Here’s a helpful list of Tea Party candidates.
We’ve already discussed Tea Party candidate Rich Iott. He’s the person who likes to dress up as a Nazi, and is currently lying to voters by claiming military service.
But there are many, many more Tea party candidates. The House candidates don’t get nearly as much attention as the Senate candidates, which is a shame, and possibly illegal.
I don’t want conservative House candidates or spokespeople to feel sad or ignored or “left out” (or “fired”) because that’s a violation of their First Amendment rights, so I’ve been listening to them.
Tea Party-backed candidate, Tom Ganley, is interesting. Note that both Ganley and his accuser are Tea party members.
The Cleveland woman who last week filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Brecksville auto dealer Tom Ganley filed an amended complaint today which claims the GOP congressional candidate wouldn’t give her a job because she refused his sexual advances.
The 39-year-old mother of four claims she met Ganley at a July 2009 Tea Party rally in downtown Cleveland, admired his anti-abortion political views and sought to volunteer for a U.S. Senate campaign he was waging before he decided to run against Sutton. She also asked him about lowering the interest rate on a Chevrolet Venture van she’d bought from his dealership. The lawsuit says that when she brought the van in for repairs and went to Ganley’s office to discuss a job he offered her, Ganley made unwanted sexual advances.
“He told her he would fix her car for free, provide her with a paying job, and reduce the interest rate on the financing of her Chevy Van in return for her acting basically as a prostitute and becoming sexually submissive to him,” the lawsuit says. “Plaintiff was greatly offended and was in fear of the deranged Defendant Ganley at that time, and was trapped in his office while her van was being repaired.”
And here’s Stephen Broden, Tea Party House candidate in Texas, freely exercising his right to political speech:
Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden stunned his party Thursday, saying he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections did not produce a change in leadership. In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas pastor, said a violent uprising “is not the first option,” but it is “on the table.” That drew a quick denunciation from the head of the Dallas County GOP, who called the remarks “inappropriate.”
It’s a long list. I’m sure there are more conservative candidates who are entitled to a forum. We don’t want them silenced.
Bulworth
Wow. A pastor. From Texas. I’m so totally shocked.
But thank you Kay for making sure our teabagger friends have a forum and aren’t silenced and refudiated by the librul media.
jonas
Anti-abortion views are always about misogyny at some level and never about fetuses, as this poor woman learned the hard way. The more anti-abortion a guy is, I can guarantee you the shittier he treats women (see too Buck, Ken).
cleek
speaking of NPR and the tea party (thread synergy!), i’m a little pissed at the way NPR keeps referring to Republican candidates as “Tea Party” candidates. ex: Sharron Angle.
The Grand Panjandrum
Here is Frank Guinta running to replace the absolutely great progressive Carol Shea-Porter in NH-01:
Chyron HR
“If you didn’t want America to be overrun by psychotic, ignorant fascists, you should have made Obama pass a bigger stimulus.”
Bulworth
I could be wrong, but it appears to me as if all these teabagger candidates running for Congress are actually Republican candidates. That’s amazing. “But we still don’t know enough about the teabaggers…”
Kay
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Wonderful. Thank you. He’s on the list!
That’s how we know he’s authentically grass roots. He’s a proud shill for FreedomWorks.
ed drone
Illegal? How? Or is that just a “meta” remark about the media and whether attention must be paid?
If Tea Party members are running for the House, are we seeing the emergence of the Tea House of the Awesome Loons? (Sorry*)
I must admit it is sometimes hard to distinguish Teahadists from the normal Republican wack-job (I mean, where does Michelle Bachman fit? — she’s been around longer than the tea-kluxers, but she’d have been a founder of that group if not already branded “Republican”). As one of them put it recently, (paraphrased, not verbatim) “They call me crazy, but then, they used to say that about the John Birch Society.”
