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What is the Tea Party movement, really?

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KingOrfeo

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The Tea Party Movement.

Is it a reactionary movement as Christopher S. Parker maintains, or a reform movement, or both at once (which would be unprecedented)?

Is it a true grassroots movement or an astroturf movement or something of each (which would not be unprecedented)?

What is it really all about more than anything else -- fiscal conservatism, or decentralization/states'-rights, or paleoconservative social values?

Why is it that the rally-signs of what is clearly a RW-populist movement never seem to mention immigration, and neither does the Contract from America?

And what do the answers to the above questions portend for its role in 2014?

Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America, by Christopher S. Parker.

Book Description
Publication Date: May 26, 2013
Are Tea Party supporters merely a group of conservative citizens concerned about government spending? Or are they racists who refuse to accept Barack Obama as their president because he's not white? Change They Can't Believe In offers an alternative argument--that the Tea Party is driven by the reemergence of a reactionary movement in American politics that is fueled by a fear that America has changed for the worse. Providing a range of original evidence and rich portraits of party sympathizers as well as activists, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto show that what actually pushes Tea Party supporters is not simple ideology or racism, but fear that the country is being stolen from "real Americans"--a belief triggered by Obama's election. From civil liberties and policy issues, to participation in the political process, the perception that America is in danger directly informs how Tea Party supporters think and act.

The authors argue that this isn't the first time a segment of American society has perceived the American way of life as under siege. In fact, movements of this kind often appear when some individuals believe that "American" values are under threat by rapid social changes. Drawing connections between the Tea Party and right-wing reactionary movements of the past, including the Know Nothing Party, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and the John Birch Society, Parker and Barreto develop a framework that transcends the Tea Party to shed light on its current and future consequences.

Linking past and present reactionary movements, Change They Can't Believe In rigorously examines the motivations and political implications associated with today's Tea Party.

<snip>

Editorial Reviews
Review
"A scathing analysis of the Tea Party movement, linking it in spirit to the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. Taking today's conservative populists to be dangerous and their ideas self-incriminating, the authors speculate that Tea Party supporters may perceive of social change as subversion. Based on research and interviews, they suggest racism, desire for social dominance . . . drives the Tea Party."--Publishers Weekly

"Change They Can't Believe In offers valuable empirical data on the Tea Party, and its focus on supporters' antagonism toward Obama is critical to understanding the movement."--Michael ODonnell, New Republic

"[A] rigorous scholarly investigation of the tea party. . . . Parker and Barreto make the case that tea party supporters are driven above all by 'anxiety incited by Obama as President.' Intuitively, this may already make sense to many readers, but the authors muster the evidence in support, dividing and subdividing different categories of political activity and belief to arrive at a firm basis for their conclusion. . . . upported by reasoned facts in place of political passions."--Kirkus Reviews

"[Parker and Barreto's] statistically informed analysis helps us understand the Tea Party's priorities, its fervor, and its contempt for compromise."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post
From the Inside Flap
"Parker and Barreto have conducted exacting research to probe the contours of support for the Tea Party, and their innovative, scientific, and critical book highlights how Tea Party sympathizers differ from mainstream conservatives in crucial ways. The authors demonstrate that despite the public image of the Tea Party, its supporters cannot be characterized as either patriotic or freedom loving. This is a must-read for all students of American politics and anyone concerned about democracy in America."--Michael C. Dawson, University of Chicago

"This original and important book is the most well-researched and significant scholarly study of the Tea Party movement and its members yet to appear. Unfolding a profile of Tea Party activists threatened by liberal changes and ill-formulated images of big government and state regulatory power, Parker and Barreto tease out core beliefs and views, ranging from commonplace conservatism to racist antagonism. Their book is an outstanding contribution to understanding American politics."--Desmond King, University of Oxford

"The Tea Party has attracted a great deal of attention since it burst on the scene in 2010, but few books about the movement have rested on as impressive an empirical foundation as this one. The portrait Parker and Barreto paint of the model Tea Party sympathizer is chilling and sure to anger movement apologists who insist the group is made up of typical patriotic conservatives. This timely, important work deserves the widest audience possible."--Doug McAdam, Stanford University

"Through a statistically and historically informed analysis of the views of Tea Party sympathizers, Parker and Barreto show that at bottom, many condemn America as it has come to be: a country in which white straight Christian men do not set standards for all. Precisely because their American dreams must go unfulfilled, the passions of these sympathizers will remain forces in American life for years to come."--Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania

"This book's main contribution to the growing literature on the Tea Party movement is its focus on the characteristics and political beliefs of Tea Party supporters--rather than activists--and its theoretical framework, which locates the Tea Party in the broader structure of far-right social and political movements in the United States."--Alan Abramowitz, Emory University
Click to expand...
 
