there's always a small amount of radicals in every group or movement and the TEA partiers are no exception. Are alot of them potentially hostile? hell yes. And they should be. But like was said earlier, we are pushing for change at the ballot box. We just also happen to be putting the feds (and some states) on notice that it's time to listen to the people and do OUR will, not theirs.

notice that there's no attempt to present or defend arguments, only complaints about "media portrayals" when the fact is that thanks to faux news and people like glenn beck this incoherent far right "movement" has managed more television exposure than left political organizations have been able to get from the same media outlets at any point since the rise of television. and the teabaggers owe everything to this coverage. it's the reason there is a "movement"---because it appears that there is one, now there is one. doesn't matter that it's incoherent. doesn't matter that groups right libertarians with milita movement people--you know like those fine fellows from stormfront---with "promise keepers" (rebrand) with isolationists (so 30s) with xenophobes (so republican) with petit bourgeois types who have watched capitalism reorganize itself away from providing for anything remotely like what they expected for themselves and who know that something is really really wrong but haven't got the political tools to be able to articulate what that might be except that something Bad has happened and ideological mercenaries on the order of roger ailes and the faux news combine are more than happy to tell these people what it is that they're afraid of and in the process to help shift the republican brand away from its own record of disaster, positioning them as some kind of independent movement.

but that's how neo-fascism works as a tactic. these groups are always right there to tell you what it is that you are afraid of. it cant be capitalism. it cant be privatization. it cant be class stratification. it cant be the american preference for diverting massive resources into technological systems that kill others in great number. it cant be the unhinging of stock performance from anything remotely like a socio-economic well being for most people (hell EVERYONE is a holder of capital, right?)

so it has to be the state. wait no. it has to be illegal immigrants. wait no. it has to be terrorism. wait no. it has to be taxes because that is taking my shit and giving it to someone else. probably a parasite. no wait. it has to be some Outside Force that Persecutes the Salt of the Earth and Doesn't Respect Nations or Flags or other symbols of the outmoded good ole days. it has to be change. anything that seems out of control.

so we're gonna mobilize and say: we're pissed and afraid.
and we're going to say these things from some old-school nativist isolationist reactionary position even though no-one can quite say what it is.

neo-fascism kids.
like it or not.

so clearly the thing to do is to deny that it's neo-fascism. because what matters is appearance, not reality. o yeah, and stop showing the people who are part of the tea party thing. stop letting them talk. they make the rest of us look bad.

whatever They say we are, we aren't.

sheesh.

your entire opinion is completely discredited when your entire outlook is based upon slander.

whatever They say we are, we aren't.


compare the tea party movement to others which are not locked into the tiny spectrum of american politics. things get ugly. the teapartiers are somewhere to the right of organizations like the front national.
the strictest parallel is poujadisme.

Pierre Poujade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


but with television coverage.

like i say, dk, it doesn't matter if you don't like the name that it's reasonable to attach to the tea party movement as a whole.
and it isn't to say that every person who finds that movement compelling is necessarily a neo-fascist. alot, seemingly like yourself, probably don't know what the word means.
but that changes very little about the nature of the movement. and nothing about what it amounts to.

again, your condescension and disdain for anything right of absurdly left leaves your opinions wanting credibility it cannot possibly find. not that it matters much. I've known your position for quite some time and know that you're never going to change it.

dk...like i said, i find it curious that no-one who's sympathetic with the teapartiers accepts the way in which they characterize themselves, accepts the responsibility for what holds the movement together to the extent that anything does. they disavow people like glenn beck, who are among the biggest cheerleaders for the movement, such as it is, and who is responsible for giving it ALOT of (conservative) television exposure.

it's not my problem that as the teapartiers surface more publicly in recent weeks that embarrassment seems to mount along with them. i think it's funny.
but i do think it's past time that the teabaggers stop playing the game of political 3-card monty they have been playing---and that you (and to a lesser extent cimmaron) are playing in this thread.

I wish I could say I find it curious that you haven't been paying closer attention to details about this. I'm not surprised that you gathered an opinion 8 months ago, jumped on the 'tea bagger' bandwagon, and have stuck with it through thick and thin.

as I was saying right above, you're unable to look past your nose to see the changes that are happening in this movement, still stuck on believing that the 'baggers' are just that, full of hot headed, uneducated, ignorant, right wing hack racists who fawn at the feet of sarah palin and glenn beck. you should probably take a closer look at the words uneducated, ignorant, and hack racists. they could be in your reflection

thanks for the laugh, dk.
enjoy your thread.

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-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+- gents, we've all been here long enough to realise that name calling isnt acceptable here, regardless of how vague or veiled it is. Please keep this on track. Its the perfect way to derail a thread.

