"Leonard Pitts" - Tea party is throwing more than a temper tantrum

Leonard Pitts Jr. | The Miami Herald

last updated: September 28, 2011 12:18:30 PM

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/29/v-print/125515/commentary-tea-party-is-throwing.html

This country is in a world of hurt if the likes of Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry wins the next election. It might be in greater trouble if Barack Obama does.

I can take no credit — or blame — for that analysis. It originated with one of my colleagues, a veteran political reporter, and he shared it one day not long ago as we were chatting in the office. It troubles me for one simple reason: it makes sense.

So here is how his thinking goes. The genteel, pragmatic Republicanism of the past has been supplanted by a pitchforks and torches mentality, a funhouse mirror distortion of traditional conservatism. Meaning, of course, the tea party.

These are folks who don’t just support the death penalty; they cheer for executions. They don’t just oppose health care reform, they shout “Let him die” to the uninsured individual who faces life-threatening illness. They are the true believers: virulently anti-government, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-tax, anti-facts and, most of all, anti the coming demographic changes represented by a dark-skinned president with an African name. They are the people who want “their” country back.

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"Amanda Marcotte" - What Awful Reality TV and Suburban Living Have to Do With the Tea Party's Lack of Empathy

By Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet
Posted on September 20, 2011, Printed on September 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152480/what_awful_reality_tv_and_suburban_living_have_to_do_with_the_tea_party%27s_lack_of_empathy

If there’s any one defining feature of the Tea Party, it’s a lack of empathy for their fellow Americans. Republican candidates know this about their base: more than their supposed love of Jesus or the Founding Fathers, more than any coherent principled conservativism, more even than the strong streak of bigotry running through the Tea Party is this gleeful “screw you” attitude. Therefore, the Republican primary has become a contest to see who can heap the most abuse on Americans Tea Partiers don’t identify with.

You have Herman Cain preening about making Muslims second-class citizens; Michele Bachmann attacking doctors and public health officials who would prevent cervical cancer in young women; Rick Perry crowing about his heavy execution rate (which includes a willingness to execute people who should have been acquitted or had mistrials); and Ron Paul drawing heavy applause from a debate audience for his belief that government should just let the uninsured die. Far from being concerned about misfortune befalling others, the Tea Party routinely supports the expansion of suffering.   

To help explain this phenomena, we might remember another signifying characteristic of the Tea Party: despite the enthusiasm for country music, Tea Partiers proliferate in suburban and exurban districts. The most right-wing districts in the country are also some of its most suburban. Michele Bachmann serves the 6th District of Minnesota, which is composed of the suburban area surrounding the north of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Steve King, known for his competing hatreds of immigrants and sexually active women, serves the 5th District of Iowa, built from the suburban sprawl between Omaha and Des Moines. Anti-health-care fanatic Joe Walsh represents Illinois’s 8th District, composed of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Joe Barton, known for apologizing to BP for the White House post-oil spill investigation, serves the 6th District in Texas, which encompasses the suburban sprawl south of the Dallas/Ft. Worth areas.  

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"Ian Millhiser" - What if the Tea Party Wins?

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/tea_party_constitution.html

They Have a Plan for the Constitution, and It Isn’t Pretty

The Center for American Progress

By Ian Millhiser | September 16, 2011.

ge their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.

At least, that’s what would happen if the Tea Party succeeds in its effort to reimagine the Constitution as an antigovernment manifesto. While the House of Representatives pushes Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out Medicare, numerous members of Congress, a least one Supreme Court justice, and the governor of America’s second-largest state now proudly declare that most of the progress of the last century violates the Constitution.

It is difficult to count how many essential laws would simply cease to exist if the Tea Party won its battle to reshape our founding document, but a short list includes:

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"Robert Parry" - Tea Party Gets the Constitution Wrong

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tea-Party-Gets-the-Constit-by-Robert-Parry-110918-925.html

September 18, 2011

By Robert Parry

It is now an article of faith in the Tea Party and on the American Right that the Founders wrote the U.S. Constitution to restrict the power of the federal government and protect states' rights. But that analysis is simply wrong.

Like any government document, the Constitution can only be understood in the context of what it replaced -- and why. The Constitution superseded the Articles of Confederation, which guided the new country starting in 1777. The Articles granted broad authority to the states with only a weak national government.

As the Revolutionary War wore on and during the early years of peace, many American leaders -- including George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson -- came to view the Articles as unworkable and a threat to the survival of the new nation.

The Continental Army was especially disdainful of the Articles because they didn't grant taxing authority to the national government and thus -- when the states reneged on promised funding, which they did frequently -- soldiers were left without pay and munitions.

The answer to this political crisis took shape in 1786 with a growing movement for a much stronger federal government, leading to secret meetings in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a new governing document, the Constitution.

The Constitution created the framework for a powerful federal authority that could not only declare war and negotiate treaties, but could tax, print money, regulate interstate commerce and undertake a host of other governing activities.

Besides the sweeping federal authority delineated by the Constitution, the document also dropped key language from the Articles of Confederation that had suggested the supremacy of the states.

The Articles had described the United States not as a government or even a nation, but as "a firm league of friendship" among the states "for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare."

