# Could progressives make (some) alliance with (some) Tea Partiers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 23, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105 "2010-04-23T15:08:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/21 "2010-04-23T20:07:25Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You either want to fight the enemy or you want to attempt to find common ground with them. No, successful politics often involves doing both at once. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/22 "2010-04-23T20:12:53Z")
Why would I want progressives to spend any time trying to find compromise positions with teabaggers? They are the fringe of the right wing. Politically, it makes about as much sense as trying to find common ground with Lyndon Larouche types. Yes, let’s find a way to dilute our position so that we gain all the strengths of affiliating with a group that’s probably less than 1% of the population? A group whose sole purpose for existing is opposition to the Obama presidency, and who will be content to disappear the next time a white Republican is elected president? The more useful question is how progressives can better make political mileage out of the dumbassery of the teabaggers. In fact, in general what progressives need to do better is fight for a less diluted progressive message. Represent something that people need and do not have otherwise. Be leaders and people will follow. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/23 "2010-04-23T20:24:13Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > I think the biggest problem today is that the left has been hijacked by special interests - the right too, but the left is really incoherent. The LEFT is incoherent? ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/24 "2010-04-23T20:27:43Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > If someone goes to these Tea Party rallies and doesn’t try to stop the fringe element from being center stage, but instead stays silent just to keep the numbers high, how can you trust them? I’d be interested to hear any direct personal accounts of Tea Party meeting attendees. _Is there_ any contest of ideas going on? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/25 "2010-04-23T20:28:03Z")
**Sam** , you know all that about what the teabaggers want from attending their rallies and talking with them, right? You know better than all these pesky citers what it’s all about because, well, how exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/26 "2010-04-23T22:12:30Z")
> [@Digital\_Stimulus](#): > > But the main thing is to note: [the teabaggers themselves originated the moniker](http://www.politicususa.com/en/olbermann-teabagger). > > In fairness, it’s (sort of) [contested](http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/18/olbermann-celebrates-teabagger-word-year-finalist)…although I don’t actually see any disproof, just complaint about Olbermann popularizing the term they themselves picked… In dispute is right. The term got it start with [Anderson Cooper](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/anderson-cooper-its-hard_n_187318.html) on CNN. Here’s a quote from Huffington post article about it: > [@](#): > > Anderson Cooper had David Gergen, the director of the Center for Public Leadership, on his show last night to talk about the President’s recent economic speech and what kind of response they could expect from Republicans. At the end of some serious policy talk they had this exchange: > > Gergen: “They still haven’t found their voice, Anderson. This happens to a minority party after it’s lost a couple of bad elections, but they’re searching for their voice.” > > Cooper: “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.” > > He was, of course, referring both to the conservative anti-tax tea bagging protests and to the sex act. Cooper is the latest in a long line of cable news hosts to mock the tea baggers for their choice of terminology. Rachel Maddow had blogger Ana Marie Cox on her show last week and the pair spent an entire segment exploring the double entendres made possible by these protesters. Then David Shuster got in on the action by cracking jokes about “going nuts” and needing a “Dick Armey”. Of course, not everyone finds this hilarious. That article was posted on April 15, 2009. I remember it well. It’s irrelevant if some random person used the term ‘tea bag’ a couple of weeks earlier in an interview no one saw - it’s entry into the popular lexicon started with Cooper’s remarks and took off from there. His exchange on CNN got a lot of media attention because of the sexual double-entendre, and the left picked it up and ran with it, as you can see from the Huffington Post quote above. And it’s also clear that he knew damned well what ‘tea bagging’ was, as did other people on the panel. They thought they were being clever. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/27 "2010-04-23T22:31:56Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > As has been observed about those on the right (forgive me for not excavating a link), one component of their value system is a “purity test”. They require their allies to adhere to some menu of beliefs in order to dialog with them (“you’re either with us, or against us”). > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I have no interest in finding common ground with them. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You can’t successfully compromise with people who aren’t interested in compromise, and it’s foolish to try with people who are evil, irrational and stupid. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/28 "2010-04-23T22:38:15Z")
