Is the Tea Party fading away?

Meh, you're just a woman whatta you know? I tell ya the day you gals got the vote was the beginning of the end of the US. Now go make me a bloody Mary it was a long night.

 

shut up, fool.

 

Fool!?! Damn uppity woman.

 

Well in their defense a lot of these people are working more then one job due to the policies enacted by the people they fought to elect.

 

It's an ironic blend of not thinking FOR themselves, while only thinking OF themselves

 

The real creativity at play is finding ways to harness the anomie of the tea party faithful. What would you do if you were given the opportunity to direct the social and cultural angst of a large minority of US citizens?

My office is full of Republicans. We have morning meetings where we discuss what's going on the in the markets. I have never heard anyone express anything but contempt for the tea party. Michelle Bachmann is a joke to these people. They know she'd ruin the economy if she were elected. They know that tea party policies, at least as they are expressed by anyone within the tea party who has actual power, are nothing more than empty platitudes. These aren't hedge fund managers, and they have just as much disdain for the folks who caused the subprime mortgage crisis as anyone ought to.

The tea party will never be widely accepted. They're too passionate about things that most folks think are dumb. For instance, I have yet to meet a person who doesn't think that we need to do something about the deficit. Word on the street is that most of my fellow citizens favor some sort of combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Most of these real americans think that the tea party approach, namely that the solution to every problem is to cut taxes, primarily for the wealthy, is ridiculous. Most people also recognize that the tea party's ostensible goal of a smaller, less inclusive government is a charade. Any party whose membership favors DOMA by a large majority isn't a party who really cares about reducing government intrusiveness.

In short, the tea party is that loud guy at the party who doesn't know that everyone else knows he's full of shit.

 

As long as the media keeps talking about them as if they represent 66% of this country, they will get more power than they deserve.

I hope that the democrats win big in 2012 so they will go away.

 

The media is just fucking out there anymore. Ron Paul nearly beat Bachmann in the straw poll but I have yet to hear any news outlet talk about him in any positive terms. They talked about 3rd, 4th and 5th place finishers more then his 2nd place finish. Hell they talked more about Palin and she's not even "officially" running. She just "accidentally" shows up at or within 50 miles of events like the straw poll, fucking attention/media whore. I think his ideas would destroy any hope of the future the US may have, I believe the same for just about all the current GOP field, Huntsman or Romney less so then the others. But you'd think given the number of followers and his numbers in the polls they'd at least assign him a freshman reporter. Yet they seemingly go out of their way not to talk about him.

So at the same time they go out of their way not to mention Paul they, as you point out, go out of their way to make the Tea Party sound like a majority voice in US politics. Fucking useless to even watch/read US based news sources anymore.

 

the american system is not at all well-served by the dominant media in any form.
i think it's been like this for a long time, but now the bones are showing in a sense.
it's been peculiar since fox news effectively won w the 2000 election and the fact that all the networks were buying their projections from the same source came out...a crisis of credibility; iraq and the entire american press on its knees before the bush people's full-court marketing and then in front of the pentagons infotainment management office eagerly sucking whatever the right put into its mouth---until they got caught out and then had to act to protect their own credibility to the extent they could salvage it (judith miller anyone?)...or, longer term, the effort that has gone into containing information flows within the official viewpoint since the reagan period....or the formation of the excremental space of fox news which single-handedly demonstrates day after day that markets do not produce optimal outcomes and that in the united states the only truth criterion really is whether you have enough dough to control a repetition channel...the consequences of labor-pool "flexibility" onto which has been added a protracted crisis for newspapers & their "monetization"---smaller staffs, fewer writers, narrower range of viewpoints, increased reliance on press releases cut-and-pasted and presented as infotainment....the assimilation of information into commodity logic...the crisis of neo-liberal ideology, the press incoherence in the face of it (almost across the board)...the increasing self-evidence of which class interests are served by the american infotainment system....the problem of the press is WAY bigger than the question of how much coverage they give some libertarian wingnut--who is at the same time the only candidate willing to actually say anything about anything of any consequence....and this just in off-the-top-o-my-head bullet point form. the timidity of the press in a context of financial pressure (print) and the drift into fatuousness (television)...not great for any democratic system even in the best of times---but in a period of structural transformation that does not have to be a crisis but sure as shit will be if the same old stupid thinking continues to be the only game in town---not great. the press has played and continues to play a very considerable role in making sure that the failure of imagination in the face of a need for fundamental change is as bad as it can be. all we need now is some rightwing asshole to get elected president and you'll be able to hear the sounds of nailing the lid shut from inside the barrel of shit they'll put us in.

