What is the difference between Republicans and right-wing Tea Partiers?

[kentuck]

Is it possible to negotiate or compromise with either of them?

Should the Democratic Party make a distinction between the two?

Should Democrats refuse to negotiate with the right-wing Tea Partiers? Obviously, their positions on taxes are set in stone.

Or are they the same Party?

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. I See Very Little Difference. The GOP Uses The Tea Baggers As An Excuse To Do What They

intend to do anyway. Even without the tea baggers the GOP will still be doing nothing.

[randome]

2. They are the same, IMO.

The entire idea of calling a political group a 'Tea Party' shows they are not to be taken seriously because who takes tea parties seriously?

They are just a more virulent strain of Republican.

[JaneyVee]

3. Same party.

[graham4anything]

4. President Obama should just negotiate with the 90% of the democratic party that loves him

[lonestarnot]

5. No diff

[99Forever]

6. Same same.

And then we have Republican Lite.

[CrispyQ]

7. The Koch funded teabaggers are just a way to force the country even further to the right.

Genuine republicans, those who adhere to the policies of the republican party before Reagan, will jump ship & join the dems, who's party platform more closely resembles the republican party of the 50s than the democratic party of the 70s. The far right will have a voice, the middle will have a voice & the left will be out in the cold. But that's ok, because according to the media, & a lot of people on this site, we're as whacked out as the baggers & should just shut up.

Last week Common Dreams had an article about a study that showed if you present liberal policies without using labels like liberal & progressive, they are overwhelmingly supported by both dems & repubs. Once you add a label, however, support goes down. Ideology gets in the way of facts. We truly are getting the government we deserve - maybe not all of us, but most of us.

[Eleanors38]

8. Tea Party people are largely poor whites who see little

Hope in their future, and have been given enemies for "comfort." They most likely voted Democratic through the 60s when their fortunes were better & the Democratic Party had a far stronger working class/labor I.D. Now, both parties aim for the shrinking "middle," leaving TPs abandoned. The poor economic situation they are in will grow worse, however. One party uses their frustrations to advantage, the other ridicules them.

If politics start to break down completely, and if Democrats want to prevail, they must talk and ally with the people in the "Tea Party."

[YoungDemCA]

13. "Largely poor whites"?

That's news to me.

In my experience, by and large Tea Partiers are from households and families with higher-than-average incomes and/or wealth. Many are also more educated than the general population (in the technical sense, meaning they often have at least a Bachelor's degree). But the Tea Partiers are proof that just because you may have a degree, doesn't make you smart or informed.

[Eleanors38]

14. It would be good to see income data, but the TPs I've seen..

don't fit your profile, but are closer to the folks dealt with in Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting With Jesus," a fundamental read.

[HereSince1628]

9. Right wing = conservative, tea party = libertarian

Conservatives bend to authority, finding answers and security in shared orthodoxy

Teahadist libertarians reject authority in favor of the validity of the freeman (yeoman) and rugged exceptionalism of the self-sufficient individual.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. They are the same Party. Is there a 'Tea Primary'? No. Do they convene and nominate as a Party?

Sure, as the Republican Party. Not one candidate has ever been elected from the Tea Party. They are just a bunch of Republicans with a name they made up when Republicans were sick of the Bush image.

[wandy]

11. The republican party is long dead and gone...........

Sorry to say that the good republican party of Nixon no longer exists.
You see it's like this.....
Hate and Fear are a contagious desiease. Beginning with St. Reagen, GOP co. was transformed into a festering pool of the misinformed.
Republican, Teabagger, Bircher all become one. Teapublicans.

If their were sane republicans, what became of them?

Now just where did you think right leaning Democrats, blue dogs and third wayers came from.

[YoungDemCA]

12. The "Tea Party" label has become a signifier for Republicans who are especially "hard-line"...

...on taxes and on social issues.

Unfortunately, that describes the bulk of the Republican Caucus nowadays. The Republican Party's inability or unwillingness to control the Tea Partiers in its ranks makes it pretty clear that the GOP is a deeply dysfunctional Party.

[Initech]

15. Tea Party: billionaire funded, brainwashed by Fox News and Any Rand