I’m kind of enjoying watching this joke unfold:
An uneasy truce may have been reached between the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party after Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele spent nearly four hours Tuesday trying to calm the fears of Tea Party leaders who worry that the GOP is out to co-opt their grassroots energy ahead of the 2010 midterm elections.
Steele met with about 50 Tea Party leaders from grassroots organizations around the country in a lengthy bull session at the Capitol Hill Club, a cushy Republican meeting-spot located next to RNC headquarters.
It is going to be funny watching them pretend to retain their “independence” while magically discovering that they share all the Republican goals.
demo woman
OT.. Happy Birthday Laura!
El Cid
What? You mean Rick Santelli and the Dick Armey aren’t re-incarnations of Mel Gibson’s The Patriot? Unpossible!
Robin G
Like they’ll even bother trying to reconcile the two positions. That’s the advantage of having a fanbase made up of the willfully ignorant.
Punchy
Methinks having 50 leaders of a single party is a harbinger for myriad control disputes, power stuggles, and other general high-lariousness.
mellowjohn
“Like they’ll even bother trying to reconcile the two positions.”
there’s a difference between the tea baggers’ position and the republican one? who knew?
Brian J
Nate Silver is saying that he imagines the Democrats could lose as many as 60 seats in the House. I don’t think the party will exactly do well, and while that is obvioslusly a worst case scenario, I’m not sure I believe the best case scenario of 35 seats either. Both strike me as unreasonably pessimistic.
burnspbesq
Over at Balkinization, Sandy Levinson has a series of posts laying out a plausible scenario for a four-candidate 2012 Presidential election that ends up in the House. Scary as all get-out.
El Cid
Tom Schaller on the perfect moderate leader Bayh chased from today’s strife-driven Senate by those weirdo partisan Democrats insisting on voting on their own legislation and those mean leftie bloggers:
Comments like this just proves that Evan Bayh, like Sarah Palin, could serve his constituents and Theamericanpeople best by leaving office.
John Quixote
@Brian J:
Check back sometime in September. The GOP has yet to truly go Full Metal Teabag. That tiger won’t like having a saddle on it’s back. Nine months is a political eternity. Or perhaps we will have sit back and watch in horror as Dick’s Army takes control.
Norbrook
@Punchy: That’s a guarantee! It’s already been happening, as the recent “convention” showed. They’re already fracturing apart nationally, and it’s even happening down at the state/local level, as each group fractures and tries to play the “purer than thou” game.
AxelFoley
I’m surprised they didn’t string Steele up. And then set up a picnic with their kids and take pictures.
Oh, btw, did you know that Obama = Bush’s third term?:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/17/837833/-Bushs-Third-Term
Comrade Darkness
Wait, do everything exactly our insane winger way or we’ll kick and scream and ruin everything?
What’s not joyous about watching the teabaggers to do the republicans exactly what the republicans have been doing to everyone else the last 16 years?
Bullsmith
What are these Republican “goals” you speak of?
GranFalloon
I tell you what – if the goals weren’t aligned before, they certainly will be after Tea Party leaders were wooed with a house salad, their choice of Chicken Florentine, Crabcakes, or Filet with Bernaise Sauce, and a fruit tart for dessert, along with complimentary house wines. Can’t you just see them leaning back, rubbing their stomachs, saying “there’s no reason why we can’t get along here”? And possibly napping during Steele’s presentation.
“Let them eat Marriott-catered fare.” One would think this ploy would be transparent to them, but no. “Obama is out of touch with real Amer – ooooh, is that spinach dip?”
Farmer_Jones
I’d like to make the observation that this really resembles an attempt to keep together a shaky parliamentary coalition. If we had a multi-party parliamentary system, I think the fault lines within the parties would be clearer. And we’d see this: the GOP with a plurality in the Senate, and the Dems with a fractious ruling coalition of two or three badly aligned minority parties (progressives, Blue Dogs, etc.) I think this goes a long way towards explaining the mysterious power of the “minority” GOP and the mysterious impotence of the “majority” democrats — we have a de facto multi party system. The GOP are remarkably unified, but they’re trying to paper over their most serious fissure by courting these so-called teabaggers. I wish them a hearty lack of success, but I think they’ll be more successful than the Democrats.
Norbrook
I’d be willing to agree with you, except that there’s the left’s equivalent of the teabaggers doing their level best to torch the Democratic Party while they’re at it. 9 months is a long time in politics, so hopefully once we get into summer, things will change a bit.
Michael
Sadly, in my hometown, a very nice and reliable progressive Dem is going to find himself facing the teabagger that is going to emerge from the GOP primary.
This particular teabagger speaks well and is a nice looking guy, and has ingratiated himself with the local political activist megachurch. Sadly, it is a guy who I’ve known well for 30 years and is actually a friend – we just don’t speak politics at all.
