Michael Lind: The Tea Party -- "Newest Right" -- is not a populist movement

[Belowjob2.0]

@Debaser

Yeah. I know. I read it. Although, I didn’t realize this was the same “white overclass” guy who you often cite. He seems to see everything through a prism of race.

It can be both.

The Tea Party is overwhelmingly Southern in origin, especially if you include the parts of border states where the Southern influence is the strongest.

You really believe that race is not a central concern in southern politics to this very day?

[Wesley_Clark]

I live in the north, I have no idea how southern tea partiers operate. Since southern whites tend to be more conservative (and whites in rural areas in the north and western areas too) that seems to be the base of the tea party. The tea party caucus in the house is 63% southern.

I disagree with a few things in that article. In it the author claims that the tea party is not ‘stupid’. I disagree. They may be well educated people but they are very dogmatic people who are more concerned with their narratives than they are with facts. If the facts don’t match the narrative, the facts change not the narrative. As a result of this the tea party has helped cost the GOP at least 5 senate races in the last few election cycles. These are people who care more about ideology and narratives than about facts. That is a weakness that can be used against them.

And it may be unpopular but the part about professors and professionals calling these people ‘neanderthals’ has a valid point. If you can only treat blacks and gays with a modicum of decency when you are forced to at the point of a gun, what are people supposed to call you. Or if you prefer to live in an ignorant bubble instead of the messy world of grey areas. What attitude are professionals and professors supposed to take to people who believe some of these things about science, or civil rights, or government? The northeast was voluntarily abolishing slavery 100 years before the south was forced to do so by the military. The northeast spearheaded health reform while southern politicians try to derail it.

What are people who identify with northeastern politics supposed to think? That these people are rational and civilized? I don’t see it.

The 2010 election was more about apathy by democrats, if the dems couldn’t get much accomplished with a supermajority why vote for them again. The lack of enthusiasm led to the GOP revolution of 2010. Which I give them credit for, they took full advantage of and gerrymandered the house pretty well.

Also since the tea party revolution of 2010 abortion has been a major issue. So these people aren’t strictly indifferent to social issues.

His argument that the tea party is the same group of people motivated by the same reasons that has existed for decades is a valid one though.

[Debaser]

@Belowjob2.0

The Tea Party is overwhelmingly Southern in origin, especially if you include the parts of border states where the Southern influence is the strongest.

I disagree. There’s plenty of people in the Tea Party not from the south.

You really believe that race is not a central concern in southern politics to this very day?

No I don’t. That’s why I never said this or anything like it.

[BrainGlutton]

@Wesley_Clark

I disagree with a few things in that article. In it the author claims that the tea party is not ‘stupid’. I disagree. They may be well educated people but they are very dogmatic people who are more concerned with their narratives than they are with facts. If the facts don’t match the narrative, the facts change not the narrative. As a result of this the tea party has helped cost the GOP at least 5 senate races in the last few election cycles. These are people who care more about ideology and narratives than about facts. That is a weakness that can be used against them.

That does not make them stupid. It makes them dishonest. Which in politics is more often a strength than a weakness.

[BrainGlutton]

@Debaser

I disagree. There’s plenty of people in the Tea Party not from the south.

No doubt, but, as with the GOP itself nowadays (and Lincoln would weep!), that is their core-base territory.

[Wesley_Clark]

@BrainGlutton

That does not make them stupid. It makes them dishonest. Which in politics is more often a strength than a weakness.

No I disagree. There are manipulators who pretend to believe the irrational things but a lot sincerely believe things that are factually incorrect and they are very arrogant about it.

That could be a weakness like I said, because these people live in a bubble they cost themselves about 5 senate races so far. They elect people in the primaries that, in their bubble, have tons of general election appeal but in the real world people like Sharon Angle or Mourdoch are not going to win an election.

In the end days of the 2012 presidential election, because the real polls showed Romney losing his team invented fake polls to tell them what they wanted to hear. As a result they were campaigning in states where the real polls showed they had no chance like Pennsylvania. That is time they could’ve spent in actual swing states (not that it mattered, Obama won by something like 160 EVs).

While opinion polls show a (slight) majority of people blaming the GOP more than anyone else for this shutdown mess, in their bubble they think people are blaming Obama. The Tea Party is creating a rift between the business class and republicans, by doing such stupid things that the Chamber of Commerce is now offering funding for people who run primaries against tea party republicans. But the Tea party, in their bubble, think they are beloved by the american people and the business class. Let them destroy themselves.

I don’t find them dishonest. Bill Clinton was dishonest. John Edwards was dishonest. The Tea party sincerely believes their own myths and fables. Bill Clinton was a liar, these people are just stupid and dogmatic.

