Political movement has internal disagreement shocka...

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From what I have seen there are two general camps in what the mass media calls the Tea Party.
The first and by far the most numerous are small C conservative, mildly Libertarian people from across the social scale who mostly want a return to a more people centered Government, pro constitution and socially middle of the road.

The second are the Astro Turf crowd created and initially controlled by the Koch boys, Fox news etal. These are the foam at the mouth right wing, fairly racist, reactionary socially conservative gang. They are the Brown Shirts doing the Koch boys' dirty work and equally as dangerous.

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I mean, remind me, whose against full employment, clean energy, health care for all and high quality universal education? The Tea Party would fully agree with those objectives. They just differ as to how to achieve it...

That is why it is hard to understand the Tea Party from looking at their actions. You are correct for the first group but not the second.

To the extreme Right Wing the moderate Tea Party factions are actually more dangerous than almost anything else, simply because they are closer to the center politically and therefore likely to be successful in attracting large amounts of support. Hence the desire to derail the Tea Party towards the extreme right via Astro Turfing.

F

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"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it."-- Mark Twain

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.

An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.36

Looks like tears before teatime.

Originally Posted by FredFredson

The second are the Astro Turf crowd created and initially controlled by the Koch boys, Fox news etal. These are the foam at the mouth right wing, fairly racist, reactionary socially conservative gang. They are the Brown Shirts doing the Koch boys' dirty work and equally as dangerous. That is why it is hard to understand the Tea Party from looking at their actions. You are correct for the first group but not the second.

I don't really think so. I mean, I obviously don't know how the Koch brothers view themselves and the world and maybe they do cackle as they try to take it over. But even Nazis would have been pretty much agreeing with such generalistic objectives of 'full employment, full coverage health care and free education. It's like with everything else... People view themselves as in the right and indeed righteous, no matter their policies. And no one goes around saying they want to create maximum pain for the greater number of people...

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I think the whooe astroturf thing is hugely overstateted. There is a big differende between the oringinal sense of the rterm - creating fake ID's and posting messages on boards etc pretending to be random citizens - and the kind of suport given to the Tea Party. You can fund a conference or whatever but that is no guarantee that anyone will turn up. The fact that people DO turn up is independent of the funding. You can't make people turn out, and the fact that the TP has significant turnout indicates genuine support.

And yes, it could be deeply divided, becuase the people themselves did not participate in formulatoing a position. So you have Libertarians cosying with economic nationalists. Theres plkemnty of space here to strike up alliances between bits of the TP and bits of the left, as has already happened. More so than any other political party in the US, the TP is the people in motion, and it should not be dismissed.

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the TP is the people in motion, and it should not be dismissed.

Agreed

Eventually the extremists will be disposed of. Hopefully it will not be in as drastic a way as the NAZIs disposed of the Brownshirts during the Night of the Long Knives.

I still, even if it is hopeless, have faith in the vast mass of moderate Americans to make a difference IF they can get the correct information on which to base their decisions.

F

__________________
"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it."-- Mark Twain

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.

An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.36

Originally Posted by FredFredson

Eventually the extremists will be disposed of.

Will they?

I think there are meaningful segment of the US pop. that do like Fox/Hannity and the rest of it. Birthers etc.

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I still, even if it is hopeless, have faith in the vast mass of moderate Americans to make a difference IF they can get the correct information on which to base their decisions.

I understand what you're saying but the info isn't anything like top secret. As I said, there is a real challenge in the "I am paying taxes and I see no benefit in them - except funding some ghetto n%ggers next fix" - It might be simplistic, with a racist undercurrent but it's not fundamentally wrong. In the UK, for example, they found that, after 12 years of Labour, the situation for near-destitute people had improved while the situation for low to middle class had worsen... Those people have a genuine axe to grind.

The left answer (let's close the wealth gap by making the rich & their companies pay) is the correct one (imho) but it has several implementation/PR related issues - First, the idea that those people create their wealth and so taxing it is stealing it. Second, the idea that increasing taxes discourage entrepreneurship and investment and lead to tax arbitrage. The first part, about discouraging entrepreneurship, is mostly bollox (there is an effect but it's pretty far off the levels we're talking about and it's mostly for small businesses/one man shops), the second part is dead real - we've seen it in action with delocalisation in the last 30 years...

Those bits would really really need to be addressed by the left, if they want to be taken seriously...

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