From RationalWiki:

The Republican Party are very very right wing, and the Tea Party are mad.
Click to expand...
—Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You, 28th October 2010

The Tea Party movement (affectionately known as the "Teabagging Movement") is a "slightly" insane, loosely organized, and even more loosely platformed, group of mostly middle-aged, white tax protesters, inspired by a complete misinterpretation of the Boston Tea Party, and managed, reported on, and supported by Fox News and its various loony anchors (ironically, the Tea Party was actually started on CNBC, and not Fox News, by Rick Santelli). It was seen as a unique, corporate-maintained phenomenon spawned in February 2009, for the purposes of protesting on April 15th, 2009, the day income tax forms were due in the United States. On this day, millions hundreds of people gathered at various locations around the country to throw teabags into some handy body of water to protest taxes, presumably with representation.[1]

Since that time, teabaggers (which they came up with before they realized what else it meant) have protested many other issues, such as the attempt to provide many of them with affordable health care.

The "movement" has adopted the lame slogan "Taxed Enough Already" as a backronym for "tea."[2] The only fear sane Americans have is that it won't become a "call to arms."[3]

There were apparently follow-up protests on the 4th of July, 2009; however, they received little media coverage, and only one place cared.[4] They did, however, hold a larger protest in Washington, D.C. on September 12, 2009 with attendance of about 70,000, comparable to other major D.C. protests.[5]

The teabagging movement represents a great achievement of the corporate propaganda system. Using people's anger towards the system and their deep-rooted racism to get them to actively root against their own self-interest is simply a milestone. Also getting this self-inflicted gunshot wound repeatedly broadcast at their news outlets takes a lot of... well... balls.

The group had mixed success in the 2010 midterm elections; they were credited with causing wide Republican gains, but also caused the Republicans a few losses. For example, Sharron Angle, who, with Tea Party support, knocked out a more viable candidate in the Nevada Republican primary but then lost the election to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whereas the more viable Republican candidate may have defeated the Tea Party's Public Enemy Number 1. Christine O'Donnell is another case of this.

Organization

The origins of these teabaggings depends on who you ask. Right wingers insist that this movement is a totally organic, grassroots effort that sprang up overnight. Everyone else realizes this is a media stunt astroturfed by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Koch Industries, Inc.,[6] CNBC, and Fox News.[7] These demonstrations took place everywhere from Kentucky to California, but were thwarted in Washington, D.C. because they didn’t have a permit to dump a million tea bags into the sea[8] (way to organize, guys!).

The first use of the Tea Party iconography started in 2007 during Ron Paul's presidential campaign. However, the Tea Parties were limited to Paul die-hards and never gained mainstream traction until Santelli dredged the idea back up on CNBC in 2009. It didn't take long for the astroturf machine to move in after that.

More than $850,000 of the money the supposedly grassroots political action committee collected went to the firm of GOP political operatives who ran it.[9]

More simply put, the "organization" consists of some printed paper yanking on a short string, to which is attached a tissue paper bag full of jumbled shredded leaves, which are steeped by soaking them in boiling water.

Factions

By the end of 2009, various groups had formed claiming to be the leaders of the tea-party movement, including the Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Nation.[10][11] On February 4-6 , 2010 the Tea Party Nation hosted the first ever national convention in Nashville, Tennessee with guest speaker Sarah Palin.[12] The convention was attacked by teabaggers for being distant from the supposedly grassroots movement, with tickets costing $549.[13]

The largest tea party organizations by size are:[14]

* Tea Party Patriots
* ResistNet
* Tea Party Nation
* FreedomWorks Tea Party
* 1776 Tea Party[15]

Ensuring Liberty Corporation

At the First Teabagging Convention, Mark Scoda, a Memphis businessman, announced the creation of Ensuring Liberty Corporation, a Memphis based company with a political action group that would fund "Tea Party candidates" - that is, politicians supportive of the tea party movement which he described as: "Less government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, states rights, and national security." It will be accepting corporate donations.[16]

Astroturf organisation

Despite claims that it is a "grassroots" organisation, the Tea Party has merely become another patsy for the US's health care insurance companies to fight healthcare reform. The "Tea Party Caucus" received donations of $2.7 million from the health care sector, which also contributed towards a $25 million "war chest" to be used by the Tea Party to fight the elections.[17][18]

One insurer has gone so far as to urge employees to attend anti-healthcare Tea Party rallies.[19][20]

The two main 'Bagger astroturf groups are FreedomWorks headed by Dick Armey and Americans for Prosperity. Both were spun off from the Koch-bankrolled Citizens for a Sound Economy. The Kochs denied any connection to the Tea Parties. A few months after that statement, a video leaked of Teabag state chapter leaders reporting directly to David Koch himself at the Americans for Prosperity mothership.[21] (But they're grassroots, honest!)

