Republican candidates are "pledging allegiance to the Tea Party"

i dont understand how they are saying the tea party isn't middle class. every rally i've been to the representation of the crowd was middle class.

the tea party represents conservatism before the crazy neo-cons took control. things like lower taxes, fiscal conservatism etc. are very popular ideas for conservatives so i dont know why it would be a surprise that the candidates would pander to this.

 

good. that'll sink the republicans. the tea party's polling numbers are amazingly low. it may well be that the debt ceiling idiocy was their waterloo.

this of course may be a moment of unbridled optimism. they don't come often, so enjoy.

 

the polling really hasn't changed that much to be honest. their favorable view has remained about the same, what has changed is their unfavorable view has gone up among democrats and independents. not really that much of a factor for a republican primary.

it may be more significant once we get to the general election though.

 

That is all I needed to read in order to realize that this is just mudslinging. Whenever the right accuses the left, or the left accuses the right, I pretty much chalk it up to more petty bickering.

 

I'm mildly interested in understanding why you bother with such labels. "They" can drink all the tea they like & avoid the taxes. My freedom is not provided, it only is.

 

the tea party is not politics as usual. the are a classic poujadiste/neo-fascist movement. it would be a **real** problem if they got into power for real.

it makes little sense to erase all descriptions/positioning. the right's been working that for a while to mask their charge into the far right, presenting it as reactive on the one hand (as over against some imaginary left) and as mainstream on the other (which is scary). until lately, few have been calling them what they've become.

 

taxes are already low.... that's just your opinion as a liberal and why would that fit along with what the tea party wants? i find the statement very odd.

i'm not sure where you got this list as there are dozens of different formal organizations that claim to be the tea party.

cutting spending and reversing the deficit is one of the biggest things that could help the middle class. when government spends over it's income there is a defacto inflation tax that takes place. it raises the price on everything and hurts the middle class the worst. it's painfully obvious when you hit the grocery and department stores and see the prices going up like crazy.

our dollars aren't buying what they should be as the printing and borrowing is getting out of control. the dollar has lost over 90% of it's value since the government began printing money in the early 20th century. i would say it's the number one thing hurting the middle class.

 

It doesn't mean that I stop reading, just that one side accusing the other of wrongdoing automatically raises my suspicions.

 

You know, roachboy, that I label things also. I don't know what poujadiste means. When I can believe in this country again is when I'll pay more taxes than get stolen. Me entiendes? Nor does our leadership. It's a privilege to live here, but less & less a benefit. I fear that those who want power over others will always have it whether they're right or wrong.

 

Samcol I think you need some facts: From 1917 until 1980 the top marginal rate was below 70% for only 10 years between 1922 and 1932, and from 1981-1986 it was still above 50% until it dropped to 38% in 1987 and then 28-31% for only four years before coming back up to 39% in 1993.

Now, feel free to continue tossing the word "liberal" at people like this is 1950 and we're about to be hauled before the HUAC for that accusation but understand that in doing so you're also accusing Ronald Reagan and even the president that added Under God to the pledge of allegiance of being "liberals".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade#Poujadism

a more detailed history would show the parallels. point for point.
the tea party is not only about an irrational view of taxes.

it's funny to me that calling out neo-fascism for what it is gets reduced to some bland "labeling"
i label scotch tape scotch tape because that's what it is.
sometimes for amusement i may refer to scotch tape as an orange.
but that isn't funny for long.
other times i think: scotch tape is an object like any other, man. why limit it by calling it scotch tape? surely it's more complicated than that.
but it is what it is.
same with the tea party.

 

oh please, i see conservative, tea baggers, neo liberals, fascists thrown around all the time when referring to conservatives, but i say liberal and everyone gets offended.

1. as i recall the tea party members wanted to see some significant spending cuts before raising the ceiling which they didn't get. the whole debt ceiling debacle was way over hyped by the president by invoking fear and urgency into the situation.

2. at what point do we stop extending unemployment benefits? are we just going to have a permanent 10% unemployment class that indefinitely gets a government check? the entitlement system needs serious reforms and the possibility of opting out of these terribly implemented programs.

3. i find it disturbing that we can't even agree to a spending cap let alone cuts. would it really be that insane to cap the budget at 3.5 trillion (or whatever it was this year) for the next few years? the democrats are in no way interested even in the slightest of reducing spending.

4. i honestly don't know much about reaganomics as i'm not a big fan of the guy like the other tea partiers.

 

maybe look up what i'm talking about and you'll see the point.
it's easy to dismiss things if you neither know what they're referring nor bother to figure it out.

and there's a difference between making historically exact parallels and repeating some conservative meme.
even by the relaxed intellectual standards of the populist right, there's a difference.

 

i actually did read about poujadism the first time you posted it. the parallel is interesting but i don't find the views of either group that irrational.

 

that changes the discussion though. at least you can see the parallel and that it's not just name-calling.
and i understand that the word fascism has to some extent been drained of content. i know it gets thrown around in a facile way, so when i've used the term i've tried to be careful about how i did it. and i'm aware that sometimes it's not enough. so thanks for checking it out.

for example, i spent way too much time figuring out something of the peculiar world of the french communist party. for them, as an organization, particularly after world war 2 (because of the extent to which the pcf emerged as a mass political party because of its association with the resistance) there was a tic of referring to everyone who opposed them, from the left and right, as fascists. it served several effects at once internally---but it also functioned to reduce the word to just a word, a meme that didn't carry particular significance, that didn't designate anything specific beyond an echo of the past that repeated something of the history by which the pcf transformed into a mass political party.

and a characteristic of fascism is that it's not irrational. it's typically a form of hyper-nationalism. it uses enemies, real and imaginary, to solidify support. it works from identity as its political base. it's often militaristic, but not always and when it is not always in the same way. this gets more diffuse with neo-fascist movements. they operate by exclusion, which is the reverse of working from a sense of victimization. alot of the more problematic aspects of neo-fascism are rooted in the implications of that being-victim. the poujadistes saw themselves as the salt of the earth, the "real" french, who were persecuted by some largely imaginary urban elite. they saw themselves as the victim of tax policies. they were nostalgic for the return of an imaginary france from the past. and so on.

fascism is a kind of mass-media based hyper-nationalism that appeals to a kind of "common sense"---if it was irrational, lots of bad things wouldn't have happened.