Is this nomenclature helpful or is it off-putting? Is this the kind of press the Tea Party wants? Would it fare better being a third party? Is it possible for a third party to win in America?
If the Tea Party became a third party, would they just continue to court old Republicans who sang the right music? How would that work? Maybe Newt has better thing before he inserts his foot. I have heard people do not like what he said.
Jon Stewart was on a roll last night. He interviewed John O’Hara, author of The New American Tea Party. Jon called out John on language. Other than the language issue (like ‘Obamacare’ and ‘tea bagging’) Stewart recommends the book. If anyone has read it, please report back in and let us know your opinion. Tea Party folks, enjoy:
Part 1
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| John O’Hara Pt. 1 | ||||
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Part 2
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| John O’Hara Pt. 2 | ||||
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From the New York Times: (bold is mine)
Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.
They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”
And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”
The Tea Party movement burst onto the scene a year ago in protest of the economic stimulus package, and its supporters have vowed to purge the Republican Party of officials they consider not sufficiently conservative and to block the Democratic agenda on the economy, the environment and health care. But the demographics and attitudes of those in the movement have been known largelyanecdotally. The Times/CBS poll offers a detailed look at the profile and attitudes of those supporters.
Their responses are like the general public’s in many ways. Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as “fair.” Most send their children to public schools. A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, and, despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers. They actually are just as likely as Americans as a whole to have returned their census forms, though some conservative leaders have urged a boycott.Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.
The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
Asked what they are angry about, Tea Party supporters offered three main concerns: the recent health care overhaul, government spending and a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.
Do you agree or disagree?
People like congresswoman Michele Bachman and Andrew Breitbart, ‘proprietor’ of the far right blog site biggovernment.org, just keep digging themselves in deeper and deeper. They need to take a page out of the Bill Clinton book and stop digging. According to Yahoo News: (highlighting mine)
Three Democratic congressmen — all black — say they heard racial slurs as they walked through thousands of angry protesters outside the U.S. Capitol. A white lawmaker says he heard the epithets too. Conservative activists say the lawmakers are lying.
Abusive, derogatory and racist behavior directed at House Democrats by protesters on Saturday shocked lawmakers. Before the President’s speech to House Democrats, thousands of protestors gathered to protest the passage of health care reform. Members of the crowd were shown heckling. Some became abusive and resorted to hurling racial epithets.
The Huffington Post reports:
A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a ‘ni–er.’ And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot,” as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president’s speech, shrugged off the incident.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
The CPAC has come to town. It arrived on Thursday. For those who aren’t card carrying conservatives, CPAC stands for the Conservative Political Action Conference and it has come to town full throttle. The list of key note speakers is enough to make moderates and liberals break out in a sweat:
Hon. Dick Armey
Hon. John Ashcroft
Rep. Michele Bachmann
Glenn Beck
Amb. John Bolton
Andrew Breitbart
Herman Cain
Tucker Carlson
Liz Cheney
Ann Coulter
Sen. Jim DeMint
I think only a fool would underestimate this movement. There are lots and lots of people out there who are angry and mad. Angry, mad people won’t just go away. However, if the people I see in this video represent this movement, I fear for our country.
Are these people imposters? Do they not represent the Tea Party Movement? Why should I not believe these are the people of the grass roots movement. Convince me I am wrong.
There are people who are tired of this topic. There certainly are topics I am tired of, yet I keep hearing them. I cannot turn on my TV without hearing about them and many ideas I feel are repugnant. I am tired of hearing the President being called a socialist. I feel it is disrespectful. I am tired of hearing he isn’t an American. That too is disrespectful. I dislike hearing people call for revolution. I feel this call threatens my country. Convince me I have misunderstood.
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?
This political movement needs a new name. What group of adults says they belong to the Tea Party. What does it stand for? Does anyone remember? From all reports, the Tea Party Convention this week in Nashville isn’t going too well. Various people have stomped out and there is plenty of bickering.
Why? The average person can’t afford to go. There are a bunch of Tea Party grassroots organizations. Many of them are squabbling already over the overly priced accommodations and set up in general. The Washington Post describes the following problems:
… [T]he first gathering of a sprawling movement, made up of hundreds of disparate Tea Party groups, has been marred by controversy. Some high-profile speakers and activist groups have canceled their appearances in protest of alleged profiteering by the convention organizers.