> [@PatriotGrrrl](#): > > Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! You talk as if it hasn’t been tried and failed. Repeatedly. You talk as if it’s actually possible to reach common ground with people who demand ideological purity. You talk as if we should compromise with racists, homophobes religious bigots; how is doing so even moral? ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/29 "2010-04-23T23:07:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The term got it start with [Anderson Cooper](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/anderson-cooper-its-hard_n_187318.html) on CNN. Interesting. I had difficulty establishing any type of timeline in tracing usage (in the cursory search I did). So: > [@](#): > > That article was posted on April 15, 2009…It’s irrelevant if some random person used the term ‘tea bag’ a couple of weeks earlier in an interview no one saw - it’s entry into the popular lexicon started with Cooper’s remarks and took off from there. My first link references March 15, 2009 (as you point out as “a couple weeks earlier”) as the time that Fox “reporter” Griff Jenkins first used “teabag” as a verb in this context (quotes around “reporter” because his coverage is more [cheerleading than reporting](http://mediamatters.org/research/200909020024)). And I have to say that I’m pretty sure that I heard the term used prior to Olbermann’s publicizing it (I didn’t know that Cooper had anything to do with it)…but that could be faulty memory on my part. Given Jenkins’ quote, I don’t think it’s unfair to say a tea-party proponent chose the moniker for them (and thus, for themselves). At the same time, I also think that it’s now pretty clear the term has been shunned, and generally should not be used. And I say generally because I have little problem with using it as an epithet, much like I’ve heard some prominent commentators (and conservatives in real life) use the word “liberal” as an epithet. I’m poking around for a more definitive timeline, but it’s turning out to be a hard slog. At any rate, thanks for the link about Anderson Cooper – I didn’t know that. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/30 "2010-04-23T23:40:48Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You talk as if it’s actually possible to reach common ground with people who demand ideological purity. Well, I know it’s not possible to reach common ground with _you_. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/31 "2010-04-24T01:01:02Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Why would I want progressives to spend any time trying to find compromise positions with teabaggers? Because, while their movement is partly about racism and xenophobia and a pointless and doomed culture war, it is also about economic populism. They are from a white middle/working class that feels squeezed – from outside, and from below, but also from above. That’s something with which progressives can find **some** common ground. [Michael Lind writes:](http://www.salon.com/news/populism/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2009/11/23/populism) > [@](#): > > Monday, Nov 23, 2009 19:05 ET > > \*\*Can populism be liberal? > > The GOP has owned it since Nixon. Democrats would have to return to the New Deal to recapture it\*\* > > \ > > In itself, American populism is neither left nor right. Translated into economics, Jacksonian populism spells producerism. For generations, Jacksonian populists have believed that the hardworking majority of small producers is threatened from above and below by two classes of drones: unproductive capitalists and unproductive paupers. While government promotion of public goods like defense, infrastructure and utilities that benefit all citizens is acceptable, Jacksonomics is suspicious of crony capitalists who owe their fortunes to political connections (can you spell B-A-I-L-O-U-T?). And Jacksonian producerism naturally is haunted by the nightmare of a class of the idle poor, who are capable of working but instead live off the labors of others and lack an ownership stake in the community. > > Reform movements have succeeded in the United States only when their programs resonated with populist and producerist values. Lincoln’s antislavery Republicans succeeded where the earlier Whigs had failed because the Republicans persuaded Jacksonian farmers that snobbish, parasitic Southern Democratic slave owners were a greater threat to white farmers and white workers in the Midwest than rich Republican bankers and industrialists in the Northeast. Lincoln’s Hamiltonian program of aid to railroads and national banking had to be sweetened with the offer of Western homesteads for yeoman farmers before former Jacksonian Democrats would join his coalition. > > In the 20th century, the most popular and enduring legacies of the New Deal have been the programs compatible with small-d Jacksonian democracy – public spending on infrastructure like dams and electric grids and highways, the promotion of single-family home ownership, federal aid to education and Social Security and Medicare, two entitlements tied to individual work by means of the payroll tax. In contrast, welfare for the nonworking poor was always unpopular with most New Deal Democratic voters, who preferred public works programs like the WPA, CCC and CETA to relief payments for the poor and unemployed. Although he broke with the New Deal tradition in other ways, President Bill Clinton was true to its spirit when he collaborated with the Republicans in converting “welfare” from an unpopular federal entitlement to state-based workfare programs. > > All too often in American politics the populist distinction between producers and parasites has been mapped onto the racial division between whites and nonwhites. But the Jacksonian republican concern about freeloaders is not, in itself, racist. And it has frequently manifested itself in anger at the freeloading rich as well as the freeloading poor. At the moment, populist anxieties about the nonworking poor or illegal immigrants receiving medical coverage are eclipsed by populist anger at federal bailouts for well-connected Wall Street bankers who pay themselves titanic bonuses for unproductive gambling with other people’s money. > > Here, one might think, would be an opening for the center-left. And yet the Obama Democrats, unlike the Roosevelt Democrats, cannot take advantage of the popular backlash against Wall Street. Why? