Conservatives are frustrated and decide to form their own political party (kind of).
WTF!!!
You have an irrationally conservative party called the Republican Party, much to the disappointment of Republican progressives like me. So how are the Tea Baggers different than the far right that has hijacked the party for 3 decades and when will us Republicans bring back the Bull-Moose party?
*"The Tea Party movement is a United States protest movement that emerged in early 2009 partially in response to the federal government’s stimulus package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The movement originated in anti-tax protests and arose in response to the increase in the national debt as a result of the stimulus package, as well as the reaction to increases in home mortgage foreclosures despite TARP bailout money paid to the banks. It grew dramatically after revelations about the bonuses paid to AIG executives in March 2009 and has been most visible through the Tea Party protests of 2009. Protesters have also utilized the social networking outlets Twitter, My Space, Facebook as well as blogs in promoting Tax Day events."*
Thanks but I already looked that up and it doesn’t add to the debate. Why would Conservatives break from the Republican Party when they already control that party?
Because they need a fringe to the fringe.
But some of them really are frustrated with the Republican party as well, because they’ve noticed how the Bush administration spent wildly. Not many, though.
One only WISHES the Bull Moose Party would come back. T.R. is probably weeping when he realizes what happened to the Republican party.
I think the tea party is fairly small though (Obama’s rallies generally pulled far larger crowds on much shorter notice than the Tea Party rallies). And my impression is it is largely made up of older, white conservatives whose head exploded when a Muslim Kenyan Marxist who works for Al Qaeda won the presidential election with democratic supermajorities and was able to implement his Stalinist schemes.
Thus goes the narrative. I guess they felt the mainstream GOP isn’t ‘scared’ enough of this threat or something. I really don’t know.
It’s a fairly common thing. A group on the left will attempt to form a separate party, even though they should realize that their beliefs are so far to the left that they have no chance of being elected. Or a group on the right will attempt to form a separate party, even though they should realize that their beliefs are so far to the right that they have no chance of being elected. In some countries with different ballot systems this might have some use. If the elections are to a legislature where the number of legislators elected by each party depends only on the proportion of all the voters who vote for them, this might work. If the elections to a single office are set up so that a voter can submit an ordered list of his preferred candidates and there are automatic run-offs using that list, this might work. However, in the U.S., where elections are always winner-take-all, this doesn’t work and could cause the candidate that a voter likes least to win.
Precisely because it’s such a useless idea under the U.S. election laws, new parties don’t get formed very often. This is mostly a rhetorical trick. Someone will claim that they are going to form a new party. The rest of the party that they currently belong to will sometimes slightly change their policies to bring that person back into the fold so that he doesn’t screw up the next election.
It also seems like a natural response to the current state of things. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Four years ago there were lots of protests from radical groups on the left; plenty of anti-war and anti-corporation rallies. They simply lacked the cohesion we see with the Teabaggers.
Now with a Muslim Kenyan Marxist who works for Al Qaeda as the president and a democratic supermajority implementing Stalinist schemes, the crazies on the left have taken a seat allowing for crazies on the right to stand up.
I think I’d be more surprised if they hadn’t formed a little gang and marched on Capital Hill. And I expect they won’t be the last. Other radical groups from the right will clump together to protest their own pet cause be it abortion-for-none or guns-for-all.
At the moment, those groups have no one in power and no one representing them. From the comfort of their trailers they here a lot of talk about government spending and UHC for them left, but then nothing from the right. Then someone realizes they can make profit from making radicals angry, and poof, the Teabaggers are born.
In a few years Palin will be president and MSNBC will supporting the Rusty Tromboners as they cry angrily for more social programs.
It’s the circle of life.
akumawabe akumbawe…
The Tea Party movement is not an attempt to create a new political party. It is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, thus is comprised of a series of political protests.
It is not a faction, it is not a breakaway group from the Republicans, rather it is a bunch of nimrods that like to make fools of themselves in public while simultaneously wrapping themselves in some good-old American history.
You beat me to the punch on that.
I think they are making an effort to shake off that image. From today’s NYT:
I’m not sure how successful they’ll be, but I think it’s premature to dismiss them as a bunch of loonies.
They don’t feel like they do control that party. They feel like the Republican party is to tolerant of, as they put it, RINOs, Republicans in Name Only, who aren’t devoted to the goals of the tea party movement. So one of their main goals is to get involved in the primaries to vote out “fake” Republicans, who aren’t conservative enough for them.
Also, the main goal of the tea partiers is to shrink the size of the federal government, and cut taxes, spending, and government regulation. Their main focus isn’t social issues. That’s not to say that they don’t have members who, say, want to abolish abortion, for instance. Most of them do. But that’s not their primary goal.
Republicans bring back Bull-Moose Party?? Is this some kind of joke? :smack:
Bull-Moose Party platform planks:
This does not sound to me like post-modern “Republicanism” whether of either the tea-drinking or bourbon-drinking factions.
I wish the Tea Partyers the best of luck.
The so-called liberal/progressives of the Democratic Party are doing their level best to screw up a real chance to make inroads into meaningful progressive initiatives. They are demanding that the whole enchilada be obtained or nothing…and each day seems to bring them closer and closer to getting nothing.
Good to see the other side as anxious to screw up a good thing coming their way.
But since I consider the conservative side to be garbage…I gotta root for them to screw up more than for the so-called liberal/progressives to do so.
I was beginning to think the progressive side was doomed. They had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But the other side seems determined to snatch it back.
GO TEA PARTY!
Like MOIDALIZE’s quote says, I suspect that by losing looniness, they sign their own death warrant. They just get swallowed up back into the big fish.
To get the Dormouse into the teapot. Same reason a raven is like a writing-desk.
What was the point of Code Pink? Or the NAACP? Don’t they have a party that supports their interests?
(Also I am amused that the initial liberal kneejerk “Astroturf” has turned into a liberal kneejerk “teabagger loonies.” Coldly calculating amoral agents have suddenly turned into unhinged crazies.)
Kindasorta. Not so much, really. But the real difference is that their existence does not damage the party in question.
Which is ironic because a large % of the population of the tea party movement (larger than the % of the general population) is geriatric and either near or over 65. People over 65 are the biggest welfare recipients in the US, collecting about 1.2 trillion a year in medicare and social security. Almost 1/3 of the federal budget goes to those 2 programs.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2010/02/06/tech-shy-tea-party
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2009/04/tea-party-teabaggers-attack-acorn/
Its like these people aren’t even capable of elementary critical thinking.
Tea activist: “Cut the budget. Cut welfare”
Government: “OK, lets start with the pension system and medical care you depend on everyday”
Tea activist:“Wait, what? You mean social security and medicare are government programs?”
If you want to destroy the tea party movement, cut their medicare and social security for 2 months. They will be begging for welfare by the end.
These people are the embodiment of every negative stereotype of baby boomers. Extremely stupid, aggressive, self absorbed and extremely spoiled/selfish. Not because they hate welfare, but because they hate welfare that goes to other people and aren’t smart enough to realize they are even more dependent on welfare than the people they criticize. A tea party activist who is 70 probably collects about $30,000 a year in medicare and social security. Then they complain about single mothers getting $4000 a year in food stamps.
We’ve always recognized that the leadership of this movement was different from the masses involved. Hell, Dick Freakin’ Armey organized the first of these! But the thing is that the people it attracted really believed this crap.
They also have come to the point where they recognize the astroturf nature of the movement. That’s why the crazies avoided this big tea party convention in droves.