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"William Rivers Pitt"- The Cult of Death

Tuesday 13 September 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/cult-death/1315937077

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

- Matthew 25:40 (King James)

Trying to figure out what this whole "Tea Party" phenomenon is all about is a lot like trying to peer into the bottom of a muddy pool. The "mainstream" news media has accepted them as a legitimate, powerful force in American politics, as evidenced by CNN's so-called "Tea Party Debate" for the Republican presidential candidates on Monday night. A group that did not exist three years ago suddenly has enough clout to rate a television banner and a chunk of prime-time coverage.

But who are these people, really?

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"Earl Hutchinson"- Party Ending for the Tea Party?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Party-Ending-for-the-Tea-P-by-earl-ofari-hutchin-110912-223.html

September 12, 2011 There are two things that have distinguished the tea party. With the help of an awestruck, fawning media, it has been able to harness public disaffection with Washington beltway politicians and a large segment of white conservative anger and loath of President Obama's policies. The second thing is it has been able to con the same media and much of the public into thinking that it that had all the makings of a majority party that would permanently rearrange the political landscape. This was never the case. The August Gallup poll and other surveys that show that the tea party engenders far more negative feelings among Americans than positive feelings again confirm that. The tea party's prime constituents have always been mostly Deep South, and Heartland, white middle to lower income voters. But this should never have surprised. The tea party demographic mimicked the GOP's prime voter demographic in every election since 1980 that helped assure victory for Reagan, Bush Sr. and George W. Bush. Before that they were the anchor of   Nixon's Southern Strategy.

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"Jack Smith"- The Strange Politics Of The US 2012 Election -- Part 1, What Both Parties Are Up To

When was it that the most extremely disturbed inmates seized control of the madhouse known as the American political system? We know they are wielding decisive influence within the two-party structure by their destructive antics in Washington and various state capitals, but when and how did this happen?

Some contend that the takeover was accomplished last January, when the new Republican House majority assumed office. Granted that the intransigent buffoonery of the right/far right party is a substantial factor, but it by no means is the only factor, as the Democrats suggest.

The Tea Party (TP) phenomenon is a symptom of one of the more bizarre political moments in American history between the odd couple that constitutes the two-party system, not the principal causative agent. It is a new formation but composed of the old hard core right wing and religious right reinvigorated with conservative populism, anti-government libertarianism, garnished with an element of racism in response to a non-white chief executive, and performing the political equivalent of wilding in the streets.

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"Eric Alterman" - Why Are Politicians Running from Economic Reality into Tea Party Fantasy Land?

By Eric Alterman, The Nation
Posted on September 5, 2011, Printed on September 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152301/why_are_politicians_running_from_economic_reality_into_tea_party_fantasy_land

In 2008 America elected as its president not only an African-American but an unapologetic Keynesian. In his inaugural address Barack Obama declared, “The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.”

The stimulus package that followed -- while disappointing in many respects (and based on a far rosier view of economic conditions than turned out to be justified) -- was nevertheless defended in explicitly Keynesian terminology. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected $814 billion into the economy. As Obama described it, the stimulus was “the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education…in this country in thirty years” and “the largest investment in clean energy in our history.”

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"Dan Mage" - The Tea Party and Fake Libertarians: Rebellion, Backlash or Death Spasms of a Hate Cult

 http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Tea-Party-and-Fake-Lib-by-Dan-Mage-110830-750.html

September 1, 2011 By Dan Mage Author's Note: When I first published this on associated content in November of 2010, the TP seemed more like an annoyance than an actual threat. Now it is becoming apparent that they can do some real damage. This is unfortunate, however I firmly believe that they are still doomed. Witch Hunters, Queer Bashers, Cross Burners and The Thanatocentric Culture Hope is the opiate of the liberal. It feels good until you run out of it. Hope is sold to the poor, sometimes by pushers who "get high on their supply" too, and it provides symptomatic relief without touching the pathology at the root of the pain. Obama has failed to bring the "change we can believe in," and while he is guilty of dealing in and indulging in the hope-dope, he warned us even during his inaugural address that if we wait for the federal government to fix things, we might be waiting a long time. Although Obama never presented any real threat to the status-quo, and has done more or less the same things that Bush was doing, and would have done too, (with the exception of the "Obama Care" debacle, and stances on cultural issues that turned out to be mostly talk), he's brought the haters out of the woodwork. They hate taxes, but then again most of us do. They want to eliminate "entitlements" except for the ones that pay their bills. They are divided on issues of personal liberty. When former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson suggested to a Tea Party rally that the time had finally come to legalize cannabis, he was met with both cheers, and boos mingled with shouts of "No, that's wrong!" The most horrified voices seemed to be those of middle aged and elderly women.

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"Diane Roberts"- The EPA, The Tea Party's Next Target

You'd think Congress would be too busy wrecking the economy to attack the environment. Yet, in the midst of a packed schedule snapping at President Obama's heels and lunging for each other's throats, Republicans have found time to try and rip the heart out of the Environmental Protection Agency, killing 40 years of protections for water, air, endangered species, wildlife habitat and national parks.

Instead of taking direct shots at the environment – not even Tea Tendency zealots come out and say they're pro-pollution – Republicans are going after the EPA. It's a "job-killer". America's high unemployment rate is not the fault of the worldwide recession or the housing bubble or Wall Street hubris or two unfunded wars on top of George W Bush's silly tax cuts for the rich, it's those damned DC bunny-huggers. Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho insists, "overregulation from EPA is at the heart of our stalled economy"; his colleague, Rep Louie Gohmert of Texas, says, "Let EPA go the way of the dinosaurs that became fossil fuels."

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