After more than two years of vilification and excoriation have Progressive Democrats found the lever to destroy the T.E.A. Party?
I read a short article on Newsmax.com last Tuesday that was entitled "Democrats Launching Their Own Tea Party". And I thought to myself; "Yeah, like that'll work." For those gentle readers here at IC that still aren't familiar with the T.E.A. Party (and you must have been living under a rock somewhere); please allow me to attempt to summarize this grass roots political movement.
Most reasonable people, of which the T.E.A. Party is overwhelmingly populated with, peg the birth of this movement to February 19th 2009 when, during a broadcast from the floor of the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago CNBC Business Editor Rick Santelli had his own personal ‘I'm-mad-as-hell-and-I'm-not-going-to-take-it-anymore' moment. He brutally criticized the administration plan to refinance mortgages saying these plans were promoting bad behavior by subsidizing losers' mortgages. His suggestion was that traders gather to dump derivatives in the Chicago River as a protest. Traders on the floor of the exchange cheered his proposal, video of his on-air rant went viral, and thanks to the internet, a movement was born.
From the very outset of this phenomenon, Democrats have had no method of answering, or more importantly, silencing us. We defy every attempt progressives have utilized to destroy this movement. They've called us racist, a charge they've not been able to make stick. They've tried to label us as "Astro-Turf" in reference to the behind-the-scenes, coordinated, and bussed in groups of paid protestors they themselves invented to influence a particular political point of view. They have done their level best to create confrontations in order to get a T.E.A. Party activist to lose his/her temper on national television so as to broad brush the entire movement as card-carrying members of the black-helicopter and tin-foil hat crowd.
With each deliberate mis-step of the Obama Administration, the ranks of the T.E.A. Party has swelled. Between the $700 billion bailout of the banks, the $800 billion stimulus package, putting the fix in for unions to take precedence over secured creditors during the auto industry bailouts/bankruptcies, and the overreach of Obamacare; progressives were the best recruiting tool the T.E.A. Party movement ever had. With each subsequent inept, hubristic, announcement that came from the Bolsheviks in the White House our membership expanded. I know; I was there. In May of 2009 the Garland County (Arkansas) T.E.A. Party could've met in a phone booth if one could still find such a thing. By July we needed an auditorium, by September we needed our own damn building. We had less than 100 members in May 2009. By November of that year we had over 1,000.
During this same time; progressives were praying to Gaia (or whatever deity they routinely beg indulgence from) every time a violent act was reported in the MSM; "Please, please, please let it be a T.E.A. Party member!"
Remember Joseph Stack? He flew a plane into an Austin Texas IRS Building on February 18th 2009. I heard the words plane and building and thought; "Oh, no!" then I heard IRS and said; "Well, let's hear him out." I can just imagine how that conversation went. "So you say you're taking my house? I'll bring the keys right over. You're on the fourth floor, right? Fourth floor." (Compliments to Billy Gardell.).
The liberal MSM did everything humanly possible to connect this deluded person's actions with the T.E.A. Party. Essayist Jonathan Capehart was quoted as saying; "But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."
By July of 2009 the movement was unstoppable. A crowd estimated at over 300,000 held a peaceful demonstration in Washington DC. After this demonstration, progressives began cranking up the rhetoric. Bill Maher and others tried insulting the T.E.A. Party membership as a bunch of homophobic, tea bagging rednecks. This insult was actually lost on the majority of us. First off; it was such an inside joke because absolutely no one other than the hurlers of this insult themselves had any measurable practical experience with such an activity. Second; once we became aware of what was actually being described by such a play on words, the first thing that struck most of us was that the words "tea bagging" and "homophobic" were mutually exclusive; another nuance apparently lost on these people.
Although the MSM and the congressional leadership tried their level best to write us off as just a few bought and paid for professional rabble rousers, it became clear during the congressional summer recess of that we were not just a group of malcontents regurgitating rehearsed slogans. Congressmen were sprinting in horror from town hall meetings across the country, having been confronted by citizens who knew more of the details of the pending health care legislation than the politicians that were supposedly being paid to actually analyze it.
