My mom is an avowed Tea Party and luckily for the other Tea Party members out there I don’t judge you all based on how crazy she is.
But during one of her many tirades on the evil of the government and the hidden Muslim Obama and in her words “that he tea party revolution will change America”, I wanted to know how exactly they are revolutionizing anything besides media coverage?.
I mean per NY Times the non-voters still largely outnumber the voters. And while the republican voters do outnumber democrats in the primaries… How did slightly more republican voters than in the past voting REPUBLICAN become a revolution??
I can see the revolution if Tea Party was an actual political platform with their own candidates but so far every tea party candidate is just another republican. Are we as a country giving to much attention to what is essentially another republican?
I mean is the hype just out of control? Am I biases on my own political leanings? I just don’t see a revolution here, I just see republican voting republican
The main change has been voting out perceived moderate Republicans in favor of ones that are supposed to be more hardline.
Thats the theory anyways, though its a little hard to tell who qualifies as a “moderate” as some of the GOP members facing Tea Party challenges have been very conservative, while some generally considered moderates haven’t been challenged. But its probably had at least some effect of scaring the GOP caucus away from compromising with the Dems on legislation despite the fairly haphazardness of the threatened retaliation.
Wait, we get to call it a “revolution” before it gains power and before it accomplishes anything? Isn’t that definition of success one of the key reasons why the tea baggers thought Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?
Shoot, at least Obama was actually President when he got the award.
But seriously, the Tea Party will never accomplish anything. Nothing. Not one person endorsed by the Tea Party has the capability to lead him/herself out of a paper bag, to say nothing of fixing any non-imaginary problem facing the country.
With all due respect, but we’re supposed to debate something your “crazy” mother said? Why not ask her to explain herself? If she can’t, then it’s just something a “crazy” person said.
Having said that… the word “revolution” has a literal and a figurative meaning. Plenty of movements like to think of themselves as being “revolutionary” as opposed to “evolutionary”. Makes you feel more important and your ideas more, well, revolutionary. Doesn’t mean that they are. The Tea Partiers are quickly just being absorbed into the GOP. Whether they do more harm than good this election cycle remains to be seen. I wouldn’t call them revolutionary, but if they want to think of themselves and being so, well bully for them.
I don’t see how they can call themselves revolutionary - revolutionary is forward looking, while the Tea Baggers entire rhetoric and goals are returning America to a prior state. They are reactionary, and I mean that in the literal rather than perjorative sense.
False dichotomy. Khomeini was damned popular and so was everything he represented.
An old-school Bolshevik once explained the situation to me thus: The Shah’s effective repression of other forms of political opposition, and his own unpopularity, meant that by 1979 there was only one institution left with any credibility in the people’s eyes: The Iranian Shi’a Muslim religious establishment – that which in a Western country would be called “the Church.”
Sir, it is you setting up the false dichotomy. Reactionaries and coups can be popular - Khomeni is proof of that. Similarly revolutions can be unpopular.
Back at uni, I used to hang out with some of the leadership of the Iranian Communist Party who were in exile after Khomeni’s coup. They were hardly tankies. The world might be a different place now if we had backed them and the moderate elements of the Shi’a heirarchy. But on the other hand it might not have been - they weren’t, obviously, the most neutral sources as to their power base.
No worries, shes mother in genes only. But I wasn’t just debating on her thoughts, but the general perception in media that the TP is a revolution of some kind. I haven’t see any evidence of a revolution, but again, I’m baised so figured I would put it out there.
I don’t know how you would go about proving or disproving that the “general perception in the media that the TP is a revolution”, but I think you are are mistaken. It’s a loud, amorphous movement. But it’s not my perception that it is presented in the media mostly as a revolution. Maybe a few exagerated times, but mostly? No.