The other sad part is that he has no fucking business whatsoever being in Congress. Wrong personality, ugly, spoiled past, rotten career, and he has no concept whatsoever of how the poorer among us fare. I’d douche him by opening the closet, but my sense of personal loyalty is too intense.
Sad to say, he is probably going to win, and I’m sick about it. The lockstep on conservatism and expressions of Christianism are going to be astounding and embarrassing.
Tom Hilton
@mellowjohn:
Well, maybe there is. There’s no difference between their rhetoric, but the stimulus hypocrites campaign (pushed by Maddow, and now Tim Kaine) illustrates that there’s a vast gulf between the Dick Armey’s* rhetoric and Republican practice. That difference, if exploited appropriately, could even pull in a Hoffman or two in some districts.
*My term for them; I’ve decided ‘teabaggers’ is disrespectful and immature.
bob h
The GOP has yet to truly go Full Metal Teabag.
For the GOP, goofy enough in itself, there is a real danger of being associated with the uncontrollable nuts among the Teabaggers. With them there is always the possibility of violence like Oklahoma City or other extreme acts, with the **** sticking to the Republicans.
jibeaux
@Punchy:
My money’s on Earl Grey. It’s a classic, you know, and the bergamot just adds a certain je ne sais quoi.
It’s sad that they’ve co-opted this name, because certain kinds of tea parties I really could enjoy. I am actually fond of those little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I really prefer they stick to teabagging, which I am willing to let them have part ‘n’ parcel.
El Cid
@Norbrook:
Other than a few bloggers, is there anything of this on a wide scale?
There are a bunch of elected Democrats who focused on blocking and badly weakening the White House and party legislative agenda.
But I just don’t see a lot of evidence for any widespread movement on the ‘left’ torching the Democrats.
jrg
The only reason the teabaggers are not loud and proud GOP is because (even as stupid as they are), they know how hypocritical it looks to whine about spending after Bush and a Republican congress exploded government spending after inheriting a surplus.
They know they want to bitch about something, but the only way they can do it is to claim some sort of independence. But it’s all a load of shit. In 3 years, the teabaggers will be a distant memory, they will simply go back to their Republican roots.
The tea party is simply a tactic to avoid conversation about responsible government, and who is responsible for the mess we are in. It is the political/populist equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “LA LA LA LA I CANNOT HEAR YOU!!!”.
Punchy
There’d be a danger if the media actually pointed this stuff out. But it doesn’t. So there isn’t.
Just Some Fuckhead
It took four hours to explain to those teabagger losers that the so-called Tea Party movement was ginned up by Republican operatives in the first place?
No one said they were bright.
plasticgoat
You can not turn on a television news show without being bombarded with the Teabaggers. NBC, ABC, CBS, Faux, MSNBC are all devoting way more time than their percentages should warrant. Imagine if the media had spent as much time and effort covering the anti-war protests? Where would America be at this juncture?
Shalimar
@Bullsmith: Republican goals are to gain power and to use that power to give lots of government largesse to their corporate (and billionaire) masters. Teabagger goals are to destroy the government completely and keep the evil liberals from rebuilding it. So there are major differences, though it’s easy to understand why people think they have the same goals since Republicans pretend to be for the teabagger agenda to sucker the rubes into voting for them.
ChrisS
@Robin G:
This.
The GOP thrives on telling the ignorant and gullible that they are independent free thinkers. Most of whom already hold multiple conflicting ideologies or political positions.
“The government is spending too much! We have to cut spending! We have to increase military spending!”
Zifnab
It’s 1993 all over again. The libertarian movement is going to whiplash and fall right back in line, as soon as Gingrich and Friends find the right tune. Then we can get back to business as usual after a rousing drive on the Impeachment-mobile.
:-p. When will all the stupid old people die off already?
El Cid
This is completely O/T, but does anyone else notice that one web page advertiser seems to specialize in pairing really weird faces w/unrelated internet ads?
Like, here is a mortgage ad with what looks like a mugshot of a caveman or Russian wild man:
[Can’t get regular embedded link to work, here:]
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l291/enbuenora/Tribal_Fusion_Weird_Face_Ad.jpg
There’s another one for something or other which has a guy with huge glasses and smiling with teeth that look like they project from his face.
WTF?
Joy
Why didn’t they meet at the local IHOP or better yet, a mom and pop diner? I bet they could fit 51 people in one. I think that’s a little hypocrisy there – meeting in a cushy room. That sure isn’t going to boost the Tea Party’s street creds.
