Thread: Grand Old Party vs. "Tea Party"

Originally Posted by Steerpike

Is it in the long term best interests of the Republican Party to allow a potential “Tea Party” takeover of the Republican Party?

I think this has been the plan of the strategic leaders of the party since mid-way through the late presidential election. Their challenge is maintaining control over the movement so it doesn't threaten the status quo. They seem to be managing things quite well in that regard currently.

What the GOP did was see the Teaparty as the enemy of Democrats, and encourage it with surrogates, while not realizing that the GOP was a coalition of conservatives and moderates, and that without the moderates, the GOP was a "permanent minority party".
So they invited the Teaparty into the tent, hoping to make the tent bigger, instead the Teaparty is pushing people out of the tent.
What the GOP thought was that they could still anoint the candidates, and label them "Conservative" and capture the big teaparty vote, while still playing for the middle, but in race after race, the Teaparty has purged the moderates.
Blowback, the unintended consequence that explodes in your face, like 9/11, which was the unintended consequence of organizing radical Islam to attack Soviet infidels, once the Soviet infidels were gone, we were the only infidels left.

I see the TEA Party as a good thing for the GOP. The GOP is seeing that main stream Republicans are not moderates. They are Conservatives. Nearly every primary battle in which the TEA Party has supported a Conservative over the GOP sponsored moderate, the Conservative has prevailed.
The GOP has 2 choices. They can stay center-right and become the third party in a 3 party system, or they can move right and become the major party in a 2 party system.
In a 3 party system, I see election results as being Democrat 40% TEA Party 35% and GOP 25%. Unless the TEA Party and the GOP form a coalition, the far left will continue to wreak havoc on the USA.

Why is it when the Democratic party was 'surrendered' to it's radical fringe in the form of a no name street thug that had only won two elections... both by trickery, no one here questioned or complained?

Oh, yeah... you guys saw that as a good thing.

Originally Posted by goober

What the GOP did was see the Teaparty as the enemy of Democrats, and encourage it with surrogates, while not realizing that the GOP was a coalition of conservatives and moderates, and that without the moderates, the GOP was a "permanent minority party".

I think you're missing the key point. The Republican establishment saw the excitement generated by Ron Paul's presidential campaign as a way to rebrand their party. So they started pumping money and not-so-subtle influence into the Tea Party. In the process, they've worked to water down the anti-war, anti-corporatist, pro-community, pro-libertarian message of the original movement, and convert it into the usual reactionary Republican crap. And they've been pretty successful at that.

Some of the complaints coming of established Republican leaders may be genuine, but I suspect even more of them are theater, a show to give the Tea Party pretenders credibility as "upstarts". The sad fact is, most of them are just the same old Republicans in costume.

Originally Posted by Ernie S.

I see the TEA Party as a good thing for the GOP. The GOP is seeing that main stream Republicans are not moderates. They are Conservatives. Nearly every primary battle in which the TEA Party has supported a Conservative over the GOP sponsored moderate, the Conservative has prevailed.
The GOP has 2 choices. They can stay center-right and become the third party in a 3 party system, or they can move right and become the major party in a 2 party system.
In a 3 party system, I see election results as being Democrat 40% TEA Party 35% and GOP 25%. Unless the TEA Party and the GOP form a coalition, the far left will continue to wreak havoc on the USA.

A problem with what you are saying here is that you are presenting a 3 party system which does not exist (this makes your "2 choices" a false dilemma).

Should the GOP fight to hold onto their identity, the "Tea Party" voters can either form an actual political party and do their own thing or they can "sit out" elections or they can vote Republican or they can attempt to takeover the Republican Party thus altering it's identity (this could be termed a "hostile takeover" attempt).

Most of the time when someone here starts a ‘just what is the GOP up to thread’ I liken it to that old story about the blind men describing the elephant.

This time you are doing so without the elephant.

Case in point:

Originally Posted by goober

What the GOP did was see the Teaparty as the enemy of Democrats, and encourage it with surrogates, while not realizing that the GOP was a coalition of conservatives and moderates, and that without the moderates, the GOP was a "permanent minority party".