All of this culminated in the progressive Democrats getting their collective clocks cleaned (pun intended) in November of 2010. In Garland County, during the run up to the November Election our clarion call was; "You're either a candidate running for office or a supporter of a candidate running for office." Out of 23 elective offices that we ran T.E.A. Party candidates for, we won 22 of those seats. Garland County experienced its first turnover of political philosophy since Reconstruction.
You would have thought this would cause the progressives currently in charge of government to re-examine their premise regarding the movement. One thing has been made abundantly clear by this administration during the last two years; no matter how disastrous the actuality of any policy decision this administration makes, they stubbornly refuse to rethink the basis for that decision. They decide to outright lie about the policy's effectiveness, demand that we double down on that policy and throw more billions after bad, or design some one-flew-over-the-cuckoo's-nest scenario where its failure is actually George Bush's fault.
Harry Reid can't speak a word about this current budget/debt ceiling debate from the Well of the Senate without practically begging the GOP to abandon the T.E.A. Party. According to him we're all extremists that would ruin government. He's on target too. If we had our way, Harry Reid's concept of government would be rotting right beside this administration's steaming pile of failure they routinely tout as "accomplishment".
All this is just setting the stage for November 2012. Progressives are already lamenting the return to; "the failed policies of the previous administration." I seriously doubt that. "Why?" you may reasonably ask. Because it wasn't the policies of George Bush that screwed everything up. It was the spendthrift progressive/Democrat Congress that created the half trillion-dollar deficit between 2006 and 2008 through unrestrained spending. And Congress has continued to do so, in spades, since the 2008 elections.
As I pointed out at IC in another essay we've never had a revenue problem, but we've always had a spending problem; especially since both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue became wholly owned subsidiaries of the progressive Democrat Party between the years of 2008 to 2010. What's making this so easy is that the progressives have abandoned all pretense at making a logical case for continued investment (code for tax hikes). They cannot even logically defend the expense of the programs they reflexively demand funding for, let alone try to justify the horrendous ROI these programs have provided. They are now reduced to; "We just CAN"T reduce the size of these entitlement programs! Our base DEPENDS on these programs!" Hence the idea that progressives are going to begin their own Tea Party movement.
All you have to know about how well this is going to work is to look to the inspiration of this new movement; none other than Van Jones. You remember Mr. Jones don't you? One of the original most coveted of Barack Obama's unaccountable czars. A senior member of the Center For American Progress and a card-carrying, self proclaimed socialist. This lunatic actually believes that President Bush deliberately allowed September 11th 2001 to occur.
Van says; "We think we can do what the Tea Party did. They stepped forward under a common banner, and everybody took them seriously. Polls suggest there are more people out there who have a different view of the economy, but who have not stepped forward yet under a common banner."
His target groups; you guessed it, the chronically unemployed and all those career renters desperately trying to hold onto homes they never should have been allowed to buy in the first place. In other words; all his homeys that depend on the largess that government forces from working stiffs like us to pay for their non-stop party.
I realize that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery but anyone foolish enough to have accepted a job as "Green Jobs Czar" to begin with doesn't have the intellectual horsepower to unclog a shower drain; let alone organize a truly grass roots movement of any importance. I predict that this is the first, and last time we'll ever hear of the Progressive Tea Party.
Bill I am a big fan of the TEA party but I have a couple of issues with your essay. First, I’m always uncomfortable when conservatives defend George Bush, especially on his economic policies. He initiated the first bail outs and spent like a Democrat during his eight years in office. I think it’s important that conservatives, especially TEA party members, make that distinction. The colossal, psychedelic, three dimensional hypocrisy of the left when bashing Bush causes a knee jerk reaction on the right to defend him to the detriment of the cause. If you defend the economic policies of Bush you are lending credence to the left’s argument that we tried free markets and conservative principles for eight years and they failed. This is why you see such passionate backlash against RINOs. Conservatives know that if we elect another RINO we are reducing our argument for limited government and financial responsibility to a barely audible squeak.
