For whatever reason, the Tea Party left behind the outrage against bailouts long ago and has backed candidates, like Rick Perry, who made their political careers based on crony capitalism disguised as state “economic development” funds. Perhaps it all started when a movement that had its roots in Ron Paul’s renegade campaign for the Presidency in 2008 was, inevitably one might argue, co-opted by mainline Republicans many of whom had stood on the sidelines in silence during the eight years of fiscal profligacy known as the Bush Administration. Instead of becoming a real movement against the incestuous relationship between government and business, it turned into a movement directed primarily at opposing Barack Obama.
This is just nonsense. The tea party didn’t come about because of crony capitalism, the tea party was wholly a reaction to the election of Barack Obama. We’ve gone over and over this. The tea party is not some organic movement that just appeared out of nowhere- it was the Republican base re-branding themselves with the help of the Koch brother’s various wingnut welfare organizations, Fox news and Roger Ailes, and out of work conservative political consultants. It wasn’t overtaken by “mainstream” Republicans- it punished all the mainstream Republicans in primaries. That is how we got lunatics like Sharon Angle and the masturbator-hater from Delaware whose name I can not remember.
How many times do we have to do this:
There is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans. Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene.
Still not convinced? OK:
Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.
They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”
And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”
Maybe just one more:
CNN has a much-needed and revealing poll on the Tea Party movement, with full breakdowns available at their site that reveal — no huge surprise — that it looks like a subsection of the Republican Party. The headline: Eleven percent of Americans have given some kind of support to the movement, with 5 percent attending rallies.
We’ve been down this road before, but the tea party is just the lunatic fringe of the GOP. Sure, there may be some misguided clowns who thought this was a real movement and glommed onto it (think the entire Reason magazine staff and other low information voters), but it never was. This was a reaction to the election of a black Muslim socialist, and a clever re-branding of the wingnut base. It took a while, but even the majority of the country has figured out that the tea party is the same group of assholes they’ve hated for decades, just with a new name:
Time released a new poll this morning finding that 54 percent view the Wall Street protests favorably, versus only 23 percent who think the opposite. Interestingly, only 23 percent say they don’t have an opinion, suggesting the protests have succeeded in punching through to the mainstream. Also: The most populist positions espoused by Occupy Wall Street — that the gap between rich and poor has grown too large; that taxes should be raised on the rich; that execs responsible for the meltdown should be prosecuted — all have strong support.
Meanwhile, the poll found that only 27 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party. My handy Plum Line calculator tells me that this amounts to half the number of those who view Occupy Wall Street favorably.
There’s that magic 27% again.
At any rate, it takes an exceptionally blinkered mind to think Dick Armey (you may remember him as the REPUBLICAN HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER FOR A FUCKING DECADE, Matt Kibbe, and all the high-profile Republicans running the tea party are something new and independent from the GOP.
*** Update ***
John, I think this is a serious misreading of the Mataconis piece. He’s arguing that the Tea Party have dropped even the pretense of caring about the bailouts and other examples of crony capitalism, and instead are openly backing candidates who owe their careers to crony capitalism. In other words, he’s stating the obvious, the Tea Party are simply Republicans by any other name.
Am I misreading the piece and being unfair to Mataconis? if that is his point, we are in complete agreement. I thought he was arguing that at one point they were actually concerned with those things, when they simply were not. They were just a gut reaction to the election of Obama.
General Stuck
This started the morn with a big belly woot.
SiubhanDuinne
Christine O’Donnell, I suppose you mean.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Stuck:
:: wave :: Hi, Stuck! Hi, Charlie!
AA+ Bonds
Yeah, remember when Glenn Beck was all like “AND THE CORPORATIONS!” and then he cried and all the academico-Leninist-libertarians all cried too and got elephants tattooed on their business parts, that was priceless
Yeah see, that’s what I mean when I talked about how it doesn’t matter who says they’re “following the protests closely”, this (“punching through to the mainstream”) is exactly what the OWS coalition has as its goal and it’s working.
