The Tea Party movement's overall effect on the 2010 midterms

Politics & Elections
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Christine O’Donnell has run in three primary Senate campaigns in the last four years. In one, she ran against Joe Biden. In the last, she won the Republican nomination over Mike Castle, a longtime congressman and former governor. Do you mean to tell me that at no point during any of these three campaigns she set forth no idea of her agenda, nothing about what she was against or what she would do if elected?

I would think that the archives of Delaware’s newspapers and television stations contain plenty of information about things that O’Donnell said during those campaigns, so why isn’t the national media examining her previous runs for office in order to find out about what she’s said and what her positions are? The media certainly found out quickly enough about how long it took for her to get her college diploma and it ferreted out all sorts of information about her finances, and yet for some reason we’re supposed to believe there’s nothing out there to report on when it comes to her political goals - that when it comes to what she thinks politically she’s little but a cipher.

So that’s why I’m calling bullshit on the media. They’re quick to spread the worst about her while simultaneously ignoring a four-year record of statements made during her three primary campaigns.

Now, whether those statements are good or bad from either her point of view or that of the Tea Party, I have no idea. But I do know that the media is telling us virtually nothing about them and is focusing instead on personal issues, even going so far as to trumpet and make fun of things she said and did while she was still in high school.

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[quote=“Starving_Artist, post:81, topic:553916”]

Dude, she has a web site. http://www.christine2010.com Shouldn’t the issues be right there? Can you find them?

Here’s what’s on wikipedia so far:

Pretty sparse.

According to on the issues, she wants a flat tax, is a climate change denier, wants to consider attacking Iran, does not want the U.S. to leave Iraq until the government is stable, wants to reduce capital gains and estate taxes even further, and opposes abortion in all cases.

Controversies and personal facts are always more reported than political stances. That’s not unusual.

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Yes, I know she has a website. But what does it accomplish to point to her website when you have the nation’s news and entertainment media (and a goodly number of posters to this board) going on and on about her views on masturbation and behaving as though one of the first things she’ll do if elected is try to outlaw it? The dialog on her - both here and in the national media - has been utterly ridiculous.

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She has taken few–if any–policy statements orally, and there is nothing on her web site. I really was asking you (or anyone else) if you could find relevant content on her web site.

Well, she is nuts. But there is also a class element to this. See here.

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And balance the budget, right?

Presumably the website belongs to her, or to her campaign at least. If she has any message she would like to get out to the world, that’s the place for it. She could phrase every position in the most flattering light; avoid any embarassing questions. No one can stop her.

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There’s a little link in the upper left corner, “skip and continue to site”. It’s woefully lacking in details, but there is something there.

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Speaking of class elements . . .

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So, hypothetically, what if the Tea Partiers, you know, lose? That is, what if all Tea-Party-insurgent candidates this year get creamed in the general election? (That probably won’t happen, but hypothetically.) How would they react then?

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ahem

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Oh, no. That assumes they’re the sort to just take the blame and hide their heads. The Naderites did that, mostly. I don’t think the Tea Partiers can be shut up that easily. I suspect they’ll double down on the crazy and ramp up the talk of revolution/secession.

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I love the tea baggers. They brought us Bachmann, Rand Paul, O’Donnell, Brewer, and Angle. They make politics easy. They offer us crazy people who lie like hell and would be dangerous in office. It is not hard to make a good decision at the polls.
Whatever kind of movement people are getting deluded into, those leaders will kill it .

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I think you’ll find it’s not so easy to kill. The Tea Party movement has an astroturf component, certainly, but in large part it really is a decentralized, leaderless, grassroots movement, made up of very angry people who are not going to stop being angry just because they lose.

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Bachmann significantly predates the Tea Parties.

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Yeaaaah . . . they’re gonna be pretty big babies about it. Big babies with guns.

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Oh, come now, you’re perfectly happy to attempt to tar Obama with even flimsier from-the-past kind of stuff (such as things his old pastor said.)

How do you know O’Donnell isn’t a closet witch? A secret wiccan, a Manchurian-druidic mole with the intention of infiltrating our government and promoting a Satanic agenda of moral turpitude?

She “dabbled” then, she dabbles now. Be sure of this: people don’t escape from witchcraft. It’s just like when someone is a student at a Madrassa and surely must be forever Muslim. And somehow also a socialist. Or if someone used family connections to escape from active duty in the military, had a very sketchy service record at best, and is an alcoholic (once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic), but put that all behind them, they’re a hero, but if someone’s former pastor said some wacky things, and that person repudiates those comments publicly, it’s still cause for concern.

Why is it that what someone did or said in the past is utterly damning for a moderate or liberal, but for a conservative, it is a badge of honor to have found grace and redeemed oneself from one’s sordid past?

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You’re not up-to-date with your knowledge of the right wing. The Muslim/socialist trope has been abandoned in favor of “anti-colonialism” and “African tribalism.” Apparently, the new idea is that Obama *refuses *to nationalize the banks, because he wants to keep them in limbo. Or something.