Second, don’t discount a progressive anti-TEA Party so quickly. We need only look to the Wisconsin protests to see the rent-a-mob, union backed frenzy the left can whip up. With deep pocket backers like Soros and the Hollywood left and cheerleading from the media the movement doesn’t have to be principled or sincere it just needs to be loud.
seanW,
As for your first concern I didn’t think I was defending George Bush as I have ‘issues’ with ‘compassionate conservatism’ as well. While we all realize that Presidents don’t spend money because the power of the purse sits with the Congress; the President does have the power of veto, forcing a super-majority in order to override and spend those dollars anyway. My major complaint against President Bush is that he didn’t veto any of the democrat majority-led spending efforts between 2006 and 2008. A check-and-balance unused is no balance at all.
As for your second concern: George Bush did originally initiate the bailouts of the banks; not a good idea. However; it was the current administration that gathered all the CEO’s of those banks together and ‘insisted’ ALL of them borrow government funds regardless of need in order to capture undue influence on the entire financial sector. While republicans will routinely announce; “I have a really crappy idea!” You can depend on a democrat to rise to the occasion and say; “And I know how to make that idea even crappier!”
So while I do have bones to pick with President Bush, I certainly have more to be motivated about since Obama took office.
As for your final concern that I may be ‘discounting’ the Progressive Tea Party; I have a question: Heard of the Coffee Party? Heard anything from them lately? They were supposedly the original answer to those bigoted, racist T.E.A. Party people. They began, to much fanfare, in January of 2010. I haven’t heard a peep out of them since. As a matter of fact; when I first submitted this essay to the associate editor, he reminded me by asking in an email; “Remember that Coffee Party they tried.” And that was the first time I’d thought of them in over a year. Absolutely no media exposure. No exposure, no influence. I suspect this incarnation of the Progressive Tea Party to fail as well.
Bill, good article as usual but I, like seanW, wish you had not gone quite so easy on Bush’s non-use of the veto power that he had. I also can’t forget Dennis Hastert’s mega-rino gavel in the house. He was a disgrace to conservatives. Some elementary follow up on his own sweet heart deals reveal a demo in the wool character that isn’t pretty. The Tea Party has every reason to be ticked off with Bush’s big government agenda. His was one of the Chinese water torture while obama’s is one of a tsunami. Both are bad for our country, one just accomplishes big government quicker.
hvance,
I agree entirely with your post. Since I’ve had two persons chastise me for being too light on our former Commander-in-Chief I guess I have no option other than to apologize to both seanW and yourself for not taking him more thoroughly to the proverbial woodshed. What is past is past. However; suffice it to say that no true conservative will ever fall for a ‘compassionate conservative’ again.
The price we must pay for good, limited, constitutional federal government is eternal vigilance. I believe the T.E.A. Party has proved this, in spades. I also believe that once engaged, these persons that constitute the T.E.A. Party will see this evolution through. What I find most inspiring about the Garland County (Arkansas) T.E.A. Party is the demographic. I belong to the Garland County Republican Party as well as the Garland County T.E.A. Party. At a GCRP meeting I’m probably one of the youngest persons there at 56 years of age. At a GCTP meeting, I’m one of the ‘greybeards’. While I cannot speak for other T.E.A. Party groups; it is truly gratifying to see the ever-swelling numbers of high school and college age conservatives that have populated the T.E.A. Party here. We became an outlet for these young conservatives as they are consistently stifled by their respective learning institutions. They’ve found a place to practice, discuss, and polish their conservative credentials with us. I think it bodes well for the continued advance of conservatism as a lasting political ideology of the future.
