Yes, but I think the Republicans are helping out the Democrats tremendously by being the crazy-ass retrograde reactionaries they are. Even the leftiest of voters has to look at the two parties and think that there really is a lesser of these two evils. That’s going to be the major motivator for voters who hate them both…do we really want THOSE crazies in power?
I see Rand Paul is delivering a “Tea Party Response” to the State of the Union after Rubio delivers the “official” Republican response.
Because that went so well last year when Bachmann did the same time. Nothing projects a healthy party like having a faction of it deliver their own speech since the GOP one obviously won’t do.
How much longer is the republican party going to put up with the tea party pretending to be a branch of the republican party, when really all they are doing is using them? When are GOP leadership going to come out and call the Tea Party out for what they are, and promise never to send another dollar to a candidate who claims to be part of the “Tea Party.”
It’s embarrassing and I cannot fathom to understand why the mainstream republican establishment continues to allow it.
Because they need the Tea Party crazies. And because at the point quite a lot of the “mainstream Republican establishment” are such crazies. They spent decades using the far right extremists as their base, and now they are dependent on those crazies, while the crazies has worked their way up the party hierarchy into positions of power. They made a deal with the Devil, and now the Devil wants his payment.
O’Malley’s going. That’s all there is to it. He might change his mind, but at this point he’s in.
Let me toss some things in to build on RTF’s list
- Successful Governor
- As governor extended college bennies to some undocumented residents
- As governor signs same-sex marriage law
- Defended 2 and 3 against referendums
- Has hands in all the right pies (worked on presidential campaigns and senate campaigns as a kid, is owed favors)
- Irish, has the name and such
- Roman Catholic
He’s going to be an interesting candidate. I dunno if he can knock of Hilary if she runs, and at this point all roads lead through her, but he’s going to be a real candidate sometime.
I’m not convinced the Tea Party has any love for the Republican establishment. I think they would rather be on their own, but the R’s woo them for the strange bedfellows thing, for numbers
Just like the Dems and the Occupy gang
Both parties cater to extremes. Sickening.
Well, I’m pretty well up on the extreme positions fostered in the Republican Party by the Tea Party. But, despite attending Occupy events, I seem to have missed precisely which radical ass crazy positions the Occupy movement foisted upon the grave, grey ranks of Democrat leadership.
Perhaps you’ll help me out with that, seeing as you are so much better informed?
Really – where’s Occupy now? Still out in the fringe and fading as far as MSM coverage is concerned. Meanwhile the Tea Party is broadcasting their own SOU rebuttal and still threatening that the “safe” ® seats created by the 2011 gerrymandering are theirs for the taking in primaries if the party regulars don’t toe the line.
Thing is, inside the GOP, the roles have reversed. The old establishment Republicans would pay lip service to the far right to use them as electoral cannon fodder because, hey, what are you gonna do, vote for those godless liberals? But now as Der Trihs wrote in his last post, they have nurtured it for so long that True Believers have risen through the ranks and feel they deserve to be the ones in charge – they would *NOT *“rather be on their own”, they would rather be the ones in charge of the Republican Party and thus one of the only two avenues to power, and have the pragmatic (business/defense oriented) conservatives be the ones who have no choice but to subserviently vote for them.
On economic issues, there absolutely is NOT a lesser of two evils, they’re both the same. On social issues, of COURSE there is a difference. The thing is, the economic inequality in this country has become so great that it dwarfs all other problems. People who are concerned with gay marriage, abortion, immigration, etc., are, to use a gaming analogy, fighting with minor opponents while a giant boss wreaks havoc as you fight his low level minions, totally ignored.
The leftiest of voters may not be all THAT lefty … they are just people who have figured out something you have not.
Roman Catholic is a PLUS? How? How is being part of the religion of anti-abortion, anti-contraception, sexism-enabling, child molester protectors a PLUS? Not in my book. Not in a LOT of books. The first thing any Roman Catholic candidate is going to have to do is a LOT of explaining to some VERY unbelieving people.
Beautifully put. I have not seen an explanation of the changes the Republican Party is going through this simple and cogent anywhere in the mainstream media. Then again, the mainstream media has become a sickening festival of lying. (Sorry, Sunday morning news talk shows have that effect on me.)
The problem with that is that Democrats become a lot more appealing to the business types when the Tea Partiers become the “our way or the whole thing burns” party.
Unless, you know, you happen to BE one of the people that are most affected by marriage equality, abortion rights, immigration, etc. It’s always easy to consign issues that don’t really affect you personally to the back burner.
No. Gays, women and latinos are going to be JUST as much a part of the helpless peasantry as formerly middle class white males if the Republican business elite has their way with our economy. The problem wit economic inequality is that it diminishes your ability to fight on ANY other issue. With money as with few other things, quantity has a quality all its own. And that applies to VERY LITTLE money as well as LOTS of money. Desperately poor people will suffer from sexism, bigotry and so forth, but they’ll be too busy just struggilng to survive to pay much attention to them.
The elite of both parties are the ones pushing the corporatist agenda that causes income inequality. Why do you think they’re called the establishment? The democrats have been nearly 100% taken over by establishment corporatists (bailouts, obamacare, militarism all over). The Tea party is founded on sound economic principles that could return economic power back to the individual, but they are crazy because they are attempting to outlaw abortion.
The crux of the argument is that tea party critics believe that giving more power to the federal government gives more power to the people. This is outright silliness.
That sounds good, but the real goal seems to give economic power to individual billionaires, unrestrained by silly government-enforced restrictions like rights, environmental protection, and so much more.
The Individual vs. Federal Government dichotomy is just talk to get people to support them. The Tea Party wants to effectively eliminate the federal government because it stands in the way of the further exploitation of the general population, and the environment, and so on.
This old chestnut again? Exploiting like how? Extorting billions of dollars from them to prop up the government’s favored firms? No that couldn’t happen on the free market.
You’re going to have to come up with something that shows tea party policies would allow billionaires to extort billions of dollars from the people, because its well known that establishment policies do just that.
In response to the OP:
Good, I’m glad. I hope they self-destruct as quickly as possible so they can stop fucking up any progress that we attempt to make.
As far as it playing out, I’m not sure. The average voter, especially conservative ones, are just absolutely clueless. I doubt they can tell the difference between a “tea-party” candidate and a moderate republican. I mean they share the same values, but to a different degree.
Both will be anti-abortion, anti-tax, pro-god, pro-guns, and a variety of easily identifiable values. But Tea-Partiers are more brazen and emotional, which can be appealing to an idiot (aka avg. voter). They come up with slogans that are easy to remember.
The moderate republican will be more reasonable which should be a good thing, but paradoxically will end up hurting him/her. One wrong move or statement on a certain issue and they potentially lost a voter.
I think it comes down to if the “Tea Party” candidate will do or say something incredibly stupid and fucked up. But, even then, the moderate republican has to be very charismatic if he/she wants to win.
Clinton couldn’t have blocked the repeal of Glass-Steagal even if he wanted to. Gramm-Leach-Biley was passed with far more than the supermajority required to override a veto.
Sounds like Libertarian non-sense to me. Please, elaborate on the “sound economic principles” of the Tea Party.
The government is a mere tool that provides society with structure and order. It is up to the people to guide the tool so as to use it correctly. The failure of its correct functioning is a direct result of the ignorance of the average voter.