Splitting Image
In fairness, Ron Paul did run an insurgent campaign against the rest of the GOP field in 2008, and he did go as far as to organize a counter-convention opposite the actual GOP convention, and it is true that the Tea Party movement does in fact have its roots in Paul’s 2008 campaign.
So there is that.
On the other hand, the news media and expecially Fox went out of their way to ignore what Paul was doing at the time, and their narrative for the year was “Democrats divided, Republicans united”, as it always is.
You are right that the instant Obama was elected, the Fox and its hounds immediately rallied behind the movement. Within weeks it was unrecognizable. At this point, I have to assume that all of the original 2008 supporters are long gone, or else are perfectly fine with their slightly altered platform. Anyone still in the Tea Party now is a grifter or is being grifted, and that includes the good Dr. Paul.
BGinCHI
Right on, John. The Tea Party was invented for the Obama Administration, but also as cover for those dipshits who supported Bush. When history was about to judge them (as the GOP) harshly, they went into camouflage mode: The Tea Party. Costumes and all.
I love it when they try to say they didn’t vote for Bush or never supported him.
Lie, you fucking liars.
piratedan
astroturf, complete with faceless political organizations that miraculously appear with the election of a black man used as a misinformation foil complete with mainstream propaganda network…
versus grass roots seeds of discontent movement pulled from all walks of life that have been financially and politically disenfranchised
analysis, how does it work, it helps if you quit putting the emphasis on the first two syllables… sheesh
and the sad part is, that fucker Mataconis got paid to write that, our media, a fucking travesty
Ash Can
@Splitting Image: I recall the Tea Party bullshit beginning with the co-opting and mass marketing of Rick Santelli’s tantrum about having to pay other people’s mortgages for them, and don’t recall any connection with Ron Paul’s cult at all. I can see how the packaging and selling of the Tea Party concept would appeal to at least some of the cultists, but that’s the opposite cause and effect.
Ash Can
As for Mataconis, is he stupid, or just not paying attention? Tough call.
Linda Featheringill
It looks like ows in nyc is in danger of being rousted out of the park, starting at 7 o’clock in the morning. Health and safety concerns.
And the company that owns the park has served notice that they are going to enforce a bunch of anti-occupy rules.
Now what?
theBuhjaysus
That scumbag Rick Santelli came on CNBC at the Chicago Board of Trade and starting ranting about the injustice of the Obama administration even discussing what to possibly do about the “losers” who were underwater on their mortgages. He called for a tea party to push back against the coming Socialist takeover.
I actually daydream often about finding Rick in and around Chicagoland and beating him to a bloody pulp.
Yeah I got issues.
sixers
Good.
Gravenstone
John, I think this is a serious misreading of the Mataconis piece. He’s arguing that the Tea Party have dropped even the pretense of caring about the bailouts and other examples of crony capitalism, and instead are openly backing candidates who owe their careers to crony capitalism. In other words, he’s stating the obvious, the Tea Party are simply Republicans by any other name.
blackfrancis
Stop the nonsense?
Nonsense is all they have.
blackfrancis
@Ash Can: Too stupid to be paying attention?
djork
Off topic, but I just replied to an Obama fundraising e-mail with this:
“While I do appreciate Mr. Obama has a very difficult job and I wish him nothing but success, I will not be donating one dime this election due to the free trade agreements forced on the American people (many of whom are currently protesting in the streets over economic conditions) by an apparently tone deaf Administration and Congress. I find it quite odd that the two parties can only seem to agree on bills that continue to gut the middle class in favor of corporations.
That giant sucking sound you hear is the hard-earned money I was planning to send you being used to buy the Occupy Wall Sreet crowd some food instead.”
No one will ever read it, but it felt good.
Maude
@Linda Featheringill:
They are cleaning it in sections. The mayor told them they could stay there.
OWS has to clear out of the sections that will be cleaned.