I agree completely: a progressive version of the TEA Party will go exactly nowhere. The TEA Party is what we political scientists call a ‘new social movement.’ It is genuinely from the grass roots, and I doubt that progressives can get something like this going. Many progressives want to deny that the TEA Party is a grassroots movement because they fantasize that any such movement just have to be on the Left. Historically they are wrong. IMHO the next few years will allow all of us to see what happens when the American system takes a hard right turn. I’m not looking forward to it–the human costs will be very high. But I also see nothing ahead to block this transformation.
Gestell,
The left throws around phrases like hard right, radical right, extreme right, religious right etc. The TEA party is fundamentally a movement to return the country to Constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, personal accountability and free markets. It’s a sad time when our founding documents and principles are labeled as extreme. In order to make the TEA party seem radical the left has to convince people not to take the movement at face value but to view everything they say as hidden code for the return of slavery and rebirth of the Nazi party.
You also speak of the human cost of what you label a hard right turn. We have been veering towards the left with only minor interruptions for the last 70 years. We now have 50,000 babies aborted annually, a high illegitimacy rate, rampant crime turning our cities into war zones, generations of welfare dependant people, an increasing illiteracy rate and trillions of dollars in unpaid bills in a failed attempt to fix it all. To me that’s a pretty heavy human cost of our hard left turn.
I still stand by what I said above about the counter-TEA party. There have been false starts but there will be an ACORN like left wing TEA party, especially if a Republican wins the White House.
Professor,
You speak of the human costs of a return to conservative values; but seanW’s analysis is accurate. The human costs, as well as the monetary costs, of progressivism have been astonishing! We are living in a dystopia of your intentional design!
The blame for our present financial situation is a pox on both major political parties. Liberals have cajoled, browbeat, threatened, and insulted conservatives into betraying their conservative values for generations. This is how you define ‘bipartisanship’. Bipartisanship, in your lexicon, is whenever conservatives betray the values of their constituency and agree to cross the aisle, NEVER the other way around. Your political ideology has redefined a spending increase of 5% as a ‘budget cut’ because the original budget called for a 10% hike.
And when you can’t pass your agenda legislatively or through congressional trickery, you find a like-minded judge to issue sweeping change at the slap of a gavel so as to avoid such pesky things as referendums or actually converting people to your point of view through logical debate. Like petulant children; you scream, protest, and threaten violence, a la Wisconsin, to get your ideological way. We ask for fiscal responsibility and you label us ‘extremists’. We ask for entitlement reform and you label us killers of children and the elderly. We ask for equality under the law and you label us racists and bigots. Why go the route of actual debate when you can just define all who disagree with your vision in the most pejorative terms possible thereby classifying all opponents as beneath contempt or debate. You’ve been doing this reflexively for so long you actually have begun to believe it.
We have now reached the point where regulatory agencies not only demand that corporations create jobs, but tell them exactly where they must create them regardless of the future fiscal health of the corporate carcass they fully intend to pick clean. There is no other possible explanation for the NLRB’s interference with Boeing’s decision to move some, not all, production to South Carolina. Are they trying to avoid the financial ruin of a union slaughtering their profit? Of course they are. They’re not busting the union; they’re circumventing it. They’re telling the union that no longer control the means of production. Look around; state governments by the score are acting in the same manner.
The President cannot understand why companies are not creating jobs. In his worldview, companies exist solely to provide services and employment to society regardless of cost. They don’t need to make money; they are merely an entity that is used to transfer wealth and goods to society.
Look at the POTUS comment from the latest press briefing, and I quote; “These are bills that Congress ran up. The money’s been spent.” Obama said, comparing lawmakers to a family that had bought a car or a house and was refusing to pay its bills.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-hold-press-conference-wednesday-235307696.html
How Freudian! The direct translation is; “When we took over both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, we tripled the debt in eighteen months. Since we all know that the one entity here that should NEVER do with less is government, conservatives should do the responsible thing, screw THEIR base once again, and raise taxes until blood shoots out of the eyes of their constituency, because my homeys in the Chocolate City gotta’ have their checks!”
