Is the Party Over for Teabaggers?

What do you call a "movement" that's not actually moving? That's a question people are beginning to ask about the tea party movement. Defined mostly by those things they oppose, teapartiers -- almost by design -- don't really have any forward momentum. Like any other conservative, when the teabagger talks about change, it means they want to change things back. As a whole, conservatives always seem to see the future as a way to return to some perfect past. And that past is always mostly imaginery -- plenty of people have already written that the Ronald Reagan conservatives have made a saint is not the Ronald Reagan who actually existed.

But to answer the question, the word you use to describe a static "movement" is "dying." Where modern conservatism is backward-looking, the tea party -- by it's reactionary nature -- is trapped forever in the present. There is a future they look forward to, but it kind of skips a step; we undo everything Obama has done, get sufficiently insane candidates in office, and everything becomes perfect forever. This Utopianism ignores the fact that everything was massively screwed up before their hated Obama ever took office. So returning to the past is returning to an extremely FUBAR situation. They're against what exists right now, but they aren't actually for anything to speak of -- unless it's the polar opposite of whatever comes out of the current president's mouth.

On Monday, I wrote about the big Uni-Tea rally the tea party threw to demonstrate their non-racism and diversity. "The crowd was pretty thin, which suggests to me two explanations, to be taken either in combination or separately," I said, "the average teabagger finds a rally without all the racism no fun and/or the tea party is suffering from outrage fatigue and losing steam." Turns out I'm not alone in that assessment.





Yesterday, Media Matters' Eric Boehlert also wrote about the Uni-Tea event. But he went further and compared that with other recent rallies. His conclusion: "The Tea Party movement has collapsed."

And its collapse means it’s time for the press to rethink the way it covers the political equivalent of the Pet Rock, a fad that appears to be in its waning days of popularity.

I’d suggest that for more than a year the Beltway press has spent far too many man-hours obsessively chronicling the conservative Tea Partiers. Part of that overindulgence has been fueled by the bullying GOP Noise Machine, which has demanded around-the-clock Tea Party coverage as proof that journalists aren’t liberally biased. And part of it has simply been the media’s attraction to a political story that was new and rather unorthodox.

But it’s time to pull the plug, or at least it’s time for the press to tell the truth about the Tea Party’s rather sad state of affairs.

Recent tea party events have had attendance numbers ranging from small-city street fair to company picnic. And part of the reason is that the tea party's record has been a record of failure. Boehlert give as examples the facts that Health Care Reform became law and the Stimulus Package went through, as did Financial Reform. I'd add that Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy are probably on their way out, same-sex marriage just became legal again in California, the "Ground Zero mosque" is going ahead as planned, and Elena Kagan -- like the vilified Sonya Sotomayor before her -- has just been confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice. In addition, as Boehlert points out, because of inept tea party candidates like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, "Democrats might hold onto control of the U.S. Senate only because of the Tea Party and its weak, inexperienced candidate" (I think that's overstating the case a bit -- Republicans didn't stand much of a chance to begin with -- but there ya go. In any case, the three aren't helping their cause much).

But simple explanations aren't often good explanations. Another nail in the coffin is the racism. The tea party is on the defensive on that front and they don't like it much. While teabaggers like to say they represent all races, the fact of the matter is that they exist mostly as an anti-Obama movement -- a case of political sore-loserism. Given the president's still astronomical approval numbers among African-Americans, the claim of diversity rings more than a little false. The math just hates that assertion.

Attempts to plug this particular hole in their rhetoric have been lazy and half-hearted at best. In addition to the failed Uni-Tea event, teabaggers recently assembled a group of champions to defend them. "[A]fter the implosion of Mark Williams, spokesman for the Sacramento-based Tea Party Express, conservatives are still bristling at the charge of Tea Party 'racism,'" writes Dave Weigel. "On Wednesday morning, Williams' old organization organized a two-and-a-half-hour event at the National Press Club in order to rebut the charge the best way it knew how -- with a chorus line of black conservatives attacking anyone who dared call the Tea Party racist." The problem: these were all familiar faces to the African-American community. They've been ignoring these pundits' arguments for years. To make matters worse, birtherism reared its empty head. Needless to say, progress was not made.

