Quote Of The Day

Comment by DLBK on September 29, 2010 at 12:09pm

Great quote!

Comment by GreenLantern on September 29, 2010 at 3:21pm

I don't think the author of the article has an understanding of what the makeup of the tea party is. Sure, there are the elderly that hold signs that say "keep your government hands off my medicare", which I'm sure we can all agree is silly, but the whole movement is really a large, politcally diverse group of people. Anywhere from free market libertarians to uber conservatives to people that have no idea what they really believe, but that feel angry. The real problem with the tea party movement is that many of the people in it have never done political activism, and don't really know what to do other than hold a sign with mis-spellings on it. They don't even realize that most of the people they support are just as bad as the people that are currently in office. I bet we start to see the movement start to fizzle after november.

Comment by GreenLantern on September 30, 2010 at 7:03am

Not everyone in the Tea Party is a conservative that watches Fox News. Plenty of them are libertarian/independents that can't stand Fox News. I think you are overgeneralizing here, which is what the democrats in Washington are doing, and it's to their detriment. They don't have a real understanding of who these people are and why they are upset, which is why they look like a bunch of apathetic weenies. I don't know if any of the tea party candidates are necessarily "worse" than what's currently in office, but just a different flavor of crap sandwich. If a republicans take over control in november, we won't really be any better or worse off than we are now. Well, I guess you could make the argument that things always get worse, and not better. What we are really seeing is people falling for the cult of personality on the republican side, just like people got all teary eyed and weepy for Obama, and it bothers people on the left.

Comment by The Diaper Pail on September 30, 2010 at 8:29am

GL, first, a quick question: did you read the entire RS article, or just the quote I excerpted above? I ask because you mentioned that you didn't think Taibbi had a good understanding of the makeup of the tea party, yet in the article he relates at length attending multiple tea party rallies, often disguised as one of them so as not to change how they might behave if they thought he was a reporter. You might disagree with some or all of his conclusions, but I'd have to disagree with a suggestion that he doesn't have a handle on who the tea party is.

I also have to disagree with your assertion that the tea party isn't primarily FOX News-watching conservatives. Though of course it's true that not every single person who self-identifies as a tea partier is a FOX-watching Republican, in general that is indeed what the partiers are:

"These folks, it turns out, are more conservative and bigger watchers of FOX News than your typical Republican. Per [Bill] McInturff, Tea Party members are simply re-branded conservative GOP primary voters -- not something completely new. “These are conservative Republicans who watch FOX, and who are very ticked off,” he said."

As to "worse," I've got to agree with JTC. The current crop of specific teaparty candidates are measurably worse than all but the very worst of existing Republicans. Maybe worse than even them. Consider that there are five current candidates for various national offices from the teaparty who beat out more-mainstream GOP candidates in their respective primaries ALL of whom object to abortion, even in cases of incestuous rape. They are: Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Christine "DON'T Go Fuck Yourself" O'Donnell, Joe Miller, and Ken Buck. This group of (relatively) new teaparty candidates could literally (and fairly) be referred to as the "13-Yr-Olds-Must-Bear-Their-Father's-Incestuous-Rape-Babies Caucus." I doubt they'll go with that name, it's too long to be really catchy -- but they certainly could go with it; each of them has stated outright that they believe it.

Such a stance also belies any pretense of "limited government" sentiments. There is no logical way to square a professed belief in limited, nonintrusive government with a simultaneously professed belief that the government should literally monitor every gestation throughout the country at all times, and take action to ensure the government's preferred outcome of those pregnancies. There just isn't.

Even leaving aside Bill Maher's wonderful (and seemingly bottomless) treasure-trove of old and embarrassing (but ultimately mostly trivial) video clips of O'Donnell, that group of five has amassed a startling record of other, non-abortion-related positions, as well. Sharron Angle flat-out said on the Lars Larson radio show during the primary (4/23) that if tea partiers don't get what they want this election, they're going to be

"...really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

Catch that? She endorses the idea that if angry Republicans/tea partiers who've been soundly rejected at the ballot box the last two successive elections don't get their way, they'll exercise their right to bear arms and form militias, and start by taking Harry Reid out.

