Obama Care is chock full of them, for one example.
My point, AGAIN, is that the Democrats are lying to the American people by stating that this can be fixed by more taxation and if the “Bush tax cuts for the rich” were just repealed, the deficit would go away. That this recession was caused by the free market. Etc.
Talking about his capability to pay is “fairness”. His higher taxes are one of the reasons he has to work harder just to make the same amount of money. Why should he be penalized more because he’s successful and adds to the economy?
How do you know he adds to the economy? Why would you ASSume that? He adds to the economy when he spends money, as do we all. He just spends more than I do.
That is the faultiest reasoning I have have ever heard. You just said he has to work harder because his taxes are higher just to make the same amount of money. Is that what you think motivates people? People work to make as much money as possible.
Rather than doing a little humble pie that I couldn’t possibly know a thing about rich people—now you are telling me in a back handed way, that you know more about my stepson’s tax situation than I do.
I don’t necessarily thing that dollar for dollar the rich should pay x and the poor should pay y amount of dollars. I think that the very wealthiest can be hit up a few more percentage points at this point in time. Later on, as the economy recovers, nudge up the middle class a half point. Right now is bad timing.
As for the silly-assed “stop spending” mantra, if your roof blows off in a storm, you don’t say times are tough we can’t afford to have the roof fixed. You find the money to have the roof fixed. Its a critical area of home ownership. Now if you have a yard full of crab grass, that can wait until times are better. Let’s use some common sense here.
This brankmanship tough times stuff has to stop.
You also don’t know what my relationship with business is. No. Obama doesn’t demonize business. I would say he applies balance. Finance, auto industry, etc was demonizing? Give me a break. He has probably forgotten more about business than you have ever learned. You are …oh…harping…..
As for ‘fair share,’ if I have used it, it is trite. You just let me know when you see it again.