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/32 "2010-04-24T02:13:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In dispute is right. > > The term got it start with [Anderson Cooper](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/anderson-cooper-its-hard_n_187318.html) on CNN. Here’s a quote from Huffington post article about it: > > That article was posted on April 15, 2009. I remember it well. It’s irrelevant if some random person used the term ‘tea bag’ a couple of weeks earlier in an interview no one saw - it’s entry into the popular lexicon started with Cooper’s remarks and took off from there. His exchange on CNN got a lot of media attention because of the sexual double-entendre, and the left picked it up and ran with it, as you can see from the Huffington Post quote above. > > And it’s also clear that he knew damned well what ‘tea bagging’ was, as did other people on the panel. They thought they were being clever. That’s not where it started. Cooper was just riffing on what they had already been calling themselves for weeks. I remember it well. The term originated long before Cooper made that joke, and it originated witrh mailings sent out by the baggers themselves. As a matter of fact, I’m reasonably sure it was already being used on this board. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/33 "2010-04-24T02:19:49Z")
[Yep](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11029689&highlight=teabagger#post11029689) It was used on this board several days before Anderson Cooper made that awesome crack. The teabaggers came up with that term themslves. It’s too bad for them if they don’t like people calling them what they call themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/34 "2010-04-24T02:23:05Z")
Didn’t the political use of “teabagging” begin as a tax protest last year? People were asked to send teabags to their Congressional Representatives and Senators as a protest. This was a reference to the Boston Tea Party in the18th Century when tea was dumped by costumed “Indians” in Boston Harbor. (Just adding this information for Canadian friends who probably know it anyway.) They unfortunately called themselves “The Teabaggers” which led to many suppressed grins on news programs and other outright puns such as Anderson Cooper’s. Priceless. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/35 "2010-04-24T05:17:53Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > [Yep](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11029689&highlight=teabagger#post11029689) It was used on this board several days before Anderson Cooper made that awesome crack. > > The teabaggers came up with that term themslves. It’s too bad for them if they don’t like people calling them what they call themselves. You know what? I stand corrected. You were right. I was wrong. And, it makes the use of it by the left more acceptable. You have a point. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/36 "2010-04-24T14:05:47Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > Simple answer - no. > > As has been observed about those on the right (forgive me for not excavating a link), one component of their value system is a “purity test”. They require their allies to adhere to some menu of beliefs in order to dialog with them (“you’re either with us, or against us”). According to the study, the left does not share this value (“hey, can’t we all just get along”). The result is a permanent statis of one side extending a hand accross the aisle, and the other side recoiling in disgust. So during the 1980s we didn’t witness an alliance of sorts between certain radical feminist and religious conservatives on the issue of pornography? ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/37 "2010-04-24T14:19:17Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You know what? I stand corrected. You were right. I was wrong. > > And, it makes the use of it by the left more acceptable. You have a point. Dear God in Heaven, Sam and Dio just agreed on something. Relatively amicably. I am urgent need of a well-stocked fallout shelter capable of keeping 4 people alive for however long Ragnarok is going to last. Anybody got a lead on one? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/38 "2010-04-24T16:54:19Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > So during the 1980s we didn’t witness an alliance of sorts between certain radical feminist and religious conservatives on the issue of pornography? Politics often works that way. Strange bedfellows. Like Christian fundamentalists supporting Israel. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/39 "2010-04-24T18:31:43Z")
I don’t see it, **BrainGlutton**. While there is some common ground on economic security it just doesn’t seem possible to deprogram any significant portion of the Tea Party supporters. If they were the kind of people who engaged in critical thought they wouldn’t be supporters in the first place. A better strategy IMO would be to continue to treat them as the hopelessly wrongheaded do-nothing deadender antis that they are. And try to do a better job of educating the next generation to avoid the paranoid style in American politics. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105/40 "2010-04-25T05:01:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The tea parties are also upset at the outrageous growth in size and pay for public sector unions. And progressives should be too. Public sector unions now pay significantly more in salary and benefits than their private sector equivalents. Do you have a cite for that? I have seen figures showing that the average wage of govt workers is higher that the private sector, but that does not mean that equivalent jobs are. I know lots pf people that leave public service to work for the private sector and get substantial raises. Besides, I suspect that only a tiny portion of govt spending is for salaries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-progressives-make-some-alliance-with-some-tea-partiers/537105.md?page=3)