The tea party's reactionary nature is becoming its undoing. By being against everything, it's come to stand for nothing. And it has nowhere to go.

That is, nowhere but "away."

-Wisco


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Newt Gingrich: America's Premier Bigot

Liberty
(n) liberty (immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence)
(n) liberty (freedom of choice) "liberty of opinion"; "liberty of worship"; "liberty--perfect liberty--to think or feel or do just as one pleases"; "at liberty to choose whatever occupation one wishes" -- Princeton Wordnet

I start out with a definition of liberty because a lot of the people who use it most seem to have no idea what the hell it means. The people who call themselves "defenders of liberty" were actually handed a couple of setbacks this week, with a city board approving a Muslim community center in Manhattan and a judge in California striking down a ban on same-sex marriage. In both cases, liberty prevailed. And, in both cases, those "defenders of liberty" expressed their outrage.

Among the most shameful voices about the community center -- to be named Cordoba House -- has been disgraced former house speaker Newt Gingrich. And his reasoning was as idiotic as we've come to expect. "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia," he said in a statement. "The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over."

Shorter Newt Gingrich; "If Saudi Arabia isn't going to practice religious freedom, we should become just as oppressive -- that'll show 'em! First Amendment be damned." You wonder when Newt will get around to calling for a moratorium on Catholic churches. After all, you're not going to find a lot of mosques in Vatican City. But that would require consistency in reasoning and that's not what we've come to expect from Gingrich -- or anyone else on the right, for that matter. And, of course, banning mosques would verify about 90% of Islamic terrorist propaganda. This doesn't strike me as being all that constructive.





"Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for 'religious toleration' are arrogantly dishonest," he went on. "They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City." Apparently, there's an unwritten limit to religious freedom, with one house of worship allowed for every X adherents. Anything more than that and you're just abusing the privilege.

But it's not a privilege, it's a right. For people like Gingrich, rights are things that can be ignored or suspended arbitrarily, with the rights afforded one group depending on the bigoted whims of another. Newt -- and the people who applaud him -- get to shut up about how they're patriots who defend the Constitution from now on. They aren't and they don't. Liberty won, you guys lost. Let that sink in while you're enjoying your frosty mug of STFU.

And it's those bigoted whims of a group that were struck down in court in California. In his ruling, Judge John Walker found:

Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize plaintiffs' objective as "the right to same-sex marriage" would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy -- namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages.

Simple, rational, and just. No one is losing anything here, while liberty is expanded. Not surprisingly, Newt doesn't see it that way:

Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they've affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Congress now has the responsibility to act immediately to reaffirm marriage as a union of one man and one woman as our national policy. Today’s notorious decision also underscores the importance of the Senate vote tomorrow on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court because judges who oppose the American people are a growing threat to our society.

Yeah, a judge overturned an unconstitutional law in California and that's why we have to keep Elena Kagan -- who isn't that judge -- off the Supreme Court. Not extremely surprisingly, Newt's not very smart about running his blog and has an open comment system -- where he's getting his sorry ass handed to him. Not only has Newt Gingrich lost the argument in New York and California, but he's losing the argument at Newt.org.

Another win for liberty. Make sure you let him know that.

-Wisco


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What the GOP Calls "The Economy" Isn't Really the Economy

If Democrats want to limit their losses in November, it might be a good idea to start pointing out that, of the two parties, Democrats are the ones who give a damn. Because Republicans clearly don't. Faced with massive unemployment and a sluggish economy, the Republican's plan is worse than nothing -- do everything that hasn't been working, but do more of it. According to Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post, "The Economic Freedom Act of 2010 -- introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) -- proposes deep tax cuts favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their income." I guess if there's one group in America who really need a handout right now, it's those Kurt Vonnegut once described as the "fabulously well-to-do." If you need a refresher course on how Republican supply-side economics works, Stephen Colbert recently explained it -- pretty damned accurately, by the way. Put less comedically, supply-siders believe that everyone other than the wealthy live off the crumbs the rich leave at the table, so the rich need a huge banquet every night. The unspoken assumption is that, unless you're a captain of industry, you're not actually doing anything for the economy. Big People who do Big Things are the sole drivers of employment and economic growth.