[Evil_Captor]

@Wesley_Clark

I don’t find them dishonest. Bill Clinton was dishonest. John Edwards was dishonest. The Tea party sincerely believes their own myths and fables. Bill Clinton was a liar, these people are just stupid and dogmatic.

So you’re saying the Tea Party is not dishonest, just delusional. I personally think it’s a little of both.

[Wesley_Clark]

@Evil_Captor

So you’re saying the Tea Party is not dishonest, just delusional. I personally think it’s a little of both.

I’m open to the idea that they are dishonest, but how are they dishonest (what examples are there, etc)? To me dishonesty implies being aware that what you are saying isn’t true, and being aware of what actually is true. Delusional means you think your fantasies are reality. The tea party seems delusional, not dishonest.

[BrainGlutton]

@Wesley_Clark

I’m open to the idea that they are dishonest, but how are they dishonest (what examples are there, etc)? To me dishonesty implies being aware that what you are saying isn’t true, and being aware of what actually is true. Delusional means you think your fantasies are reality. The tea party seems delusional, not dishonest.

Somehow, GWB seemed to manage both at once, every single day of his presidency.

Of course, W was a flaming Commie by TP standards.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

. . . nor is it a bunch of ignorant yokels . . .

However, based on their quotes in this study, many in the on-the-ground base are quite astonishingly ignorant.

[Wesley_Clark]

@BrainGlutton

Somehow, GWB seemed to manage both at once, every single day of his presidency.

Of course, W was a flaming Commie by TP standards.

Ok I’ll give you Bush being both. But bush was not a tea partier. Bush promoted tolerance towards muslims and latinos. He signed medicare D.

Jesus, I’m nostalgic for republicans who act like W.

[Zakalwe]

@Wesley_Clark

He signed medicare D.

But refused to pay for it with a any revenue increase.

[BrainGlutton]

@Debaser

But Lind goes quite a bit too far. He takes the fact that the Tea Party is slightly disproportionately southern and somehow infers that to mean a whole lot of things about race that just aren’t true. Of course the Tea Party is more popular in the South. There are more conservatives there. That doesn’t mean that it’s fair to tie the Tea Party to some non-existent roots in “white Southern terrorism” and somehow lay their entire ideology in protecting white power over Blacks and Hispanics.

You don’t need some centuries old conspiracy theory to explain the motivations of the Tea Party. It’s a movement of people frustrated over the ever increasing size and scope of the Federal government and high taxes. Of course these people are conservative, and thus disproportionately southern. Also, of course they tend to be small business owners or “local notables” as Lind calls them. By reading so much more into it than that Lind is going a bit off the rails.

@Debaser

You don’t need some centuries old conspiracy theory to explain the motivations of the Tea Party.

Lind again.

When I have described the well-considered, coherent political and economic strategies of the conservative white South . . . I am sometimes been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist.” But one need not believe that white-hooded Dragons and Wizards are secretly coordinating the actions of Southern conservative politicians from a bunker underneath Stone Mountain in Georgia to believe that a number of contemporary policies — from race-to-the-bottom economic policies to voter disfranchisement and attempts to decentralize or privatize federal social insurance entitlements — serve the interests of those who promote them, who tend to be white Southern conservatives.

As for the race thing:

Another mistake is the failure to recognize that the Southern elite strategy, though bound up with white supremacy throughout history, is primarily about cheap and powerless labor, not about race. If the South and the U.S. as a whole through some magical transformation became racially homogeneous tomorrow, there is no reason to believe that the Southern business and political class would suddenly embrace a new model of political economy based on high wages, high taxes and centralized government, rather than pursue its historical model of a low-wage, low-tax, decentralized system, even though all workers, employers and investors now shared a common skin color.

So the struggle is not one to convert Southern Baptists to Darwinism or to get racists to celebrate diversity. The on-going power struggle between the local elites of the former Confederacy and their allies in other regions and the rest of the United States is not primarily about personal attitudes. It is about power and wealth.

[BrainGlutton]

Colin Woodard, author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, applies his theory to explain why the TP thrives where it does and not elsewhere.

There are tea party supporters everywhere, but only in these three cultural regions have they managed to achieve real and lasting political success. This is because their platform - to slash taxes, labor protections, environmental regulations, social programs, and the reach and authority of the federal government — is in accord with the centuries-old cultural ethos of each of these regions, and anathema to those elsewhere.

Several commentators have drawn parallels between the actions of the “shutdown caucus” and those of 19th century Confederate nullifiers and secessionists, Dixie minorities who were willing to burn the federal government down to get their way. In regards to the Deep South, they’re onto something.

