Frank Rich: The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged

[kpete]

Published on Sunday, February 28, 2010 by the New York Times
The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged

by Frank Rich

No one knows what history will make of the present - least of all journalists, who can at best write history's sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn't choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I'd put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

..............

Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.

Equally significant is Barstow’s finding that most Tea Party groups have no affiliation with the G.O.P. despite the party’s ham-handed efforts to co-opt them. The more we learn about the Tea Partiers, the more we can see why. They loathe John McCain and the free-spending, TARP-tainted presidency of George W. Bush. They really do hate all of Washington, and if they hate Obama more than the Republican establishment, it’s only by a hair or two. (Were Obama not earning extra demerits in some circles for his race, it might be a dead heat.) The Tea Partiers want to eliminate most government agencies, starting with the Fed and the I.R.S., and end spending on entitlement programs. They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington — a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All.

The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28rich.html

[Pyrzqxgl]

1. What you are saying is "The Tea Party = Anarchy!

I remember back in the 60's I had a tongue in cheek political button that said "ANARCHISTS UNITE".
Actually that's not too far off.

[HillbillyBob]

2. Theres your garden variety of anarchists who just want to

smoke dope and ignore society. Then there is this lot..and they have been on a slow boil for a few decades, mostly quiet and unnoted by most of society.
They go under several of various guises that sometimes overlap Kreestians, white supremacists, survivalists, there are others that fall into one or more of those groups that seems to cover the most of them though.

[Billy Burnett]

3. Some like violence.

Reenacting/replaying some deep-seated psychological syndrome.

:nuke:

[ladym55]

4. And the M$M gives the Tea Party legitimacy

This is very scary to me. The legitimizing of hate speech by corporate media is just mind-boggling.

How many people heard Sarah Palin speak at the Tea Party conference? Was it something like 600??? It was a HUGE national event. I saw more people at an event concerning troubles in Africa in downtown San Francisco that got NO coverage even in the local media. (The reason I can't be more specific is BECAUSE the event received no coverage. I only heard a few snippets on the bus I was riding ... but there were LOTS and LOTS of people there.) Peaceful protest against the Iraq War brought out hundreds of thousands, but THAT wasn't covered.

[Tutankhamun]

6. Yes, the Iraq war protests were the largest in the history of the world.

Not only did our media not cover them, they didn't promote them either. Think about it.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. They're EXTREMISTS, whatever else they are.

Call them Teahadists, the Tealiban, al Teada, whatever. None of those parallels really exaggerates their slavering, unhinged fervor.