 

W, Fox News, Iraq war all remind me of the old days when 70-80% of the people in my office were proudly expressing their Neo-Con roots. I think most of the current tea party folks are former Neo-Cons. Their ideas were wrong then and they're wrong now. To quote Jagger...

You call yourself a Christian
I think that you're a hypocrite
You say you are a patriot
I think that you're a crock of shit

 

For me, the failure of the Wisconsin recall vote for the Democratic party serves as the proverbial dead canary in the coal mine.

I know the scorched earth policies of the Tea Party are bad and you know and your circle knows... but it's so attractive. My gut tells me that their momentum is greater than the economy's and by the time the 2012 election hits, they'll be the prime benificiaries. Possibly Obama will retain the office but I highly doubt there will be anything but yet another congress and senate full of obstructionist heroes.

I may be overly pessimistic but I think their message is too unified and too catchy to go unfollowed. I'm afraid the only way to expose it as dangerously simplistic and unworkable is to put it into practice.

As they say, you will have to go through it to get to it.

 

Fresnelly, I think you are on to something. I think the election of Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto, underscores this nicely. Ford is a pretty good Canadian equivalent of the Tea Party in Canada. The folks who elected him were motivated by similar things (deficits, spending, taxes, etc.). It was more anger and reaction than reasoned response. Now that Ford is in power, many are seeing him for what he is... a very shallow, one-note politician with very little vision beyond cutting services and government.

A mayor should *always* be a city builder. They should have a vision for the furture.

The tea party aren't nation builders. They too lack a vision forward.

 

The Tea Party flat out wants a Reagan of ideals with a budget of Jefferson. The problem with them comes the fact that the very people they elected to do exactly what they wanted are the same people they are screaming at for almost defaulting. They are a "one hit wonder" in politics. 2012, might see the gain some seats in the house from other "RINO" republicans but they are not going to gain any share from dems. Too many dems will be coming out for the presidential election to prevent a sweeping addition. Their biggest problem is the public leaders are Beck, Bachmann, and Palin or crazy, nutjob, and stupid.

 

You can't bitch about the roads being full of pot holes then bitch about having to pay taxes to fix them.

I know nothing about this mayor you folks are talking about but the gravy or pork as we call it is the big bad bogey man the tea party et el are always complaining about. It's people of welfare, it's scientific studies, it art programs blah, blah blah. First most people on welfare either can not work because their too young or have some disability like my ex sister-in-law who's been mentally handicapped her whole life. Yes, some reporter can likely go find some guy smoking pot all day sucking on the welfare teat for no good reason but the vast majority are getting benefits because they need them. So let's not fund science studies, right? Well the studies I've heard them bitch about effect a lot of things and the cost is usually some .00000?% so even doing away with them wouldn't have any noticeable effect. Same thing with the budget for arts.

Even if we cut everything the tea party wants us to cut all we'd end up with is more homeless people ( a very few of whom would now be scientists and artists) and a very small dent in deficit spending.

 

Most of these angry people were pissed off after 9-11 and it was nothing but Rah, Rah, Rah! Let's go get them... at any costs. Deficits didn't matter then. Stuff like France not agreeing with us, that was important. So important congress spent time renaming dishes in the congressional dining room from French fires and French toast. After a day of debate we solved that problem and changed it to "freedom fries" and "freedom toast." Many of those same people now have ides on how to solve the nations problems. Sadly their solutions will not be as silly as renaming breakfast items. Their solutions will have vast sweeping effects that will cause our problems to balloon.