Sadly, most Tea Party members are too full of righteous indignation and are too stupid to realise they are merely pawns in a gambit by their corporate backers to ensure they retain their profits... at the cost of the very people who are cheering them on.

Stupidity

The problems with these teabagging protests are many, but boil down to rich right-wingers taking advantage of uninformed working stiffs. Generally, these protests suffer at least one of these flaws:

1.The Obama administration had issued no new taxes at all, before the date of the protest. Any complaint about the tax policy at the time should be directed at the Bush administration, whose taxes were still in effect. Even after the Obama administration changed the tax laws for the following year, 95% of people will get a tax cut, not an increase. No reports exist saying whether the protests consisted entirely of the 5% who would pay (slightly) more taxes. Furthermore, though the Teabaggers frequently protest the 2009 stimulus package, tax cuts encompassed 37% of the stimulus.

2.The original Tea Party was to protest taxation without representation. The US currently has taxation with representation, unless Obama plans to suspend free elections (he doesn’t). Thus, using tea is an inappropriate, idiotic idea that accomplishes nothing except pointing out which people are not clever enough to research what they are protesting about. Oh, and giving some fish a brief caffeine and tannin high. And creating a temporary windfall in sales of tea bags.

3.Also, and more amusingly, the original Tea party was a protest over the tea tariff being cut — but only for the British East India Company, giving them a virtual monopoly due to lower pricing over the wealthy merchants who were being undercut (and who were the "protesters").

4.Promoted as a "giant" protest, with "over 500" local events, it is utterly dwarfed by the "protest heard 'round the world" against the start of the Iraq War, which earned George W. Bush the ignominious title of having the largest number of people ever in history to protest against him.

5.Many who consider themselves to be part of the Tea Party worship the Republican Party and/or people like Glenn Beck. Others (wanting to appear "independent") claim to not agree with such organizations or people, yet espouse much of the same crackpot rhetoric. They think that listening to paranoid blowhard Alex Jones and reading infowars makes them savvy.

9/12 protests

The protests on the September 12, 2009, were the accumulation of a six-month campaign by Fox News host Glenn Beck. The 9/12 Project gets its name from the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC, on September 11, 2001. Apparently Beck decided that the way to commemorate the 8th anniversary of this event was to hold a large anti-government rally in one of the cities where it occurred, something he had failed to do on the previous seven anniversaries whilst George W Bush was president. His rationale was that the protest was going to take America back to how they felt the day after the terrorist attacks - united behind a Republican president.[22] He then devised 9 principles and 12 values he wanted everyone to adhere to.[23] When the protest finally occurred it was given all-day coverage on Fox News, with Glenn Beck hosting a special show from the protest. Despite some claims of a seven-figure turnout,[24] the heavily astroturfed tea party protest attracted 70,000 to 100,000 people.[5]

Aftermath

The aftermath of the protest became a comedy of its own. Fox News began running full-page ads in newspapers that read "How did, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this story?"[25] The other news organisations all pointed out that they had given coverage to the protest during their news bulletins. Fox countered by saying they were missing the story behind the protest; however the story behind the protest is that Fox News astroturfed the protest - including having news producers directing and rallying the crowd.[26]

Never one to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh suggested protesting the media itself for not covering this "growing movement".[27] This began WorldNetDaily's attempted astroturf campaign to protest "Obama's Minion Media", with the help of the supposedly grassroots, supposed organisation Operation: can you hear us now? - whose website seems not to exist.[28] The extremely lackluster event gathered less than a few thousand people in more than 100 locations, making for underwhelming protests that were justifiably ignored by the media.[29] As with the July 4th protests, unless the tea parties have extensive coverage from major media outlets, such as Fox News, beforehand, they tend to attract very small crowds.

In October 2009, Republicans in the House of Representatives wanted to pass a resolution to commemorate the "hundreds of thousands of American patriots" who "came to Washington, DC, to show their disapproval."[30] Remember, these protests are not organised by the Republicans, they are entirely organic, and the protesters oppose government waste—which should presumably include passing unnecessary resolutions.