Colorado candidate Ken Buck has endorsed and amplified the claim, first floated by Tom Tancredo, that the greatest threat to America today is Barack Obama. Greater than Al Qaeda. Greater than climate change. Greater than anything. The greatest threat to the United States is...the President of the United States who was elected by a large majority of Americans less than two years ago. Only Buck expanded his remarks beyond Tancredo's attack on Obama:

"The greatest threat folks is not a single man, but rather the progressive liberal movement that is going on in this country."

I could go on, but you get the point (I hope). These candidates are measurably more radical than most of the people who've ever called themselves Republicans, including the last administration. Witness the furor over the "ground zero mosque." George W. Bush explicitly and repeatedly said we were not at war with Islam, that Islam was a religion of peace, and that the terrorists we were pursuing had perverted and twisted Islam to suit their own purposes. Today, that message seems almost quaint, anachronistic amongst tea party supporters.

These people represent not merely a qualitative change ("different flavor of crap sandwich," in your formulation), but a quantitative one. They are observably, across their entire political outlook, more conservative, more radical, than virtually all previous Republicans. Which makes sense, given that they are being supported by the most conservative base of the Republican party.

Comment by GreenLantern on October 1, 2010 at 7:04am

In my opinion these tea party candidates aren't any worse than the people in office now. They all want government control over things, just different types. I have to laugh when I hear republicans talk about "small government" when government never grew faster than it did under Bush II. I look at it as a different type of crazy. I don't look at these people's position on abortion as any more crazy than Nancy Pelosi saying that government paid abortion is good to keep the population of black people low. It's just a matter of what you value as to whether you feel these tea party people are any worse than those in office. If you are a democrat, then of course you think they are worse. If you are a republican, you probably think they are better. If you are like me, than you feel that it doesn't really matter, they all suck.

I think Angle really spoke poorly about the point she was trying to get across, regarding what the second amendment really means. Of course, I get she's advocating violence, but what I think she was also referencing what the fact that our founding fathers considered it the duty of the people to be armed and if the government gets too out of control that the people should stop them, with force, if necessary. That's what happened in the Revolutionary War.

Again, it's really a matter of what you value as to whether you think these people will be any worse or not.

Comment by ferret on October 1, 2010 at 9:46am

I think this article is way over the top and causes the kind of "insanity" Colbert and Stewart are going to rally against. That said their is an evil part of me that cackles when I read it.

Comment by ks on October 1, 2010 at 10:36am

I don't look at these people's position on abortion as any more crazy than Nancy Pelosi saying that government paid abortion is good to keep the population of black people low.

When did Pelosi say that? I googled that phrase and the only thing I could come up with was numerous conservative sites complaining that she said, in an interview, that funding for family planning services will reduce costs in the long run. Which is true and I don't see why that is (or should be) in any way scandalous.

However, family planning services include birth control, pre-natal care, STD screening, and a whole bunch of other services in addition to abortion. But there was absolutely nothing that I could come up with that shows any kind of quote from her explicitly saying that "government paid abortion is good to keep the population of black people low." That is a ridiculous assertion and, frankly, a bit of a weasily thing to say.

Comment by The Diaper Pail on October 1, 2010 at 11:38am

ks - I had the exact same reaction you did: "holy crap, Nancy Pelosi said THAT? Where/when?" In fact, I was so startled that I dropped everything and did the same thing you did - Googled it extensively - before I even read your comment. And I got the same results. Unless Pelosi made a worse comment somewhere else that has mysteriously somehow never made it into wide Google circulation, that assertion is based off the quote about family planning's relationship to cost.

If I had seven beers in an hour, then looked backward through a kaleidoscope while squinting, maaaaybe I could interpret Pelosi's quote to mean that she hoped contraception would keep the black population down. Maybe. But that only works if I a) assumed the absolute worst about Pelosi's intentions as well as her racial beliefs, and b) concluded - despite her having said nothing about it - that because these contraceptive and family planning services would be for low-income families and that a disproportionate percentage of blacks are low-income compared to whites, Pelosi MUST have been speaking about keeping black births down. I'd also - in order to come up with that "biased-against-blacks" conclusion - have to discount the fact that there is also greater percentage of hispanics currently in poverty than whites.

I agree; I find such a conclusion both unsupportable and biased.

Comment