I know this is a stupid question, but how the hell can anyone expect to legislate when they so demonize their opponents that even acknowledging their positions is out-of-bounds? Politics used to be the “art of the possible,” but now it’s “mission improbable.”
Ed
NOTE * (not really).
Erik Vanderhoff
Man, I hope just enough Tea Partiers win to make 2012 a cakewalk for Democrats and liberals. This is going to be an exciting couple of years.
And by exciting, I mean as interesting and terrifying as a train wreck.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Kay: Yep. Dean Barker and others blogging at Blue Hampshire have been doing a great job of staying on Guinta’s case.
Chris- The Fold
Does a tea bagger state senate candidate in Illinois count? Check out what he said the other night at a NAACP event…
“Look at the number of black men who opt out of getting a job and opt out of higher education. They don’t even make it out of high school because the lucrative drug trade is so rampant that it’s just easy for them to fall into that. What are the avenues for the black man to get out of the ghetto? He becomes a star athlete or he does drugs. I mean very few men of the black race get out of that ghetto through education…”
OH yeah he said it, and then just kept digging it deeper.
Something Polish
via tbogg:
A gaggle of geese; a scrotum of teabaggers.
Kay
@ed drone:
I think conservatives are have some fundamental confusion on political speech. They think it means they’re entitled to an exclusive forum on their own terms, and when they speak, any dissent or consequences of that speech means they’re being “silenced” or “targeted”.
gene108
Part of me and my white-collar self hopes the teabaggers start undoing all the New Deal and Great Society legislation that’s propping up a lot of people, who vote for them.
It’d be interesting to see where wages go, when the minimum wage gets repealed.
Or how well the living standards of people end up, when environmental laws get thrown out the window. Big cities are no longer factory towns. The liberals living in big cities won’t be effected. It’s the people in small rural towns, where the mines, oil wells, gas wells, and factories are that’ll feel the impact.
At some point, if you keep voting for people, who want to dick you over you should get what you vote for.
burnspbesq
@Chris- The Fold:
It was worth clicking on that link to discover a post entitled “Ross Douthat: Space Alien Man Child.”
Thanks. You brightened my morning.
Kay
@ed drone:
One of the corporations that donate to the Chamber of Commerce for attack ads cited protesters as a reason they should be protected from disclosure.
But protesting is, of course, a form of political speech.
Not much of a debate if one side does all the “talking”, right?
wrb
Don’t forget Art Robinson, who is doing dangerously well against Defazio in Oregon
Art Robinson, Oregon GOP Candidate For Congress, Sells Book Comparing Africans To Retarded Children
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/06/30/art-robinson-oregon-gop-candidate-for-congress-sells-book-comparing-africans-to-retarded-children/
Robinson and the Infamous “Oregon Petition”
Robinson is the founder of a group called the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” (OISM), which markets, among other things, a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about sosialism in the public schools” and books on how to survive nuclear war.
http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1067
Slowbama
This is why whenever I’m on a plane and see a passenger wearing, you know, a three-piece suit or a golf shirt, I get really, really nervous.
GregB
Who better to “restore honor” to American government than this selection of idiots, fascists, racists, plutocrats, stooges, dupes, buffoons, sexists and clowns.
It only makes sense, because that Obama is such a boor and Speaker Pelosi is crass and Jim Clyburn, well, you know.
Dennis SGMM
@Kay:
But, but,but, we are all able to engage in political speech so we’re all equal – right? The fact that the other side has siege guns while we’re waving flyswatters in no way affects our equality.
cleek
a couple dozen freshmen teabagger reps are not going to be enough to drive the institutional GOP’s agenda or to overcome Obama’s veto. the professional GOP knows better than to actually try to cut popular programs, and cutting smaller programs won’t actually do anything significant to the deficit.
so, all they’re going to get is a vocal, ignorant and over-expecting sub-group within the GOP caucus. the country will never get to see the full fury of the teabaggers’ policy agenda.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Chris- The Fold: But we musn’t criticize because that would violate his 1st Am. rights AND be horribly racist!