Where has this thinking gotten us? Well, Bush subscribed to this idea and, as a direct result, had the worst record of jobs growth since jobs numbers began being tracked. So, of course, Republicans argue we have to do more of that. It may not have worked at any point up until now, but this time for sure.

What Democrats need to do is point all of this out. Not only will it set Republicans back, but it'll embarrass idiotic Democrats who sorely need to be embarrassed. Americans need to be introduced to Alexandra Jarrin and Paul Krugman. Krugman is, of course, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times. Meet Alexandra Jarrin. Jarrin is a "99er" -- someone who's used the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits:

Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town.

Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker is still emblazoned on her back windshield.

"Barring a miracle, I'm going to be in my car," she said.

Now let's see what Krugman has to say:

I'm starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers -- but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.

Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That's bad. But what's worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn't care -- that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.

And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is "structural," a permanent part of the economic landscape -- and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they'll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

"Not long ago, anyone predicting that one in six American workers would soon be unemployed or underemployed, and that the average unemployed worker would have been jobless for 35 weeks, would have been dismissed as outlandishly pessimistic," he writes, "in part because if anything like that happened, policy makers would surely be pulling out all the stops on behalf of job creation."

Of course, they haven't. Let's be clear about one thing: reducing the deficit does not create jobs. And neither do tax cuts for the rich -- if top-heavy tax cuts raised employment, they would've started doing it ten years ago, when they were first implemented. Republicans, along with the aforementioned idiotic Democrats, have already begun their "new normal" campaign, blocking extensions of unemployment benefits and standing against any government spending that would help create jobs.

And let's be clear about another thing, the rich are not the "job creators," as Republicans like to pretend. You are. Consumers create jobs. Jobs are created by demand. If the rich can suddenly afford to hire a bunch of people, they won't -- not unless they need them. And the only reason they'd need more workers would be to increase production to answer demand. If no one's spending money, there is no demand. And, with high unemployment, a lot of people aren't spending money -- because, like Alexandra Jarrin, they don't have any. And this just feeds the cycle. Decreasing demand results in further unemployment, which results in decreasing demand, resulting in further unemployment, which results in lather, rinse, repeat.

That should be the Democratic message. The economy isn't some weird, unknowable deity who can only be appeased by arcane mumbo-jumbo and human sacrifice on the Altar of Deficit. And it's not a big white bank with Greek pillars on Wall Street. The people that Republicans call "job creators" don't create anything, they're just middle men who make their living selling money to each other.

No, the economy is you. You're the economy when you buy groceries, when you get your kids ready to go back to school, when your fuel pump dies and you have to replace it. You're the economy and if the government isn't helping you, then the government is ignoring the only thing that spurs economic growth and employment -- consumption.

The economy isn't as complicated as Republicans like to pretend, that's just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that their policies are designed to help the rich. The truth is that the economy is as simple as you've always supected; if you're broke, the economy is bad. And the fix for that is for you to stop being broke.

If we give an inch to Republican economics, then we take one step toward that society Krugman describes as becoming "the new normal," where unemployment is so vast that employers can get away with paying next to nothing and the only people with any money to speak of are those who already had enough in the first place.

That's the Republican idea of a great economy. The question is, is it yours?

-Wisco


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FOX News, Catapulting the Propaganda Since 1996

There are snippets of video that can explain a lot. George W. Bush explaining that it's his job to "catapult the propaganda" was one example of the revealing slip and this video of Nevada GOP senatorial candidate Sharron Angle on FOX News is another. In it, she explains her campaign's decision to hide from the mainstream press, limiting her interviews to wingnut TV and rightwing talk radio.

Transcript from Political Correction [emphasis theirs]:

Angle: We needed to have the press be our friend.

Cameron: Wait a minute. Hold on a second. To be your friend?

Angle: Well, truly—

Cameron: That sounds naive.

Angle: Well, no. We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported, and when I get on a show and I say, 'Send money to Sharron Angle Dot Com,' so that your listeners will know that if they wanna support me, they need to go to Sharron Angle Dot Com.

