This reads like a snide insult, and it’s not appropriate for this forum. Please don’t do this in the future.
I’ve noticed that as well. I wish there were more conservatives around. I’d be interested in finding out what they actually think versus what liberals say they think.
ETA: I realized I used ‘‘liberals’’ in the 3rd person. I am actually a liberal myself. I’m interested in finding out what you actually think versus what we say you think? Something like that.
Conservatives don’t help themselves with nonsense like “death panels,” amd “socialism,” and "birth certificate, and if you listen to talk radio or watch Fox News, you’ll see liberals portrayed in far more derogatry, hyperbolically, hyperventilating, demonic (sometimes literally so) terms than anything coming from the left. Nobody with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as the spokespeople for side has any business complaining about being perecived as intellectually lacking.
Well, stay out of my refrigerator.
The left is fine with protest as long as it doesn’t degenerate into racist name-calling, spitting, violence, and death threats. These people are overwhelmingly members of the right and the Tea Baggers.
Sarah Palin thinks that living near Russia gives her foreign policy experience. She thinks Obama is a closet Muslim and not a US citizen. She equates the reformed health care bill watered down by Pubs to be socialist and fascist. She can’t name a single Supreme Court case she disagrees with except Roe v. Wade and then blames the media for “gotcha” questions. She can’t even name any publications she reads! Sarah Palin deserves every bit of venom she gets, and then some
Don’t kid yourself, the threats to lawmakers are all coming from the Tea Baggers and the right. I want to say “extreme right” but these people are actually probably the majority of the right wing nowadays and make up their core base. If you fear for polarization of US politics, then you should be against these Tea Baggers and everything they stand for
That story also had the following quote:
If the tea partiers are indeed more educated than the general populace - well, that doesn’t speak well of our education system.
According to this poll, 57 percent of baggers have a favorable view of Bush.
I’m somewhat sympathetic with the stated ideals of the Tea Party movement (smaller government, balanced budgets), but I’m heavily at odds with their chosen policy objectives in support of those ideals.
Additionally, I had the opposite experience from Clothahump. I attended a few Tea Party style events in Central PA in 2009, and they had a strong showing of people with clearly racist agendas and misspelled signs (I’d estimate the percentages at 35% and 75% respectively), even in the fairly diverse college town I live in.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there’s a tremendous amount of regional variation in the proportion of Tea Party types who are racists vs. those who are honest proponents of the various policies.
As I’ve said in other threads, at least in my county (and to a lesser extent, state-wide and regional) Republican organizations that I’m plugged in to, it seems like the primary motivating factor of the Tea Partiers is that many of them feel completely disenfranchised and to an extent cheated when the national government isn’t in the hands of “movement” conservatives. The fact that we have a black president and a female speaker serves to add some fire from the stuck-in-1850 fringe.
If you adjust for the demographic background that they come from, the Tea Partiers are neither particularly educated or wealthy. They are 90% white, mostly male and over 45 years of age. Of course they’re wealthier and more educated than the general public, which includes the urban poor and minorities.
The leadership has been begging their members to leave the nasty signs at home and to tone down the chants, so that they’ll look like a more reasonable collection of people.
Waves hand
Er, I think wierdaaron would rather I didn’t. It’s still in development, so he’s trying to keep track of how many people are using it. If you PM him he can send you the link.
By the way, only 89 users have badges, so this data suggests that roughly 3% of active posters on this board are members of the Tea Party (since lurkers don’t have badges).