Wow.
Nice of him to kick away his chance to say he was talking about poor people in general.
NonyNony
@Dennis SGMM:
Hey, both you and News Corp are free to drop a million dollars on advertising for Congressional campaigns this cycle. I don’t know what you’re whining about – rich and poor alike are free to spend as much money as they want getting their chosen candidates into office.
Don’t you just get the tinglies from all that liberty?
EconWatcher
OT, but it’s looking like the “Aqua Buddha” gambit might have been a stroke of genius that could possibly win Conway the election.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/10/the_full_aqua.php#more?ref=fpblg
I thought it was a cheap shot about harmless college hijinks that would backfire. But I guess that’s why I sit in the cheap seats.
New Yorker
I’ve probably said this many times before, but the Tea Party is really making me respect the 2nd amendment more. I wonder if some day I may have to arm myself for protection against these loons.
Punchy
This disconnect between what the teatard rubes want, and what the teatard Reps will be able to actually accomplish (especially if they are still in the minority) will be amazing to behold. Their inability to repeal HRC, Amendments 17, 14, 13, and difficulty in blowing up all the Planned Parenthoods will frustrate the baggers to a degree that should lead to records levels of comedy.
Kay
@Dennis SGMM:
I think it’s worse than that. I could live with what you describe. These speakers hide. I don’t know how I launch a protest against any corporate entity that smears liberal candidates or causes when all I have is “The Chamber of Commerce”. That doesn’t do me much good. What if I feel like picketing the headquarters of the donor?
I can’t even boycott, and refuse to buy their products or services. I don’t know who they are.
It makes me laugh a little, what absolute godamned cowards these big corporate entities are. I live in a rabidly Republican area, I have a business here, I’m an active local Democrat, the opposition, and my name is all over the place. I’m not protected from the possible economic consequences of my political activities, but they are.
mds
@cleek:
Given that they primarily embrace the institutional GOP’s agenda, it won’t be necessary. Seriously, weed out the talk of armed sedition, the evils of fluoridation, repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, and defense of pedophilia, and you’ve got tax cuts for the rich, gutting government regulation, and further institutionalizing discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities. This doesn’t differ substantially from the establishment GOP’s agenda at all. That’s why GOP moneymen are funding ‘baggers: because they’re “populists” who demand that the wealthy brutalize them more.
bemused
Tea party types were disruptive at the first Jim Oberstar/Chip Cravaack debate last Tuesday in Duluth. I finally found and watched the full debate on wdiotv site and it was a shameful scene. The rowdys were yelling before the moderators had even finished introducing the candidates. The mods had to tell the crowd to pipe down several times during the 90 minute debate. Even when a moderator said this isn’t kindergarten, it didn’t embarrass them. Once while Cravaack was speaking some Oberstar supporters made some noise and Oberstar made hand motions to them to quiet down and let the guy talk. Cravaack just sat there and did nothing to admonish his supporters from hollering over Oberstar.
I did laugh once. Oberstar was booed when he mentioned climate change and he called them flatearthers. They were not as amused.
The 2nd Oberstar/Cravaack debate is tonight live streamed by debateminnesota.org and theuptake.org. We’ll see if this will be an actual debate instead of a tea party rally.
gene108
I once thought people realized the Gilded Age wasn’t so hot and the Progressive changes made in the 20th century made America better…. I guess I was wrong…
We’re headed for Gilded Age 2.0
Kryptik
@gene108:
What’s worse is that the country seems to actively pushing for a return to the Gilded Age, where the original was simply because there was no checks conceived to avert it the first time around.
Cat Lady
@Punchy:
fixt for accuracy, sadly.
mds
@bemused:
First Baron Hill, now Oberstar. Did the climate scientists get to these guys’ Wheaties? Listening to Manchin, I would have thought that climate change would be an easy one to throw over the side out of completely unprincipled political expediency. Yet these guys, who are not exactly leading lights of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, if you know what I mean, are going to the mat over it. “Flatearthers” is about right. Too bad the Senate fucked them over on cap-and-trade, too.