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Here’s something I’m not entirely clear on about the Tea Party:

Several fissures in the American conservative movement have become apparent in the past decade. One is between warhawkish neoconservatives, and isolationist paleoconservatives. The latter has been most clearly represented by Pat Buchanan and his America First Party (formed out of the right wing of the defunct Reform Party) and his magazine The American Conservative. As sometimes remarked in that magazine’s pages, the paleocons have found some common ground with the left, at least to the extent that they want U.S. troops out of the Middle East, and they don’t want the U.S. sticking its neck out for Israel. The paleocons also economic isolationists/protectionists where the neocons are (like the neoliberals) economic globalizers; and Main Street populists where the neocons are Wall Street elitists; and strictly anti-immigration (for reasons both economic and racial/cultural), where the neocons seem sympathetic to corporate America’s need for cheap immigrant labor. Throughout the Bush years, Buchanan and the paleocons were the most important dissenting voice on the right. (There is also the Constitution Party, which seems very similar to the America First Party in ideology, the difference being emphasis – the Constitution Party is much heavier on social-religious conservatism. Including, I think, support for Israel on “Christian Zionist” principles, which might or might not be enough to keep it from ever merging with America First.)

Now, since Obama took office, the Tea Party movement has emerged as a far more important – at any rate, far more visible and vocal – dissenting locus of the right. They challenge the GOP establishment. They do seem to come from the same demographic/cultural base as Buchanan’s paleocons. Their rhetoric is mostly based on smaller-goverment economic libertarianism and old-fashioned decentralism – that is, they want the federal government, at any rate, drastically reduced in size and functions and cost. But, I haven’t heard them say much at all about foreign or military policy. Nor immigration. Nor globalization. Nor the Wall Street/Main Street divide.

So: How do the Tea Partiers feel about these issues? Is there any consensus in the movement? Are they an ideologically different conservative movement than Buchanan’s paleocons, or are they just emphasizing different elements from the same general worldview? How does Buchanan feel about them (I’ve never heard him comment)?

GD thread.

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I think the key missing factor is age – other polls find the Tea Partiers are mostly over 45, Gallup does not. If the former is true, then the movement might be born to die in our lifetimes, just by generational attrition – that is, it represents a world-view which its members’ children do not necessarily acquire, and as Tea Partiers die off, they will not be replaced by commensurate numbers of those now young.

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Yeah, it’s too easy to make fun of Christine O’Donnell. And I suspect she’s going to lose anyway. I’m much more concerned by people that don’t have a history of being a token religious goofball on national tv, who may seem inoffensive, but may have daft ideas about governance once they get in.

From my neck of the woods:

Former House GOP whip Roy Blunt (MO)[sup]1[/sup] is going for US Senate now. The Dems, in a textbook case of my-turn-ism, have put Robin Carnahan (daughter of late governor Mel Carnahan) on the ballot. I’ve met her, she’s a nice lady, smart, personable. I like her better than I like Blunt, but that’s damning with faint praise, as Roy rubs me the wrong way. I don’t think she’s running a terribly brilliant campaign, but I will vote for her because a) the other guy is a tool; & b) I refuse to reward the GOP for their behavior these last two years. Anyway, neither of these two is an outsider, &…we’ll see how it goes.

But Roy’s old seat? Hoo boy.

The GOP nominee is a strikingly fat political newbie called Billy Long, who runs on a slogan of, “I’m fed up!” What he’s fed up by, I don’t know. I don’t really trust this guy to do anything smart in office.

The Dem nom, Scott Eckersley, is a former staffer of a not-terribly-beloved, one term, GOP, former Mo. governor who apparently had a falling out over said governor’s ethically lax behavior. (Said governor being, interestingly enough, the outgoing Roy Blunt’s son.) He’s even less visible & well-known than the screwball Long, & that, combined with the fact that he decided to pursue the minority-party nomination in a district that sometimes goes 70% GOP, means he’s on track to lose.

I’m not holding out hope that Billy Long will do something really stupid, nor that if he does the news media will manage to get awareness of that out, nor that if awareness gets out it will affect the voting patterns much. But hey, you want to embarrass the GOP/Tea Party in a very red district, throw some aid at Eck; he seems to be a Blue Dog, but at least he’s professional, & he might get Long down to 55% of the vote. whoo

  1. It’s unfair I suppose, but Roy Blunt can be remembered as the guy who left his wife to marry his lobbyist. So he’s literally in bed with [del]Philip Morris[/del] Altria. :rolleyes: He also was noted as losing to Boehner in GOP leadership shakeups over the last decade.
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I think I saw an ad for him. At the end, does he fire a shotgun into the air, and turn around and wink at us?

The Carnahans, of all people, have no room to blast Blunt for his Washington connections. That said, of course I’ll vote for Robin; Blunt is despicable.

And–that said–I have never lived in a state until now where a politician’s last name meant so much. Family connections have an effect I’ve never seen before.