Being a career educator, you more than anyone else, should understand how people learn. They may come to terms with concepts at varying rates, but repeat the lesson enough times and they eventually grasp the hypothesis. A corollary to this is that subsequent generations almost always out-perform the previous generation when it comes to grasping and employing these previously introduced concepts. We’re now living in the world you initially DEMANDED in the 60’s! The tantrums, uncontrolled outbursts, and profligate spending that the generation of Love began have come to fruition. Half of working people pay no taxes with most actually getting a wealth transfer due to the EITC. An additional one in six people is receiving some type of government assistance. Unemployment is at 9.1% and if you include those who have given up looking or are working more than one job to make ends meet that number approaches 17%.
Our annual budget is coming within reach of $4 trillion. We are on track to create the first $1 trillion department, HHS, when Obamacare fully kicks in. We’re obligated to $14 trillion in debt and have unfunded liabilities in excess of $40 trillion. We’re presently living in the world your ideology demanded, and the person you placed in charge wants to spend more! And you have the audacity to lament a return to sanity! And why? Because all the dependency you’ve deliberately created over the last half century will indeed have catastrophic consequences for tens of millions people who, thanks to your ideology, no longer grasp the concepts of self reliance, hard work, thrift, or delayed gratification.
When does your ideology admit defeat, if history serves as any reference, the deliberate slaughter of tens of millions at the hands of centralized government is just around the corner, or will you even deny the ‘catastrophic’ costs of the regimes of Mao and Lenin? This is your ‘Great Society’ writ large! The most astounding portion of this is that now you’re defense of this catastrophe is; “Stay the course because we’re not quite done yet!” Believe me, you’re done! D-O-N-E done!
One would have expected someone of your intellectual background to have figured this stuff out by now:
• “Need” is not a virtue!
• “Profit” is not a sin!
• Income redistribution of OPM, forced at the point of a government gun is not “Charity” it’s “Theft”!
And in the face of all this; an overwhelming majority of your ideological brethren want to ‘double-down’ the bet on that three-legged horse that is the fruit of their, and your, genius!
When I suggested that there are folks that needed to re-acquaint themselves with Francisco d’Anconia’s treatise; “Is Money the Root of all Evil?” it was specifically with you in mind. You should have it engraved on a plaque that is 3.5 feet wide and 5 feet long. There should be one in each room of your home and another in your office. You should read that document at least five times each day before lunch; and another five each afternoon. It should be the litany that springs from your lips each night before bed. You’ve accused me here at IC in other posts of being a bigoted, racist, homophobic, conservative nutcase; and during all of that time never once recognized that the entirety of this current debacle was demanded of this country by you and your ilk. Your shining mental ideal of a society of government controlled equality has ended as a steaming pile of failure. Stifle! Please!
First of all, George W. Bush is one of the reasons the TEA Party exists. There are some who are rankled when identified with the former president (I am among them) and will expend some effort to dissociate themselves from him (I am also among them). People who are both socially and fiscally conservative (IMHO, the only set of attitudes that can identify a genuine conservative) find themselves sidelined these days by Republicans and at least in my own case I have been basically at loose ends to figure out why these attitudes are no longer mainstream among Republicans. The TEA Party offered two things I personally found to be irresistable – they are a genuine grass-roots movement and they are as conservative as I am. With all the legacy media folks echoing the opinions of people like Ms. Pelosi that we are “Astroturf” and the effort (the only one I am aware of, but let’s say there has been at least one) by the Republican Party to co-opt the movement, the only thing that has kept it free of such entanglements is that the leaders didn’t sell out. In my opinion and that of some political authors I have read over the last six months, the movement will either make basic and permanent alterations to the Republican Party or it will absorb the Party, as the Republicans absorbed the WHigs in 1860. Thinking about it, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, would it?