Shawn in ShowMe
How could a true grassroots movement outraged by the bailouts of our Galtian overlords be co-opted by Dick Armey and the Koch brothers in less than six months? Even the average Mitt Romney flip-flop takes longer than that.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
I vote for “lying through his teeth”.
Steve
The Tea Party is sure getting refudiated with the inevitable nomination of Mitt Romney. Only, here’s the funny thing, they’re all going to vote for him anyway, as if they were nothing but partisan Republicans. Wild!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I was under the impression Tea party was an outright hijacking of the libertarians by the GOP and even the libertarians were saying it at the time.
Wag
Yes, you’re misreading the piece.
Wag
this is the money quote that tells me you’re misreading the article.
BGinCHI
@theBuhjaysus: But there are just SO many Chuck E. Cheeses.
Splitting Image
@Ash Can:
None of that is wrong, but read this:
Paul Dec 2007 Money Bomb
Paul had been using the tea party moniker since at least 2007. (You can find a few articles confirming this by doing a search for “Ron Paul 2008 Boston Tea Party”).
As I see it, both the Wall Street Galtians and the Paul true believers had been using the tea party imagery for quite awhile. The Galt Streeters have been ascendant in the libertarian party for quite some time, but the Paul campaign gave some credence to the idea that there was a grassroots movement out there.
On January 20, 2009, the Galt Streeters moved into high gear and their activities were reported (especially by Fox) as through they represented a continuation of the Paul campaign. Paul himself helped contribute to that misconception. Having said that, Santelli would have framed his little tantrum in terms of the Boston Tea Party if Paul hadn’t been born. Paul’s activities did help the Galt Streeters because his campaign gave people a vague awareness that there was a “Tea Party” grassroots movement out there fighting the man… or something. Fox took over the branding, and Bob’s your uncle.
shirt
Look, ya’ll, the teaparty was the emerging racist wing of the conservanazis. It could no longer be hidden by the code words or tamped down with with evangelical god-balm. So they drug it out in plain sight, whitewashed it then doused it with a finish coat of red, white and blue put a tri-corn hat on it and called it macaroni.
And as for libertarians, for the most part (though not all) they are to conservatism what agnostics are to religion: when in the foxholes, one of ’em begins to pray, the other invests in the military industrial complex.
General Stuck
Sounds to me like mataconis is saying the Tea Party was formed for altruistic reasons concerning spending, and TARP, and corporate welfare, and then swapped that for opposing Obama that helped them win the 2010 election, as a successful strategy change. I and others say this is false, and it was always about Obama that got these fat hateful fucks off their sofas and onto the street, that was then financed into a mostly GOP weapon, though one that has backfired bigtime.
There is no doubt in my mind that the tea party as an org would never have existed but for having a black president. All the same people would be pissed cause he’s a liberal, and make shit up like they did with Clinton for being a dem, BUT THE ENERGY it took to form a mob and act stupid in public was all about race, and nothing more.
handsmile
@Linda Featheringill: (#10)
I predicted this very scenario in a response to you (#47) on the “Kings of Wishful Thinking” thread that was posted on Monday.
Earlier today on the “OWS/Together: Random Snippets” thread, I wrote (#35) about Bloomberg’s sudden announcement that Zuccotti Park posed a public health issue and that protesters must vacate the site to permit cleaning crews to work. Of course, two days earlier, the emperor of New York had declared that OWS protesters could remain there for an indefinite period.
This afternoon I visited Zuccotti Park to provide cleaning products to those assembled there, as had been requested in an #OWS alert. A full-site clean-up by OWS participants has been organized for this evening and tonight in an effort to obviate the city’s action tomorrow morning. The atmosphere at the park was very tense and deeply suspicious of Bloomberg’s true intentions.
I hope and expect that one of this blog’s front-pagers will be posting shortly on this worrying development at “Occupy Wall Street”‘s original site.
