just how reactionary is the tea party?

[Thats my opinion]

Some progressive friends of mine enjoy talking about the Tea Party as if all the baggers were skinheads, roughnecks or Neanderthals. One look at the crowds at any of their rallies ought to be enough to dispel that perception. While there may be a smattering in the assemblages that looks as if they haven’t had a thought in recent history, on the whole Tea baggers appear to be a rather typical, white, middle-aged, or older slice of Americana. It is not until you take as closer look at what many of them believe that you may pause to wonder what America would be like in their hands.

Sean Hannity occasionally highlights what he describes as typical focus groups, featuring Frank Luntz. These groups of about 25 are hardly a cross section of the communities from which they come. They are pre-screened Republicans, mainly advocates of the Tea Party. What they say is not what some liberal source thinks Tea baggers assume, but are convictions right from the horse’s mouth. Recently Luntz presented a focus group of Iowans. Two-thirds of them believed that President Obama is not a native-born American and is not a Christian. Almost no one believed that global warming even exists, let alone has become a problem.

A recent Public Policy poll of registered Republicans in Mississippi, a hard-core Tea bagger State, concluded that 46% believed inter-racial marriage should be illegal and 14% weren’t sure. One might assume that this issue was settled decades ago. A Tea bagger, who is an elected Republican operative in Orange County, California, recently sent out a cartoon showing President Obama as the child of chimpanzees. The cartoon was accompanied by the line, “no wonder you can’t find a birth certificate.” If you think racism is dead or has nothing to do with the political debate, you had better look again.

These may not be the positions of most right wing Tea bag oriented Republicans, but neither has the party repudiated them. Speaker John Boehner often said that his role was not to tell others what to think, leaving the door open for these obscenities. If he doesn’t ask those representing this fringe to leave, the assumption is they are still invited in. As long as the Republican Party fails to repudiate racist views, it leaves itself open to the accusation that it is a safe harbor for the worst in American bigotry.

The Tea bag phenomenon is not a new development in American politics. Every few years there is a populist uprising, which usually protests government inattention to some popular demand, particular among the left-out in American culture. Veterans have marched on Washington. The Civil Rights struggle produced tens of thousands who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to hear the speech by Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequently evolved into the poor peoples’ occupation of the Mall.

In 1912 the American Progressive Party led by Teddy Roosevelt, “the Bull Moose,” adopted a platform including: A National Health Service encompassing all existing government medical agencies. Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled. Limited injunctions in strikes. A minimum wage law for women. An eight-hour workday. A federal securities commission. Farm workers economic relief. Workers' compensation for work-related injuries. An inheritance tax. A Constitutional amendment to allow a Federal income tax. Women's suffrage.

Williams Jennings Brian mobilized millions to oppose the control
of the banks, the monetary system and the railroads by a wealthy minority. These and other populist movements almost always came down on the side of the poor and the left out. The Tea party, however, a new substantial part of the Republican Party, is controlled by the haves, not by the have-nots. Its agenda is not to support the cries of the left out, but to destroy what little safety net former populist movements have helped to weave. Thus the Tea party is not a populist movement after all, but a political cabal of the middle-class funded by very wealthy people and urged on by an anti-populist right wing. When Americans realize what has happened, my guess is we will see the repudiation of baggers on behalf of the real populists.
Charles Bayer
[e-mail]

[louis-t]

1. Republicans work for 2% of the population.

They know they can never win elections with support from 2% of Americans. That's why they have to lie to the other 98% and hope that 45% believe them.

[Demeter]

2. It's the Malice plus the insanity

That is how you recognize a Tea Party person. It's more than plain insanity.

[AndiMer]

3. Recommend

But you are sort of preaching to the choir.

[Thats my opinion]

4. I may be preaching to the DU choir

but these columns appear several other places. Last evening I received an irate e-mail from somebody who read it in this forum, but has been banned from DU for obvious reasons. From my considerable mail I know that there are non-choir voices who have heard the tune.

[musiclawyer]

5. The tea party is merely " reaction formation"

in a societal sense. I view the TP as this older, not that smart, demographic that had been drinking the right wing media kool aide for decades, Voting republican lockstep. Be definition that right wing media played up the racist angle and the San francisco liberal angle for decades. So even some of these folks who weere not tribal when they were younger became tribal as they got older. And then their world literally collapsed in front of their eyes, a lot of them getting hurt, because of the very people and institutions they had been supporting for years. So........ rather than reflecting and thinking about who was responsible ( and looking in the mirror) they had to find a scapegoat. It helped that POTUS was a black man (in their eyes) and was a gift to corporate third party machine that co-opted the tea party. But even if the President was Joe Biden, he would have been villified the same way. All the rage, really, is self loathing now taken out on anyone not part of the tribe. I'm not a shrink, but I called this one a long time ago. That's why I'm not too worried about the tea party. Conservadems can do much more long term harm than the tea party. The TP is dying at a faster clip than you can imagine. These are not the type of people who take of their bodies or their minds. The corporate co-opters know this. They will turn to Manchurian conservadems before long. Those are the polititicians we need to weed out of the party. The other party will self destruct on its own.