Which accounts for all the Democrats who get elected.
Do you have a cite for your claim? That is how it works here - when you make a claim like that - you have to back it up. If you are just tossing out some hyperbole, then never mind.
The Tea Party has pulled the center rightward. Extreme left organizations have largely failed to pull the center leftward. Right now, a “typical” Republican would have been too conservative to be elected in Reagan’s time. Reagan himself would be close to the center, and far left of the registered Republican average in today’s politics.
I’d say that whether the Tea Party succeeds in holding elected positions or not is irrelevant. The country is closer to their ideology now than before. That’s all that matters.
He is right, actually. It’s the Teabaggers with their silly hats and violence against counterprotesters, with their signs like “keep government hands off my Medicare” who is making the rest of the world laugh at you. The American right is the world’s laughingstock. Sorry.
And yes, I do think long-term protests such as the occupation movements do show more seriousness than putting on a tri-corner hat and threatening violence with signs like “we came unarmed . . . this time” and sitting in a park for a couple of hours. Teabaggers are merely figures of fun, important only in that they may help Republicans gain power. This would be a bad thing, because Republicans are simply incapable of governing. Again, teabaggers are merely figures of fun. Palin and Bachmann come to mind.
You seem to be equating the Tea Party movement’s influence on Republican congressional strategy and tactics (which is significant) with the (more recent) Occupy movement’s influence on Democratic congressional startegy and tactics (which is close to nil). Apples and oranges.
Well, except for being a born-again Christian military man who deregulated the airlines (and beer) industries, as well as boycotted communism in the Olympics and sent the CIA after the Soviets in Afghanistan…
They weren’t far left in the sense of being hippies or anarchists or whatnot but they advocated extreme social liberalism (for their time at least) and the failed economic policies which were dragging the country now. And this is the same Dukakis who helped loose Willie Horton, the same McGovern who advocated that everybody in the country get a few thousands dollars from government, and the same Carter who pardoned all the draft dodgers.
The United States of 1929 was not completely laissez-faire. Indeed the US hasn’t been laissez-faire since at least 1890 when the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. Almost every practical economic question since 1890 has been a question of the degree of regulation and what exact regulation should be or should not be in place.
[quote=“2sense, post:27, topic:609473”]
Can we have some examples of how the Tea Party is forcing the Republican Party farther to the right?
Democrats have used similar rhetoric to have the overwhelming majority of blacks and Hispanics vote for them by implying implicitly the GOP will take away their dole and for Hispanics deport all their bretheren.
Not on most social issues. The GOP has generally accepted the early 90s position of the Democrats on homosexuality even the Tea Party.
On the contrary both Gingrich and Perry have retained fairly immigrant-friendly stances and unlike on some issues they have not flip-flopped on this.
We need an economically liberal (in the classical sense), pro-national security, and a pro-life party. In such a case the Democrats would be little more than Socialists-lite.
The ones who won were either in very conservative areas (such as Kentucky) or were not ultra TPers (like say Scott Brown)
I agree that as of now the GOP is closer to the mainstream than the Democrats. But this is not going to be the case if a candidate who advocates a national sales tax or decimating Social Security is nominated.
He has passed his gigantic and wasteful Stimulus spending bill and his unconstitutional Obamacare bill. These are major bills that he has succeedeed in passing. The only one he has failed is in abolishing the Bush tax cuts.
It doesn’t get old:
www.abandonmythology.com/files/page0_blog_entry205-obama-i-got-this.jpg
Okay, it will, but it hasn’t yet.
First, there is little “grass roots” about a group that was brought together by the money of the Koch brothers and the media (and organizing power) of Fox News.
Second, the earliest scenes of Tea Party gatherings that I saw, (on Fox News, where they were being supported), were filled with all the vitriol one could stomach and were rarely “orderly.”
If that is your example of “grass roots” and “orderly,” then you demonstrate a rather tenuous grasp of reality.
I’m not sure what this has to do with anything I’ve said.
Again I don’t see how this response correlates with the my post. I’m saying that I don’t see the Tea Partiers pulling the GOP to the right. Where are the examples of them doing so?
These guys aren’t running for Congress. No GOP presidential hopeful has an interest in attacking opponents for being soft on immigration. 1/3 of Latino voters supported McCain last time. Republicans want to hold on to as many of those votes as they can come November. Running nationwide (in the swing states really) is far different than running in safe Red districts where you have to worry about being primaried for not toeing the line on every single hot button issue. Whatever their platform, if one of these 2 were somehow able to become president they would have to deal with GOP congresspeople who simply can’t go along with increasing immigration.
I’m not sure how germane this is but I was watching GPS on the DVR as I posted that and Alan Simpson was pretty dismissive of the Tea Party. Fareed Zakaria asked him about how it seemed the Tea Party had little influence since they agreed that it looked like the traditional candidate Mitt Romney was going to be the Republican nominee. The former GOP Senator said that Republicans, “…like to give the saliva test of purity and then they lose and then they just bitch for four years. It’s an amazing party.”
An implicit implication?
The bounders!
Contrary to the OP, anyone with even the slightest idea of they are talking about knows the country is center right but democrat politicians have been pushing it left. Moving it back the other way where it belongs is not radical but reasonable. Please dont espouse liberal marching orders as facts. (gotta love it when the left is caught on speakerphone outing themselves).
It can be argued that the GOP likes to rattle the swords at illegal immigration, but the truth of the matter is that without illegal aliens (love that term) many low-wage jobs remain unmanned. This figures into the growth (or not) of our economy.
No, that’s exactly what we need to be rid of.
Not if they remained what Obama represents now.
Boehner can’t control them, what makes you think Romney can?
No, they’ll ratchet up to the next level, whatever that is.
I think this is wishful thinking. That conservatives are mainly old people and will eventually die out.
If anything the cadre of conservatives that have come to age during the Limbaugh/Fox media normality and since the 9-11-2001 attacks are more virulent than the old type, if fewer in number.
I think it’s more true that the activist stage for the Left is during youth, and for the Right later in life.
We all know that’s the main thing that motivates black voters, because they’re all on Welfare.
The point is that there are fewer of the hard-right type in every generation. And people do not grow more conservative as they grow older.