An Internet hub with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, indies, centrists, moderates, and right
Conservative Food Fight Over Tea Party Label
Political eyes and ears are now focused on the Tea Party convention whose big weekend speaker will be former Alaska Gov. and likely 2012 Presidential aspirant Sarah Palin. But there are now some big squabbles and divisions in Tea Partyland.
14 Responses to “Conservative Food Fight Over Tea Party Label”
Saw on CNN a story about Tea Party vacation cruises.
LOL……will you tax these suckers already?! Good grief.
Taxing them? If you mean the groups, the groups don't have much money.
If Palin is going to become the sort of figure the tea party movement ends up coalescing around, then they are going to get a rep for being little more than a slightly whackier wing of the GOP. . . which is the way lots of folks see them already. As such their credibility and future growth would take a hit before they even get off the ground.
It is a sad comment on our times that so many have allowed themselves to be backed into the PC corner of referring to this amalgam as tea partiers. It was so much more fun when we could refer to them as teabaggers…a name many of them used themselves early on.
If you start of with Tom Tancredo as the face of your movement you have already sown the seeds of your own destruction. The guy is a kook who couldn't even win more than two percent in Repbulican primaries. America tends not to elect haters.
I agree with JSpencer here – if Palin becomes the public face of the Tea Party it will just damage their image further.
I sympathize with the Tea Party in some ways, but their messages are so unfocused they come across as a bunch of people upset about something but not sure what exactly.
The national convention wasn't called by the groups themselves. It's a pretty obvious attempt to use them, since the price was so high and the speaker's bias so obvious. No one from our group is there.
I must confess that I've never given any of the Tea Party set much credibility for 1 BIG reason:
There was ballooning government spending under the GW Bush administration & Republican Congress (in the majority for 6 of the 8 years of Bush's term) which turned billions in surplus to a trillion dollar deficit (2 wars, Medicare Part D, tax cuts for primarily the wealthy which have not “trickled down” past their bankers, and socializing the losses of these same bankers and fat cats on Wall Street to the rest of us, just to name a few) and these Tea Party people made nary a peep. I find it to be the epitome of “IOKIYAR” hypocrisy and it disgusts me.
What's worse is these Tea Party people seem to want to put those same kind of people BACK IN POWER (wash, rinse, repeat) rather than cooperate with the current administration to actually attempt to solve any of the country's problems which is the classic definition of insanity. Sarah Palin as the face of it is merely the icing on a hypocritical cake.
Anna I completely agree with your reflection. I wondered, when it was just started, about the total silence by such a group for the preceding 8 years, and thus felt like their credibility was about 8 years delayed and a few billion dollars short of real concern.
And I continue to wonder what would have happened to our economy, much less the world economy, if there had been no “bailout,” although I confess to being frightened by numbers “trillions” that my mind can't begin to wrap around. It's also disgusting to see that AIG is in the news again with big bonus stories.
As often as Andrew Sullivan is vilified on these posts, I tend to agree with his degree of concern regarding the phenomenon and symptom that is Sarah Palin.
Given this is your sentiment, you must be, at your core, more of a traditional political party person than independent/libertarian.
Both the lack of an organizational chart as well as the suggestion of anarchy is what instills the fear in the DNC and RNC……..and therefore, in today's day and age, represents its potency.
Exactly, there is no convenient label to attach to them, except I think it pretty safe to guess each one is something other than an economic liberal. I think it is also a pretty safe guess that none of them think Obama is any great shakes.
“Upsettness” may indeed be the only glue that binds them. That's what's so fascinating to me and fearful to establishment backers…….no one knows where this is going to lead.
To suggest Palin is or will be the face is to not be thinking analytically. “The face” of the movement doesn't charge the “movement” $100,000 appearance fee. Palin is simply a more famous “upset” person that helps the upset mood of things. Palin won't sell as a leader to the libertarians as she is a populist.
I don't believe this group will evolve into anything formally disciplined enough to start running candidates all over the place.
Well for starters, it didn't exist 8 years ago. In fact, the bank bailouts (which have as much to do with the tea parties as the health care bill, IMHO) and other wild spending didn't start until 2008. The government has been building up since World War II, but since 2008 has been skyrocketing. If the tea parties were trying to build up the Republican party, they wouldn't have formed a separate group.
CO as I said in my first post I do agree with the Tea Partiers on some points, specifically control of spending and avoiding unnecessary government intrusions. I don't see the lack of a focused message as a positive though, as I think that hurts it's credibility. I think the association of some birthers with the Tea Party has also damaged it's image.
One of the things I liked about the Tea Party initially was the LACK of party ties – in the early Tea Parties incumbent Republicans were as unwelcome as Democrats. Palin however is a dyed-in-the-wool traditional GOP, indeed a former GOP VP candidate, with a whole lot of baggage. Associating with her was something I'm not sure the original Tea Partiers would have done and I don't think it's a good idea now.
“Palin however is a dyed-in-the-wool traditional GOP, indeed a former GOP VP candidate”
Palin has sided with McCain in McCain's bid for re-election and contesting the primary against J.D. Hayworth. This is similar to George W. Bush choosing to aid Arlen Specter instead of Pat Toomey.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/20…
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/colum…
I don't believe this group will evolve into anything formally disciplined enough to start running candidates all over the place.'
I have to admit, I don't know one of the Tpeers (OK?), but from my insulated viewpoint, they sort of remind me of the people in the Movie Network who opened their windows and hollered: “too many commercials” or something or other. They came from all backgrounds too.