Attendees have been charged $549 a ticket (plus hotel and transportation) to gather for three days at the luxurious Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center — an expense that critics say is out of reach for the average grass-roots activist. Some of the proceeds will go to cover former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s reported $100,000 fee to deliver Saturday’s keynote address.
There was also some mention of a $600 per person lobster dinner that one person who sat home described as a typical Republican fundraiser dinner. That sure doesn’t sound like an ‘average Joe’s’ kind of meal. Sarah Palin is a keynote speaker who has said she will not profit from her honorarium but has yet to say who will receive her speaking fee.
What has happened to the grassroots, ‘tired of high taxes’, just your every day average person who showed up at town hall meetings to shout his or her outrage at the ‘system?’ The Post article indicates that those in attendance at the initial Tea Party Convention in Nashville are not your ordinary people being taxed to death. The people attending the Convention are staying in opulent accommodations, eating fancy meals, and living high on the hog. The little man probably can’t afford the plane ticket much less the accouterments that go with that plane ticket.
The internet seems filled with stories about Virginia Congressman Gerald Connolly and his staff bullying some tea party woman. Much is being made of the woman being small and not likely to inflict harm.
A little background from the Washington Post:
Protesters targeted Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a first-term congressman whose Fairfax County district voted for Republican Robert F. McDonnell in this week’s gubernatorial election. Connolly, up for reelection next year, said that he has not decided whether to vote for health-care reform but that the tea-party activists will not influence his vote.
“You try to hear them out respectfully,” Connolly said. “The problem is they’re not here on a mission of dialogue. They’re here on a mission to persuade and discourage.”
Eric Odom, founder of the American Liberty Alliance, the group that organized and implemented the Tea Party Movement has announced that they soon will launch a Huffington Post of their own. According to the Huffington Post:
Odom announced Friday what he calls a movement-minded news portal and his answer to the the Huffington Post. While the domain and branding are secret for now, Odom has given his news portal a temporary name, Project 73.
Odom aims to create an online news portal that he hopes will become the “gathering spot for all the news” for their “side” — a “movement minded news portal.”
“I mean, I despise a lot of what is written at Huffington Post. But the reality is… they’re good at it. They cover very wide ranges of topics and they cover them well. On our side you need to visit a good ten sites in the morning to get the full web digest. On their side you just go to Huffington Post and you know about everything that’s happening.”
At the bottom of the Project 73 announcement, Odom says, “Not a single person involved with our organization, or any tea party movement related organization for that matter, is profiting off of the movement.” However, it looks like Odom’s site will be a for-profit model.
It sounds like a good idea. One stop shopping for people writing blog post. People won’t even have to sully their TVs with watching Glenn Beck. Plus, Project 73 sounds a lot like Area 51. The name gives the project an air of mystic. I just hope it includes a glossary.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/tea-party-founder-announc_b_300347.html
Back in the spring, lots of folks got a laugh out of Texas Governor Rick Perry for suggesting that Texas secede during a tea party protest. It looks like he might not have been kidding. Perry has formed an organization called the Texas Nationalist Movement which advocates secession. They held a rally on the steps of the state capitol recently. One speaker really needs to check his history facts out before clutching the mic.
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Matthews also takes a look at McDonnell’s thesis and dancer Tom Delay.
Are these people in Texas serious or are they just trying to illustrate a point? I have heard several people say they are just going to revolt. Several had elaborate plans to do so. What does all of this mean? Would it have happened if McCain were president?
Saturday, July 4 will be another day of Tea Parties held all across the United States. Many of us are still trying to figure out what the Tea Parties are all about. Originally, I thought that they were about taxes. TEA did stand for ‘Taxed Enough Already.” That seems reasonable. Bi-partisan folks coming together to just say NO to new taxes and new debt. I think I am wrong though. Just looking at the agenda for the local tea party, it is unclear what the real theme is.
A Republican friend of mine suggested that it was just a lot of hot air. Now it seems to me that the Tea Parties are anti-Obama rallies. Can we now say the Tea Parties aren’t bi-partisan and that they are Obama-bashing? The local tea party has the much discussed FAIR guy in attendance. So are the Tea Parties now protests about illegal immigration?