I'm sorry, but this whole "the tea party are not what the media portray them to be" is a bit silly, no? I mean, they are promoted and/or sponsored by Fox News and pajamas media (home of joe the plumber). As is this "they are fed up with both parties" claim. Their keynote speaker at the convention was Sarah Palin. The biggest sponsors for the convention are:
- the judicial watch (founded by former republican senate candidate Larry Klayman, funded mostly by Richard Melon Scaife, and which has a list of "top 10 corrupt" politicians that includes 9 democrats),
- the leadership institute (founded and presided by Morton Blackwell, member of the executive committee of the RNC),
- Vision America (hosts of the "war on Christians conference" about how the "gay agenda" and the "secularists" are driving Christ out of public life, and presided by Rick Scarborough, who, by his own accounts, is Tom Delay's "closest friend"),
- the Young Americans for Freedom (creators of the 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day' contest, 'Koran Desecration' contest, and responsible for posting "gays spread aids" fliers all over the michigan state campus)
- The voices of America (created by two members of Beck's 9-12 project)

Then, in the actual convention itself we had:
- Tom Tancredo, republican, as the opening speaker, where he lamented that the outlawing of literacy and English tests to vote, and that that allowed Obama to get elected
- Joseph Farah, "birther" and editor of World Net Daily, who used his speech at the convention to denounce Obama as an illegal alien
- Andrew Brietbart, creator of the documentary "Generation Zero," which argues that the recent financial crisis was engineered by 1960s radicals intent on destroying capitalism. Oh, and also the boss of that guy that was just arrested trying to wiretap Landrieu's phones.

Of course, you may argue that the convention is not representative of the entire movement.

But when we look at the states' tea parties, the majority are sponsored by Dick Armey's freedomworks. And the majority actually endorses the republican candidates quite consistently, from David Vitter in La., to Scott Brown in MA, to Michelle Bachmann.


Now, those may be extremists that are a minority in the tea party movement. But when this minority actually includes both the leadership and the sponsors of the movement, its hard to argue that they are not representative of the movement. At some other point in time the tea party might have been grassroots and not partisan. Not now.

Anyone seen Medina's poll numbers yet? Has it even mattered that she said what she said?

According to this Fox blog, there haven't been any poll numbers since her comments in and about the interview.

My gut says that her numbers will rise. Her post-interview response/explanation was pretty good. Also, this exposure certainly increased people's interest and if people see her overall message they will most likely move away from Perry and Hutchinson. In a crazy way, Beck might have just handed her the primary.

I could totally see people giving her the sympathy vote because of Beck. Or would that be the hate/angry vote because of Beck?

Heh, I was riding to a job site with a co-worker just now and he had Beck on the radio:

What a difference a week will do. Medina just did an interview on a Dallas talk radio station and said "all the right things" about truthers. As an aside, Beck asked her that question because he was being inundated with calls from people saying "I can't believe you would do what you did to Van Jones and then have the nerve to have a 9/11 truther on your show as a candidate!!!" As you may recall, Beck exposed Van Jones as a truther and he resigned (in part) because of it.

The point is that public sentiment against truthers seems to be a powerful force. Having the label would definitely be a negative in the campaign. He didn't know anything about her position on the issue and thought that by asking the question, it would settle the issue that she was not a truther. Again, if she'd have just said "No" last week - she could have spent this week focusing on why she is a better candidate rather than re-refining her answer to a seemingly simple question.

Regardless, she will probably still rise in the polls.

A well-founded and insightful summary. A true voice of reason.

judging by the local radio shows and the people in and around north texas, people are either going from Medina to Perry or from KBH to Medina, so it looks like she may have pushed KBH out of the race.......still too early to tell though

I do know that some of the local shows here in Dallas are calling Beck out for his outright lies on his tv and radio shows as he tried to defend himself. There are alot of Texans very angry at Beck right now.

Dang...More lies? When is that hater Glenn Beck going learn not to try and fool us like that? So which outright lies did ol' Nazi Glenn tell this time? I don't really have enough time to tune in to watch or listen to what he actually says, but it appeals to my social perameters to exercise unsubstantiated righteous indignatation with such enthusiasm! double-dang!

Sorry couldn't help myself I think this is great.

Glenn Beck is the answer to FOX's question of, "How do we, in this ripe time for journalism, steal Alex Jone's message and internet traffic without suffering the wrath of "teh internets"?"


Really, what the answer turned out to be, was a dude who was slightly lamer than Alex, with slightly better resources, and a far more retarded audience.

This created a balance between Glenn and Alex, because FOX's viewers, and Alex's viewers, could coexist at this point, thereby keeping everyone happy and in business feeding bullshit to uneducated sheep all over the country, without any of the sheep individually conflicting with one another on the same media-driven issues (thereby starting flame wars which may reduce total number of viewers). It worked well enough, anyhow.

Triple-dang! Where did you hear that? That Glenn Beck just wont stop trying to fool us! He must be home skooled.