Kryptik
@Cat Lady:
Re-fixt. After all, don’t you know that Americans can’t be terrorists?! Not unless they’re….MUSLIM. After all, Muslims are always Muslim first, American second, don’cha know.
Suffern Ace
@gene108: Doesn’t amaze me. With a desire for 14 carat gold plating, people don’t quite get the pun. Ask them if they want to be hung upon a cross of gold, and they think that is one heck of a way to die. That whole free silver thing was just a handout anyways.
Zifnab
@Kay:
That’s where you’re mistaken. The only valid form of political speech is campaign contributions.
Oscar Leroy
@jonas:
“Anti-abortion views are always about misogyny at some level and never about fetuses”
So the anti-choice nuts don’t believe that abortion destroys a living soul?
Southern Beale
You know, if the country keeps sliding rightward, some day this will be the plotline of “The Way We Were” remake….
singfoom
@Kryptik:
Actively pushing? Man, we’re already there. We’re beyond the old gilded age. The real question is who the Teddy Roosevelt analogue is today, and when he will break up the Multinational Corporations ala Teddy’s Trustbusting.
mds
@Zifnab:
FTFY. Remember, it’s still illegitimate when George Soros does it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern Ace: And where exactly do the ruby slippers come into play?**
** Pedant preemption: I know they were silver in the book.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Heh. Especially when they turn on the evil RINOs who BETRAYED THEM. Hilarity will ensue in the next election cycle, when Teabaggers try to raise George Gordon and Nathan Forrest from the dead just to get some candidates who hew to their ideals their ideals.
Omnes Omnibus
@Oscar Leroy: How is a soul destroyed? Aren’t souls immortal?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@wrb:
If you are going to mention Art Robinson please don’t forget his plan to get rid of nuclear waste by spraying it in a thin layer over our oceans. Art’s ‘studies’ show that radiation is good for us so maybe we could even spray the nuclear waste all over the ground and even mix it in concrete so we can build the foundations for our homes on it.
Yup, that’s fer reals!
These Teahadists want to poison us with nuclear waste, sell off Social Security and Medicare to the highest bidder, get rid of unemployment and welfare, wall off our country from the rest of the world and so much more!
Aren’t we fortunate.
/retch
Linda Featheringill
Ah yes. Ganley. Met him in the course of trying to buy a car once. Asshole. I see he hasn’t changed.
If the Republican leadership is truly stunned by this statement, then they are stupid. It always was on the table.
Part of the TeaParty enthusiasm for voting [and hysteria when staging demonstrations] could be explained by their exhausting all the established political forums before resorting to violence. Some of these people want to be able to say that they tried their best within the system.
If the system doesn’t work for them, they can either slink off into the corner to lick their wounds or they can try methods that are outside of the political system.
As a lot of us know, this is an individual decision. Nobody can decide this for somebody else. Therefore, I don’t know what the TP as a whole would do. I would expect some diversity, with some folks being more peaceful than others.
Kryptik
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Oh, you have got to be shitting me. Please, please tell me you’re shitting me.
Rafael
An unforeseen benefit of all these Tea Party people running is that most of them are so crazy and dumb that I bet a bunch will get caught on corruption charges of some sort or another just in time for the 2012 election cycle.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rafael: Something to do with an orange man handing out checks from lobbyists on the House floor perhaps?
slag
This made me laugh out loud.
And this post compelled me to kick in a few more dinars to the cause.
Although when it comes to money and campaigns, liberals really are bringing knives to a gun fight.