So they invited the Teaparty into the tent, hoping to make the tent bigger, instead the Teaparty is pushing people out of the tent.

What the GOP thought was that they could still anoint the candidates, and label them "Conservative" and capture the big teaparty vote, while still playing for the middle, but in race after race, the Teaparty has purged the moderates.

Blowback, the unintended consequence that explodes in your face, like 9/11, which was the unintended consequence of organizing radical Islam to attack Soviet infidels, once the Soviet infidels were gone, we were the only infidels left.

Nothing in those 4 paragraphs is even remote to the truth.

“What the GOP did…”
“So they invited…”
“What the GOP thought…”

None of that happened.

It is a small wonder that goober (and many others here) cannot get correct the economic goings on from 15 years ago since he doesn’t have any grasp of what has been happening in the last 15 months.

You ‘all need to put down the New York Times (goober: that includes the Boston Globe) turn off CNN, and try and get a turn picture of the world.

You might want to try here:

Arlen Specter's Revenge - WSJ.com

It has seemed pretty clear that the Tea Party as branded has had the same old Reagan style Conservative mixture, that good old populist elitism, combining the same old authoritarian collectivism (there should only be one American culture, one party, everyone should march in step, if you aren't patriotic you don't belong here, we should exclude the people who don't fit in from American society so that we can grow stronger as a nation, the individual doesn't matter what matters is the nation, adherence to religion and tradition is more important than human rights) with a selective smattering of individualism that suits their policies of disenfranchising and singling out the oppressed members of society, essentially pro-greed pro-corporate economics, the belief that the private sector doesn't need any competition to be superior that private corporations just are more efficient even without competition, just because capitalism works like magic. Scapegoating the poor (despite half of the Tea Partiers, ostensibly the half that isn't small business owners, are too poor to pay taxes), scapegoating illegal immigrants, scapegoating unions, etc.


It seems to me they have no more individualism or any less authoritarianism than the Republican establishment, just mixed together in a different way.

The collectivist Right strikes again, you know?



Also, as to what Ernie said, I don't think there is a Left at all in federal level American politics; certainly not a far left. The Progressive wing ostensibly would qualify for what objectively would be center-left, but we've seen Obama running things center-right center-right center-right with lots of hugs and compromises to the actual right. The only person who might actually qualify as being a actual Leftist on the federal level is Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist. And considering that he would compare to the European crowd as a social democrat at best, that simply makes him Left and not Far Left.

Yet Republicans/Conservatives are constantly moving further and further into the extreme collectivist and authoritarian ends of Rightism while denouncing those opposition members who keep moving further Right to match them as being communists somehow.

But then again no one ever expected sound economics or morals from the G.O.P., only from a few individual members like Lincoln and Eisenhower (who if alive today would be Democrats).

Originally Posted by tsquare

Most of the time when someone here starts a ‘just what is the GOP up to thread’ I liken it to that old story about the blind men describing the elephant.

This time you are doing so without the elephant.

Case in point:



Nothing in those 4 paragraphs is even remote to the truth.

“What the GOP did…”
“So they invited…”
“What the GOP thought…”

None of that happened.

It is a small wonder that goober (and many others here) cannot get correct the economic goings on from 15 years ago since he doesn’t have any grasp of what has been happening in the last 15 months.

You ‘all need to put down the New York Times (goober: that includes the Boston Globe) turn off CNN, and try and get a turn picture of the world.

You might want to try here:

Arlen Specter's Revenge - WSJ.com

I am highly skeptical of the idea that any source you would send someone to would be more objective than CNN.

Originally Posted by Federalitarian

I am highly skeptical of the idea that any source you would send someone to would be more objective than CNN.

Whatever...

Originally Posted by tsquare

Whatever...

Well you'd have to think he would think the Communist News Network was objective.

Originally Posted by 9aces

Well you'd have to think he would think the Communist News Network was objective.

Yeah... I'd love to see what he thinks in on CNN that is 'rightwing'

Keep the discussion off each other, please.