Cameron: Alright, alright.

It should be noted that in Sharron's quest to find media friends, she decided to include FOX News. It should also be noted that FOX's Carl Cameron doesn't exactly shoot down her misconception. He pretends to be shocked that this is her media strategy, but doesn't even try to pretend that FOX is not her friend. And the reason for that is that it's not a misconception. FOX News exists to be Sharron Angle's friend, in the sense that it exists to be any Republican's friend. Bush was wrong; it's not a Republican president's job to catapult the propaganda, that chore falls to FOX, who always have their BS trebuchet's cocked and ready to fire.

Angle has been avoiding the media like a plague -- at one point literally fleeing the press -- mostly because she's a nightmare candidate. If she spoke to the real press, she'd have to explain why she thinks the unemployed are "spoiled" or what kind of a demented god it is she worships who would plan a pregnancy through rape. She'd be forced to expand on why she thinks Social Security and Medicare need to be "transitioned out." On FOX, as on talk radio, she doesn't have to explain any of those things at all. All she needs to do is tell them that Harry Reid is a Democrat, which is synonymous with "evil," and drop her web address. Easy-Peasy. No embarrassing questions about what she'd do or what her qualifications are. If it works for the empty-headed Sarah Palin, it'll work for anyone. The hardest question she'll have to answer is, "Why doesn't everyone see how awesome you are?"

What's galling about this is that, even while they do this, FOX continues to pretend that they're a legitimate news organization -- and not a subsidiary of the Republican Party press office. But worse is that everyone else feels inexplicably compelled to play along.

Raw Story:

He might want to check first for pins.

Fox News has been awarded a front row seat in the White House briefing room and Bill O'Reilly is promising to personally use it.

The White House Correspondents Association announced Sunday that the The Associated Press would get Helen Thomas' old seat in the center of the front row. Thomas was forced to retire in June after saying that Israelis should go back to Germany.

Bill O'Reilly, front row, White House press room. If you've ever wondered why our politics seem to keep getting more and more idiotic, there's your answer. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that we all have to pretend that clowns and propagandists are actually serious.

-Wisco


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Without Hate, the Tea Party is Nothing

This weekend, the Tea Party held a "Uni-Tea" rally to demonstrate all their non-racism and Diversi-Tea. Featured speakers included black conservatives and Andrew Breitbart. The fact of Breitbart's constant attacks on black institutions was totally airbrushed out of his own personal history and no mention was made of the NAACP or Shirley Sherrod. As far as the diversity off the stage goes, I've already covered that -- long story short, there wasn't a lot. The crowd was pretty thin, which suggests to me two explanations, to be taken either in combination or separately: the average teabagger finds a rally without all the racism no fun and/or the tea party is suffering from outrage fatigue and losing steam.

But more than racial diversity was represented at the rally. Two agents of the Homosexual Agenda infiltrated the ranks.

Talking Points Memo:

Apparently, Uni-Tea wasn't only bridging the racial gap. Brendan Kissam and Matt Hissey wandered into the event carrying signs that said "proud gay conservative" and "freedom is fabulous." They said they were "the Gayborhood's envoy to the tea party."

The pair said the tea party is welcoming to their minority group, too. "The Tea Party is accepting of everybody," said Hissey, adding that "Skin color diversity -- that's not real diversity. Everyone here has a different life experience." Hissey recognized that the tea party "might be against gay marriage," but that's ok, he said, because he is too.

I'm guessing that Kissam and Hissey (can those possibly be their real names?) hadn't had a lot of experience with the Tea Party. Just last week, an incident in Pennsylvania demonstrated the Party's attitude toward gays and lesbians -- they're evil. The Potter County library was set to show a film titled Out In The Silence. According to the Patriot-News newspaper, the film is "about the challenges of being openly gay in rural Pennsylvania." This film was not going to be shown... Not if "real Americans" had any say, anyway.

The leader of the Potter County Tea Party, through a local blogger, claimed the library was allowing conservative Christians to be "attacked for our beliefs at a public library we support with our tax money. This is wrong and cannot be tolerated." Later, he apologized for using the tea party name to express his personal opinion...

