Almost none of those things are true of Obama, so how is Brown in Obama’s mold? Obama did run a good campaign, but he was running in a state that strongly favors Democrats these days, he never served in the military, and he’s not particularly Clintonesque. ‘Down to earth’ is not something I’ve heard said about Obama very often either. Intelligent, sure. Handsome… some people think so. I guess you could say Obama and Brown were/are both fresh faces and that that worked in their favor in their senate campaigns. But it seems to me that Brown pitched himself as a regular guy sort of candidate (“I drive a truck”) and Obama never did that. He wouldn’t be able to pull it off if he tried.
If you’re listing the reasons Brown won, you need to include the fact that his opponent is universally agreed to have run a terrible campaign.
The circumstances around Obama were pretty unique. His 2004 DNC address drew a lot of attention, and he was able to excite some people early on because of his message and also because of his race. That helped make him a credible candidate in the middle of his first term in the Senate. I don’t see that happening for Brown at the same point in his career. He did attract national attention for winning unexpectedly, but I don’t see him getting to that point where he’s a serious (if longshot) candidate for 2012. And it’s true that he is a Massachusetts Republican, too.
Shoot, I don’t think anyone knows what the Tea Party wants, other than “change.” One of the conservative posters here made a pretty good comment during the 2008 campaign, in that many disenfranchised center-to-left people projected their own beliefs on Barack Obama, and therefore Obama was sort of everything to everyone.
I would say the Tea Party is even more so. What the Tea Party stands for is whatever any conservative-to-libertarian person who is somewhat riled up wants it to stand for. Witness the numerous organizations which claim to represent the Tea Party that go all the way from Ronald Reagan worshippers to fruitcakes who think there is a secret 13th Amendment to the Constitution that would strip Obama of his citizenship. (Yes, I’m serious.)
When the Tea Partiers descended on Washington lo these many times,
one would have to be ignorant not to see some people expressing some combination of intolerance, ignorance, or offensiveness. From what I saw, there were very few being outright racist, but a fairly notable number of what I’d call simple intolerance – “We’re tired of Mexicans crossing the boarder to steal our women, etc.” Well, not literally, but close.
It’s funny how “technocrats” is such a terrible word now. Tea Partiers hate politicians. They hate lawyers. They hate career bureaucrats. They think people ought to be drawn from everyday America to run the government – fine. So the idea of having, say, an economist make economic policy ought to be appealing, right? “NO! He’s just some TECHNOCRAT who specialized in BEING AN EXPERT and then APPLYING HIS CONSIDERABLE KNOWLEDGE TO GOVERNMENT! We can’t have that! Why can’t we have a fry cook from Wendy’s run the Treasury for once!!!”
It’s posts like this that reveal you’re a Canadian not an American. You guys are nuts over language not race.
Race is the 800 pound gorilla of the Tea Party. It’s the subject that everyone is thinking about and nobody is talking about. Race is the reason there were no mass movement against Clinton or Carter but an ongoing demonstration against Obama.
Tea Partiers may say they want traditonal values and small government and fiscal responsibility and whatever else. But those issues have been around for decades. What got marchers out on the sidewalks was race.
Let me guess: someone comes along to post a photo of one of the racist posters seen at Tea Party events, like the one with Obama as a witch doctor. Sam Stone says that’s not directly from a tea party group, it’s just a person at a rally. Someone else says the point is that racism is feeding the movement to some extent and that arguing over whether or not the statement must be official is semantics. Then the whole thread descends into pointlesness.
It isn’t 1950. People don’t openly speak about keeping the races seperate. (Although they do complain about how political correctness means you can’t say some things anymore.)
Most of the racism is, as I posted, unstated. It’s things like when Tea Partiers say they want our country back…and the President isn’t like us…he doesn’t share our values…we just want things to be they way they used to be.
This reticence does have its conveniences. It makes it possible for tea party defenders to stick their fingers in their ears and deny that there’s any racism involved. As long as there are no hoods or burning crosses you don’t have to explain why there are no black faces in the crowd.
So Sam, I’m giving you the benefit of a doubt and assuming that, as a Canadian, you’re not seeing what any American sees and not just denying the obvious.
As things stand, Scott Brown would never make it through the primary. The Republican Party is all but pared down to the ideological core, and he fails on most of their points. He’s recently been caught whining about always having to be the one to vote with the Democrats when the rest of the Republicans want a Democratic-sponsored bill passed but don’t want to be caught dead voting Yes. There are several states with open primaries where Independents and crossover Democrats might push someone like him to the front, but not nearly enough.
McCain had many of the same flaws, but so did everyone else who had any national exposure or who was treated seriously by the media. A lot’s changed recently. The hard right wing is a lot more organized and a lot more well known; and the Republican Party itself much more restricted in viewpoint. An ideologue will be their candidate, not a centrist. If Scott Brown is to stand a chance he will have to tack hard right, right now, and – see above – he’s not doing it.
If you based an assessment of what the tea party movement is actually about on what they say, then you’d come to the conclusion that they’re staunch supporters of Obama. He wants to cut their taxes and leave them alone, and they’re up in arms against the idea.
(by the way, let me say that I’m always a bit bemused seeing Sam Stone and The Second Stone debate. Can’t just use “Stone” as mental shorthand, any more).
Really Not That Bright has a reasonable example. Now we’ll have to see whether the tea party people condemn that. dudemanjack posted an example that I would use as an example of how the left is trying to smear the tea party as racist. There is NO evidence that those racial slurs occurred. In fact it seeems to me that the event in question was an attempt to trap the tea partiers by sending members of the Congressional Black Caucus marching through a tea party rally, surrounded by cameras and microphones, hoping to catch racist acts on camera to use against the movement. They couldn’t manage to do it, so they just lied and said it happened, and the media dutifully reported it as fact. To date, no documentary evidence of racial slurs has been presented, despite a $100,000 reward being offered to anyone who may have captured it on a cell phone or video camera.
Where were the teabaggers when Bush was running up huge deficits and spending like the proverbial drunken sailor? Nowhere, that’s where. Silent.
It’s not a movement, it’s just a bunch of angry republicans pissed that they lost the election. If it was a movement about principles, they would have marched on Washington during the Bush years. They’re a joke.
I think Brown would make a solid candidate in the general election, but as others have noted, he’d never survive the primaries. Unless he’s so ambitious that he would adopt a platform that mixed teabaggery and far right-wing talking points.
That was on April 12. I think four months is probably long enough for the (no doubt strident) Tea Party condemnation to have filtered through to the mainstream media, don’t you? Or any media, for that matter.
