What is the Tea Party movement, really?

[The_Trouvere]

How the age of austerity will remake American politics.

Thomas Edsall is a moderate Democrat who has made a career explaining how and why the Democratic New Deal coalition that dominated the United States from the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 to the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 came to an end.

In the following essay, which I shall excerpt, he provides the best explanation I have read of the Tea Party that I have read.

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The Tea Party has expertly articulated a widespread grievance: that the government is redistributing money from hardworking Americans to the idle and undeserving. Of course, this is hardly a new charge. But it takes place in a new context—an age of growing austerity, where this complaint will acquire an ever-sharper edge and battles over the scarce resources of the state will erupt in spectacular skirmishes...

For decades, our political system has been able to fund an array of social programs while keeping taxes relatively low. The American economy grew at a sufficient pace that it could rather effortlessly bankroll a state that satisfied divergent interests.

But that broad, unintentional compromise is no longer sustainable. We’re entering a period of austerity...

With resources shrinking, the competition for them will inflame. Each party will find itself in a death struggle to protect the resources that flow to its base—and, since the game will be zero-sum, each will attempt to expropriate the resources that flow to the other side.
http://gonzaloraffoinfonews.blogspot.com/2010/10/limited-war-how-age-of-austerity-will.html

 

[renard_ruse]

Phony "conservative" movement from the relative rightwing of the GOP establishment. It was originally started by grassroots non-partisan populists but quickly got hijacked. It tries to ignore values issues just like the lie-bertarians, not realizing you can't have economic conservatism without values conservatism. They are symbiotic.

Also, its stupid for not changing its name as the name itself has been so stigmatized by the media and by liberals on the internet. It should rebrand itself every six months or so to stay ahead of the demonization curve, but seems oblivious to this.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Phony "conservative" movement from the relative rightwing of the GOP establishment.

Is there any movement in American politics right now that you do consider True Conservative?

It tries to ignore values issues just like the lie-bertarians, not realizing you can't have economic conservatism without values conservatism. They are symbiotic.

Try telling that to Ayn Rand. Symbiotic? No, actually, there is no apparent logical connection between the two at all.

Also, its stupid for not changing its name as the name itself has been so stigmatized by the media and by liberals on the internet. It should rebrand itself every six months or so to stay ahead of the demonization curve, but seems oblivious to this.

That never works. In politics a movement can't succeed without establishing a recognizable brand-name, and it has to be durable from one election-cycle to the next.

 

[KingOrfeo]

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.

Remember Ross Perot, that rarest of creatures, an in-some-ways-hardheaded economic populist? He decided (wrongly) that the federal budget deficit was Problem Number One, "the crazy aunt who lives in the basement and nobody talks about," and his solution was the common-sense (which is not to say the right) one: Raise taxes and cut spending at the same time.

He didn't last long, did he?

 

[KingOrfeo]

The TP does at any rate appear to be a thing about which it's hard to be neutral. Everyone who does not support them thinks they're a bunch of idiots.

 

[RobDownSouth]

The TP does at any rate appear to be a thing about which it's hard to be neutral. Everyone who does not support them thinks they're a bunch of idiots.

They certainly are very polarizing.

Filthy nasty polarizing racist bigots, to be exact.