Although the local tea party official claimed "$1.5 million of local taxes" go to the library, the reality is its total budget last year was $117,000 -- with less than $42,000 from local governments.

At its core, the Tea Party doesn't have any central belief; they are defined by what they're against, because they don't seem to be "for" anything. They like to talk about the Constitution a lot, but their Constitution a fantasy document written by Christian zealots that bears little resemblance to the one ratified by people immersed in the Enlightenment. For them, Freedom of Religion means the freedom to join their religion -- and everyone else gets to shut up about it.

To say that the Tea Party is feverish with bigotry is to simply state the obvious. Never mind the racist signs and slogans, those are dismissed as the "cranks" -- something teabaggers do every time they're confronted with them. Take a look at their stances on issues of tolerance. For example, you will never in a hundred-billion years encounter a Muslim teabagger. There's a reason for that.

Joe Conason, Salon:

Sarah Palin's semiliterate yet somehow Shakespearian tweet protesting the "Ground Zero mosque" has drawn fresh attention to a cause that excites bigots across the country. Her friend Mark Williams, the racist loudmouth expelled from the Tea Party movement over the weekend, is already leading a national campaign of agitation against the "mosque" and the worshippers of Islam's "monkey god." Florida evangelist William Keller wants a piece of the fame and fortune, too. New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio even seems to believe that opposing the mosque -- and perhaps all mosques -- will revive his stagnating candidacy.

Like so much right-wing agitation, the campaign against the mosque in lower Manhattan -- actually an interfaith community center known as the Cordoba House that will include a mosque -- depends on fear and misinformation. Its political purpose is to demonize Islam and its adherents, no matter how peaceful and moderate, by pandering to prejudice and inflaming emotions left raw by the losses of 9/11.

If the Tea Party is defined by those things that they're against, then they're united in their hatred of Muslims. It's not just Cordoba House that draws Tea Party fire, but any mosque built anywhere in America. In Tennessee, a proposed Murfreesboro Muslim community center has become an issue in the Governor's race. Current Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey has gone so far as to deny that Islam is an actual religion and, as a mere "cult," may not deserve any Constitutional protections afforded other religions.

In Florida, things are especially bad. In May, a pipe bomb exploded in a Jacksonville mosque, causing "significant" damage, "right before evening prayers at the mosque." In Gainesville, the Dove World Outreach Center plans to hold a good old-fashioned book-burning, as the Quran will torched to commemorate 9/11. Also in Gainesville, several members of the same church were sent home from school for wearing a t-shirt that read, "ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL."

"I've met Muslim children, but I don't actually have any contact with them at the moment," one student said. "I don't know why that is -- I guess we've just never become friends." You're wearing a t-shirt that says, "ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL," and you don't know why you don't have any Muslim friends? Really?

If there were no racism at all on the right, this would still be bigotry. A multi-cultural, multi-racial alliance against one ethnic group is still bigotry -- and that bigotry is a cornerstone of the entire movement. There's a reason that Republican politicians are jumping on the "no mosques anywhere" bandwagon: because the teabaggers are already leading that parade.

-Wisco


UPDATE: Case in point, via Think Progress:

A mosque in Texas was heavily vandalized last weekend, coming in the wake of a national intolerance movement by the right wing against Muslim places of worship. On Friday, members of the Dar El-Eman Islamic Education Center, in South Arlington, found "graffiti depicting Uncle Sam and Allah in a sexual position spray-painted in the parking lot.”"Then, early Sunday morning, in a case of suspected arson, a fire destroyed playground equipment at the mosque, causing $20,000 worth of damage. The vandals also cut a pipe, allegedly thinking that it was a natural gas line...

According to the report, this wasn't an isolated incident; "An open gas canister was left inside a mosque under construction in the same town last summer, and there was a separate 'attack' reported recently in nearby Rockwall. Meanwhile, in Temecula, CA, where the local Muslim community wants to build a new mosque, about 20 people protested its construction Friday, carrying signs reading, 'Muslims Danced for Joy on 9/11' and 'No Sharia Law.'"

How long before this anti-Islamic fearmongering actually kills someone? Your guess is as good as mine, but don't be surprised if it does.


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