Anya
It amazes me that the wackiest of the teabaggers candidates are the black teabaggers. WTF is up with that? I know, it goes with the territory that when you sell your soul and join forces with folks who think you’re inferior, you’re a lost cause, but must you out crazy the crazy.
ruemara
@Kryptik:
Uh, no, he’s not. not even slightly shitting you.
bemused
@mds:
I just read a column by Sam Cook in the Duluth News Tribune about a Cloquet High School teacher taking his senior government class to that debate. The 12th graders were “appalled”, thought the yellers were “boorish”, “disrespectful” and “acted like a kindergarten class”. The class actually wanted to learn something and hear what the candidates positions and they were prevented from doing that.
I doubt that these teens’ comments will shame the rude ones out of setting such a bad example in the future. Most of them are probably proud of themselves.
wrb
@Kryptik:
It is true
and
“Robinson appears on Senator James Inhofe’s list of “prominent scientists” who dispute the existence of man-made global warming.”
ed drone
@gene108:
AS H. L. MENCKEN SAID, “DEMOCRACY IS THE THEORY THAT THE COMMON PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THEY WANT, AND DESERVE TO GET IT, GOOD AND HARD.”*
Ed
NOTE * HAPPY CAPS-LOCK DAY
(Glad I can get that over with now.)
kay
@Linda Featheringill:
He’s quite the negotiator.
He owns the dealership and he didn’t even offer to just give her the piece of shit car. He offered to reduce the interest rate. What woman wouldn’t jump at that deal?
JohnR
What you mean “we”, paleface? Anyway, we’re already well into it, maybe even past the peak.
I just don’t understand all this fuss – isn’t the House supposed to represent Real Americans? Everyone knows that Liberals aren’t either, and corporations are both.
catclub
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Robinson is crazy because he does not realize what statements will get him tagged as crazy. Or crazy for a politician.
In discussions of ocean dumping of nuclear waste, I was always impressed by its simplicity – get nuclear waste away from almost all life on earth by glassifying it and putting it in cement casks, having them sink to the bottom and then deep into the sediments. The casks may eventually dissolve – but the leakage should be slow and the pollution will be diffuse. The most dangerous and risky part of the process is transporting the cement casks both on land and sea, but once they are deep in mud, they are probably the safest disposal location we can imagine. Any land based disposal has a very hard time figuring out how to last 10,000 years safely. Earthquakes, water infiltration – people infiltration, etc.
However, if you ask an expert about this, that person will probably agree, but then say that we are forbidden to discuss ocean dumping as a possible solution. Discussing these things is crazy for a politician. I am not one.
Kryptik
@ruemara:
@wrb:
Oh god. Just…
Fuck all, this is just getting sick.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kryptik:
As ruemara said, no shit. The guy is a fucking loon and the people in my county love him. I am noting all of the crazy fuckers who are displaying his signs so I know who is who while conducting my business.
I want to know who the dumbfuckers are in our county and support for this guy is a surefire indicator of a dumbfuck.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@catclub:
He doesn’t want to glassify the waste, he wants ‘to dilute it and spray it in a fine mist over the oceans’. And if his ‘studies’ are correct, also spray it on land and mix it with concrete to build the foundations for good nuclear families to move into their nuclear home.
To hell with it leaching out, just let it loose and everything will be great. We ought to be snorting that shit up it’s that good for you!
Ash Can
The Tea Partier in my district is Joel Pollak, who underwent an extremely abrupt shift to the right wing in college, and would do a terrific job of representing the interests of Israel’s right wing if sent to Washington. (The interests of his actual congressional district here in the US? Not so much.)
Bruuuuce
Fortunately, the teatards aren’t taken too seriously as candidates here in Queens, NY (except possibly down in Gotti country). Which is why I can only bring this cautionary tale to the table. It’s by Sara Robinson, late of Orcinus, and now blogging at Our Future, about another potential step closer to Sinclair Lewis’ America wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Scary stuff, and a good reason for me to see if I can find a seat at the phone banks this weekend.