Conspiracy Theorists

The Tea Party has attracted many conspiracy theorists to its cause. Anyone who spends time on an active Tea Party forum will see a number of conspiracy-related threads pop up. More common conspiracies include:

* The belief that Obama is deliberately trying to destroy America, or trying to create a socialist/communist totalitarian government.
* The belief that Obama's presidency is part of a plot to institute the New World Order - often referring to George Soros or the UN.
* And, of course, Birtherism

An eagle-eyed viewer may also find:

* 9/11 truthers
* Conspiracies about chemtrails
* Abiotic oil

Assault on language

As if any confirmation were needed, the fact that the protest has been labeled "teabagging" shows that it was created by a bunch of old white people who had no idea of its more popular meaning. Many in the gay community feel that the teabagging party has tarnished the name of the dirty homosexual act.

In a further proof that the tea party movement thinks Google is some sort of a communist ploy, an Oregon tea party group had bumper stickers saying "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."[31] Some protesters have been seen carrying signs that say "LOL" (with Obama campaign logo as O). While Internet language is always evolving, we assume the response from 4chan is probably something along the lines of "ಠ_ಠ".

Insert teabagging jokes here

* Protestors were "full throated" and wanted to give Obama "tongue lashings". Oh yeah, that's dirty baby.[32]
* A Fox News fan wrote in saying he would hang tea bags from his rear-view mirror and antennae (to "support the cause") because he couldn't make it to the actual protests and Gretchen Carlson piped in saying, "You could hang it from your mirror too like fuzzy dice."[33]
* "It's hard to talk when you're teabagging"[34]
* "(I)f you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you're going to need a Dick Armey."[35]
* "Teabaggers suck balls."

Not a joke

"But they are nothing new, nothing new at all. They are mostly a bunch of cranky white men with money who are trying desperately to hang on to their privileges. Same as it ever was. They are what we have called 'Republicans' for at least the last 30 years."[36]

Jon Stewart once commented - in semi-praise of Ron Paul - that most were just "Moral Majority in three-corner hats."

There were 1.7 million 'baggers at a protest in Washington D.C. in the autumn of 2009 according to Glenn Beck.[37] Not 60-75 thousand as estimated by the DC Park Policiffers.

Conflict with Libertarians

Though the movement claims to be libertarian, many libertarians have come out against the movement[38] and its prominent figures.[39] A Libertarian Party poll has also shown that Libertarians see the Teabaggers as too "Republican-flavored."[40] Some of their possible "problems" with the Tea Party could be:

* The Teabaggers' closeness to neoconservatives, such as Dick Cheney.
* The Teabaggers' reactionary social policies and support for immigration law.
* The Teabaggers' "national security" policies - which are "un-libertarian".
* Glenn Beck's previous entanglement with a Libertarian candidate.
* The Teabaggers' failure in oppose legislated deprivations of liberty of those who do not match their own demographic.

It's about taxes and spending, really!

Libertarians (as well as most everyone else) don't buy this line. A number of polls have shown considerable overlap between the Tea Party and the religious right (though you didn't really need polls to tell you that considering some of their favorite candidates).

* A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that almost half of Teabaggers openly identify as part of the "religious right", a majority favored declaring abortion illegal, and less than one in five in favor of legalizing gay marriage.[41]
* A Pew poll found similar results, in addition to finding a majority in favor of securing the border and Second Amendment rights.[42]
* A University of Washington poll found that a majority of Teabaggers thought gays and lesbians had "too much political power" and that immigration was "changing the country for the worse."[43]
* According to a CBS poll, Teabaggers are more likely to be birthers.[44]
 
It's a bunch of bitter clingy old white folks, dedicated to the proposition that somewhere, somehow, some undeserving minority (probably a woman) is getting some sort of government benefit that should be their benefit by right.
 
The proud stalwarts of the Tea Party
Have lusts that are hearty but naughty
Such as offering their sacks
As mid-morning snacks
To all and to sundry! How haughty!
 
koalabear said:
If he had a brain he would realize there are more than one TP's. :)
Click to expand...
funny-toilet-paper-27.jpg
 
KingOrfeo said:
The proud stalwarts of the Tea Party
Have lusts that are hearty but naughty
Such as offering their sacks
As mid-morning snacks
To all and to sundry! How haughty!
Click to expand...



you are such a fucking idiot, its mind blowing. we need someone that will end this obama welfare train, end this government explosion of growth and pay ...

we need a party and POTUS that doesn't love war

why does the obama love to murder people?
 
To be fair, the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party had a reasonably sound beginning. The policy underpinnings had merit and the persons involved were sane. Of course this was a short-lived era.

Then the Christians, the bigots and the haters took over. And that was all she wrote.
 
This is the message of the teabaggers: cut my taxes; don't cut government spending programs that benefit me; pay off the national debt.

A movement with a message like this can win elections, but it cannot achieve its goals.

The enduring legacy of Ronald Reagan is to leave millions of Republicans with the delusion that they can have the government they want without paying for it.
 
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