Maude (#17): Unless your information on the clean-up has been issued within the past two hours, it is completely incorrect. At the time of my visit this afternoon, OWS protesters had been advised by NYPD that the entire park must be cleared of all people and belongings by tomorrow morning. The OWS decision to fully clean Zuccotti Park tonight has been based on that understanding of Bloomberg’s directive.
jwb
“the entire Reason magazine staff and other low information voters”—I see what you did there and I entirely approve.
Linda Featheringill
@handsmile: #28
I’m very sorry to say that you were right.
I understand OWS is holding a demonstration at 6 o’clock in the morning, fortified by lots of people. Don’t know how that will turn out.
Do you know if there is an alternate location?
singfoom
@Maude: Yes, they will allow the protesters back in, but not with tents/sleeping bags or any other equipment.
Thus, ending any chance of an occupation.
See? Use the cleaning as an excuse to get them out, throw away their stuff, prevent them from coming back with their stuff.
If it truly was about sanitary conditions, why has the city blocked all of OWS attempts to get dumpsters and or portapotties near the park?
This is specifially to end the occupation.
singfoom
@Linda Featheringill: I heard them discussing that the “Contingency Committee” have a plan for an alternate location, but they aren’t releasing that information broadly or publically so the NYPD doesn’t pre-empt them.
I’m very afraid that there will be violence tomorrow when the police attempt to remove the occupiers. I expect it to be started by the NYPD in an effort to goad the occupiers to respond in kind.
Hopefully they will not. I have read of some plans to have everyone link arms and sit down and go limp when touched by the police, making them have to haul everyone out of there one at a time.
Chris
Couldn’t agree more with this post, and I’m somewhat mystified that this is still even under discussion. It’s not like the teabaggers themselves make any effort to conceal the fact that they’re conservatives, that the only politicians they’ll vote for are on the hard right of the Republican Party, and that their only problem with America is that there’s too many liberals.
handsmile
Linda Featheringill, Maude et al
This article from the Guardian (who else?) that was posted to its website at 18:16EDT updates and clarifies the situation at OWS/Zuccotti Park:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/13/occupy-wall-street-zuccotti-park-cleanup
The situation is very disturbing, with the probability of considerable civil disobedience and the potential for aggressive police enforcement tomorrow morning. Also, the article seems to confirm that Maude’s claim above was incorrect.
[My apologies for these O/T comments. I am responding to earlier comments on this thread relating to the “Occupy Wall Street” protest.]
Linda Featheringill
@handsmile:
Nothing to apologize for.
BTW, I am following Adam Gabbatt [who reports on OWS for The Guardian] on Twitter. He said he is planning to stay in the park all night and be there in the morning.
handsmile
@Linda Featheringill: (#35)
Thanks, I appreciate that.
Mr. Gabbatt and the entire corps of Guardian reporters who have been dispatching articles since the inception of “Occupy Wall Street” deserve much gratitude. Their reporting tomorrow will be critically important.
My disgust at the news division of the hometown New York Times (exempting its editorial pages), on the other hand, has rarely been greater. Their coverage of OWS has been utterly disgraceful, and I must once again (hand smacks head, ‘won’t I ever learn’) regard with extreme skepticism the reliability and integrity of their coverage of other matters.
To address briefly a tactic of civil disobedience that singfoom alluded to above (#32), I was informed that protesters plan to link arms and sit/sprawl along the perimeter of the park and throughout its interior.
Many protesters with whom I spoke this afternoon were quite concerned about the prospect of undercover police provocateurs appearing amidst their ranks tomorrow. They expressed an anticipation of arrest for non-violent civil disobedience, but are deeply worried of spiraling NYPD aggression if there are incidents of violent resistance.
AA+ Bonds
@theBuhjaysus:
Taibbi claims the Ron Paulers were using the term back during his 2008 campaign, and I believe it, I think it’s one of those Good Tricks that people figure out over and over on their own (to be Anglo-American about shit), claiming to be a bunch of ballsier white guys a couple hundred years ago who had real shit to complain about.
It just makes them all motherfucking sad in my opinion, wormy elderly posers who still don’t understand adulthood, and as the worker-backed OWS achieves serious popularity in less than a month, the Medicare-collecting Tea Party drops into “truly pathetic” numbers in polls (27%).