This is a region founded by West Indies slave plantation owners, men who cherished and fought for a form of classical Republicanism modeled on Ancient Greece and Rome, where a privileged minority enjoyed liberty and democracy, and slavery was the natural lot of the many. The agenda of the Deep Southern oligarchy has been consistent for more than three centuries: to control and maintain a one party state with a colonial-style economy staffed by a compliant, low-wage workforce with as few labor, workplace safety, health care, and environmental regulations as possible. Its slave and racial caste systems have been smashed by outside intervention, but its representatives in Washington have continued to fight to reduce federal power, taxes on the rich, and rolling back labor and environmental protection, and social service programs. Not coincidently, these are also the central goals of the tea party caucus.

Greater Appalachia - home to nearly half of the shutdown hardliners - was founded by a very different group of people: settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of northern England, lowland Scotland and (especially) Northern Ireland. In this culture, “freedom” is about maximizing the autonomy of the individual and freeing each person from outside encumbrances. There was little love here for the aforementioned Deep Southern oligarchs - indeed, the region sided with the Union in the Civil War for this very reason. But since Reconstruction, the federal government has appeared the greatest threat, imposing communitarian-minded innovations like income taxes, the Civil Rights Act, cap and trade and, of course, ObamaCare.

A similarly libertarian political culture took root in the Far West - which includes the high plains and Rocky Mountains, but not the Spanish-settled borderlands and Pacific coastal plain - a region dependent on and resentful of the federal government, which owns much of the land. Here the Tea Party stands a chance.

[Evil_Captor]

@Wesley_Clark

I’m open to the idea that they are dishonest, but how are they dishonest (what examples are there, etc)? To me dishonesty implies being aware that what you are saying isn’t true, and being aware of what actually is true. Delusional means you think your fantasies are reality. The tea party seems delusional, not dishonest.

I do not think they honestly state the goals of their anti-vote fraud campaigns, just for starters. I do not think even they believe it. Believe me, the southern white elites are the old “courthouse gang” updated for modern times, they know damn well what vote fraud is and how much of it is going on, sometimes because they are the ones doing it.

[BrainGlutton]

@Evil_Captor

I do not think they honestly state the goals of their anti-vote fraud campaigns, just for starters. I do not think even they believe it. Believe me, the southern white elites are the old “courthouse gang” updated for modern times, they know damn well what vote fraud is and how much of it is going on, sometimes because they are the ones doing it.

Well, I think you are talking there about the kind of “vote fraud” that can only be done by election officials or with their complicity.

[Wesley_Clark]

@Evil_Captor

I do not think they honestly state the goals of their anti-vote fraud campaigns, just for starters. I do not think even they believe it. Believe me, the southern white elites are the old “courthouse gang” updated for modern times, they know damn well what vote fraud is and how much of it is going on, sometimes because they are the ones doing it.

The voter fraud thing is a good point, that is dishonest. However I know a few tea partiers in real life and they seem to sincerely believe that voter fraud is a massive issue and that we need legislation to stop it. That doesn’t mean the politicians and pundits behind the laws aren’t dishonest though.

[BrainGlutton]

@Wesley_Clark

The voter fraud thing is a good point, that is dishonest. However I know a few tea partiers in real life and they seem to sincerely believe that voter fraud is a massive issue and that we need legislation to stop it. That doesn’t mean the politicians and pundits behind the laws aren’t dishonest though.

Lind is probably right that the TPers are not nearly as crazy nor ignorant as others commonly assume. Nevertheless, many of them do seem to have the kind of minds that obstinately and persistently substitute their own reality for reality. They have brains, they just won’t use them to engage the facts, but only to invent and rationalize their own.

“The Communist and the Catholic are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.”

– George Orwell

If he were alive and in America today, he would add “Tea Partier” to the list.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

Lind is probably right that the TPers are not nearly as crazy nor ignorant as others commonly assume. Nevertheless, many of them do seem to have the kind of minds that obstinately and persistently substitute their own reality for reality. They have brains, they just won’t use them to engage the facts, but only to invent and rationalize their own.

“The Communist and the Catholic are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.”

– George Orwell

If he were alive and in America today, he would add “Tea Partier” to the list.

In fact, I think they’re a prime example of what Orwell called “nationalists” in his 1945 essay, “Notes on Nationalism”.

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly–and this is much more important–I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

<snip>

Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should–in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918–and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which it is felt ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied. In 1927 Chiang Kai Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count’, or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.

Sounds like the average Fox News fan, doesn’t it?

[BrainGlutton]

Another followup from Lind. His argument here is that liberals and progressives are missing a bet, and have been missing it for decades, by writing off the white working class as “conservative,” when in fact American conservatism’s demographic center-of-gravity is much more upscale.