Moses2317
Not only are many of the tea party Republicans shady people, but their views on policy issues are radical and dangerous to the American people. We need to keep reminding voters what these clowns really believe and what is at stake in this election.
kay
@Ash Can:
I see he was endorsed by Alan Dershowitz. Former civil rights lawyer but perhaps most famous as a promoter of “the torture warrant”.
That endorsement alone….
Linda Featheringill
By the way, according to Politico,
http://www.politico.com/morningscore/
Look for “SENATE SIREN – OBJECTS IN MIRROR”
Vitter may be in trouble.
Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of him?
Winston Smith
Gee, and the Dallas Morning News just endorsed Broden.
I think it just got steeper.
Linky:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-broden_04edi.State.Edition1.50d831.html
Paul in KY
@EconWatcher: I met a committed Repub today at lunch & he was growsing about hearing all the time about ‘effing Aqua Buddha’.
Previously he’s been pretty smug about Ayn Rand Paul, but the smug was not present today.
Ash Can
@kay: The best I can figure — and there isn’t a whole lot of non-blatantly-RW-biased information on this guy out there — is that he just decided to grow up to be the Zionist’s Zionist, and sees a US congressional seat as the best way currently available to further the interests of Israel. He mouths the standard stop-Pelosi/repeal-HCR crap, but beneath this GOP veneer he seems to have no real interest in US public policy at all other than throwing a monkey wrench into what he believes is Barack Obama’s anti-Israel policy.
ETA: Fortunately, Jan Schakowsky appears likely to retain this seat.
wrb
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Yea, Robinson supporters has these big rectangular signs plastered on their car doors. It gives the impression that we’ve been invaded by the Robinson Corporation fleet. They are everywhere.
kay
@Winston Smith:
The endorsement is amusing.
They don’t know one thing about Broden, which they admit, because they didn’t ask him anything, and they’re willfully ignoring his wackjob statements.
If the Tea Party end up running Congress, it will be due to media’s absolute infatuation and complete deference to them.
kay
@Ash Can:
That’s the common thread among Tea Party House candidates, so he picked the right “movement” to hide in.
Sure, they dress up like Nazis and they get some scrutiny, but other than that? Black hole.
Americans know more about the New Black Panther Party than the Tea Party.
wrb
And now what shows up in the Balloon Juice sidebar?
“Don’t believe the lies being told about Art Robinson. Vote Art Robinson”
Don K
Jeez, there’s no entertainment value around this area. The local (MI-9) TPer (appropriate considering Halloween is coming up) is Rocky Raczkowski, who comes across on TV as a car salesman with a nicer suit, and if he harbors any birther sympathies has managed to keep them in check.
The obligatory four-point program in the TV ads consists of:
Repeal Obamacare
Reduce taxes (doesn’t say whose, however)
Eliminate the deficit
Create jobs
I get the feeling there’s room for at least 2 garden gnome question marks in there.
DaveInOz
Looks like Michelle Bachmann will soon be representing the ‘reasonable’ wing of the GOP
DougW
@Chyron HR:
Totally correct. So many opportunities lost to the idea of bipartisanship when it should have been clear (to anyone who could smell a dead skunk in the middle of the road in the summer heat), that McConnell, Boner, Rove, d’Mint and all the other members of the dishonorable opposition are hell-bent on total destruction of the Democratic Party.
Those fascist weevils were really unhappy when we enlightened the country about their plans for a “permanent majority”. They’re back at it again. This wouldn’t be a problem except for the Roberts & Scalito Supreme Court of the Far Right & Beck Only.
However, since big business has bought the radical right tooth and nail and this is not a necessarily a marriage made in Heaven since REAL Republicans have their own agenda, it’s going to be to watch the fireworks.
I only pray to all the faces of the GOD, that HE/SHE endow Democrats with the ability to be at the very least 75% as effective at the ability to obstruct the radical party as they were of Obama and his mandate from the American people in the 2008 election.