I don’t know, maybe it’s better to actually name your movement something evocative instead of waiting until that one guy on TV tells you which Founding Father you’re allowed to pretend to be for Halloween?
Then again, the Tea Party couldn’t name itself the “blame Obama” movement, because of Obama’s popularity. OWS, on the other hand, is an imperative verb, and an implicit challenge, targeted at two other words that together form one of the most reviled and low-polling terms in the country right now
Mnemosyne
So the fact that racist Ron Paul was using the term first is proof that it wasn’t used in a racist way by others?
I haz a confused.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
It’s like the Gadsden flag or Civil War history, it’s one of those things where a lot of Americans relate to it in healthy degrees, except for the unkempt old racists who when they first lay eyes on it their faces light up red and they start whooping like a fire truck and never ever ever stop
Linda
Here’s more solid evidence that the Tea Party was never opposed to crony capitalism: the administration of John Kasich, currently head boil-on-the-butt-of-the-entire-state-of-Ohio. He has rejiggered the state Department of Development create a privatized nonprofit to take over the business development part of the operations. Originally, he wanted to put himself at the head of it, but was knocked down by a lawsuit. He has, however, pushed a bill through the compliant General Assembly to exempt it from the state’s Sunshine Laws. If Obama ever tried that on a federal level, the Tea Party would raise hell. What do you hear from the TP in Ohio? Crickets.
Samara Morgan
the Tea Party is wholly made up of white christian nativists.
like Anders Breivik.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Cole
did you know that white (NHC) christian evangelicals make up 26.3% of the population?
General Stuck
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hi SD! Charlie waves a paw.
hells littlest angel
Even if you did misread Mataconis, your post is pretty fucking terrific.
Jester
You’re not misreading Mataconis. He’s saying the teabaggers started out because of anger at the bailouts, then gradually turned into anti-Obama activists. What really happened was they were always anti-Obama, and the bailouts gave them an angle to attack him. If it wasn’t the bailouts it would’ve been something else, like Obama’s belief in gravity (“how do we know we’re not being *pushed down*? SOCIALISM!”)
Nutella
“the masturbator-hater from Delaware whose name I can not remember” Heh. All I remember is that she is not a witch.
bjacques
I remember that the Tea Party really got going when it looked like Obama, not Hillary, was going to get the Democratic Party nomination.
I also seem to remember that Rick Santelli threw his famous tantrum *after* the TARP money was safely in the bag. “Losers” referred to homeowners who were (and are) screwed, not the bankers who gambled 10 times their assets in the bog mortgage securities casino. But the definition was later expanded to auto workers for GM and Chrysler.
2 hours until the NYPD come. Good luck, all.
Triassic Sands
That would be Witch O’Dumbshit. Or something like that. I’m pretty sure she’s a witch, anyway.
bjacques
Moderation? Weird. I’ve used the “S” word before, but not here.
Winston Smith
I know one person who fits the “Ron Paul teabagger” mold. He went to the first rallies when I was in Springfield, MO. He identified himself with the tea party for about 6 months until it was co-opted and Testards started being regulars on Sean Hannity (who he hates).
Now he says, “Except for a polar-opposite view on government regulation, OWS is what the Tea Party was supposed to be. If it continues without being co-opted by the Democratic party, I’ll be impressed.”
I don’t know how many other people like him there are. He’s a pretty unique guy.
Jess
So that’s where the 9-9-9 plan came from…
IrishGirl
I know two men, in their forties, white, one educated and the other clearly not, who identify as Tea party members. They used to identify as libertarians. They both swear up and down that they are NOT republicans and that the Tea Party movement was totally grass roots and do not even buy into the theory that the Tea party was co-opted by the Republicans. So they are rejecting BOTH theories (that they’re just a rebranding or they were co-opted). I’ve gone around and around with them both and they are so fanatical its frightening. In the end, does it matter? They’re dangerous….enough said.