El Cid
@Joy: Why didn’t they meet on a historic Revolutionary War battlefield? All Tea Party meetings should be held on such hallowed ground, since big government parasite soshlists cannot cross onto such places.
chopper
i wonder if he tried peppering his speech with street talk, as he’s been doing lately. “don’t y’all worry. we aint gonna crib yo’ shiznit. that would be…de wackest. hey, why are you leaving? come on, guys. i’m reaching out over here…”
kgc16
@El Cid: Yeah, I’ve noticed those too. My first thought was that the people who choose the illustrations were having some fun, trying to make their jobs less boring–but now I think it’s an attempt to get our attention by using what are actually pretty disturbing images. I put my hand over them so I can read in peace.
Norbrook
@El Cid:
I don’t think it’s a “wide scale” in terms of actual numbers – as you point out, it’s a few bloggers. The problem is that some of those bloggers attract the attention of the MSM, enabling the depiction of Democrats as hopelessly fractured and “failing.” It fits into the news/punditry cycle, and then out into the general electorate. Voters who are already angry for a number of reasons tend to take out their hostility on the most convenient target – the incumbent, whichever party they happen to be in. That’s if they don’t sit at home because they feel that things aren’t changing.
I’m not happy about it at all, and I’ll say the firebaggers don’t represent much more than a small fringe. The only problem is that the fringe gets attention by the media, because people who are jumping up and down yelling are more entertaining than the people who just go about their business, getting things done.
Brian J
@John Quixote:
That’s what I am thinking. I mean, do I expect them to lose seats in the House? Yes, I do. And now, I am starting to think they might lose seats in the Senate, but, going against the grain a little, I think it’s possible to make slight gains.
Whatever the case, as you said, there’s still so much time. Didn’t the Democrats just pull even in one of the congressional ballots, from Gallup or some organization like it? And more importantly, as you said, I don’t think the public realizes that they aren’t dealing with moderates.
General Winfield Stuck
Follow the money
Johnny B
At what point can we start referring to Tea Party members for what they are: Right Wing Republicans.
It seems to me this whole “political movement” is a creation of Republican insiders who wanted to organize the racists, Birthers, and Christianists without being accused of blowing the dog whistle.
It’s amazing to me how the press refuses to see how much of the Tea Party “concerns” are exactly the shit the far right was saying during the 2008 election. Obama as Hitler, Obama’s Birth Certificate, and Obama as Socialist were all being said by the same people who were cheering Palin at McCain rallies.
David
The Tea Party will have a thin veneer of independence but will become an arm of the Republican Party made of “wacky but lovable people who dress up and demonstrate” but can be counted on to vote Republican. They’ll be like the televangelists who pretend like they just might not be able to support the Republican nominee until they push them further to the Right.
Perhaps Sarah Palin will siphon off some of them since she seems to have rejected the Tea Party brand. Palinistas Unite! (and go away).
Brian J
@Norbrook:
Assuming things don’t get worse, nine months is a long time. I do worry that they might get worse, or not get better fast enough, but if they roughly stay where they are, I feel as if we have enough time to defeat most of these people regardless. Now, even if the economy doesn’t start to do well enough, passing something like health care reform could, I think, put out most of the fires in the Democratic party.
Ash Can
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m betting that what happened in those four hours was that Steele et al. convinced the teabaggers that the GOP would do whatever the teabaggers want. And the teabaggers are dumb enough to believe all the GOP’s bullshit. “Hey, they’re nice guys. They treated us to a nice lunch. They’re on our side. We know because they said so.” Seriously, this is the Moral Majority all over again. The Republicans will do and say whatever they need to do to make sure they have the teabaggers’ votes, and that will be that. The only question is whether there’s any limit to the batshit insanity the GOP can absorb. The Moral Majority may have been fucked up, but at least they weren’t overtly calling for civil war. If the face of the GOP becomes synonymous in the general public’s mind with people in goofy costumes hysterically calling for massacring American citizens and storming the local legislator’s office with Uzis, the right-wing narrative may finally have maxed itself out.
Mike Kay
crap by any other name is still crap.
these guys were already right-wing republicans to begin with.
It’s not like they were voted for Nader or Bob Barr — they’re the same one who showed up to palin rallies screaming, “he’s an arab!”
chrome agnomen
@Michael:
so country first is out the window?
artem1s
@burnspbesq:
Yea, this is never going to happen. Steele is right now doing the party business of making sure that a viable 3rd party never materializes from the extreme wingnut (wh)right. Go review what Buchanan did for the GOP in disassembling the Perot party. The GOP loves them out there screaming and stomping their little feet but they will never be allowed to draw actual
moneypower away from the GOP.kay
@Ash Can:
“He is leaving it up to the people, and that’s what we want,” said Cheryl Couture, a member of the 9.12 Project from Naples, Florida. “We don’t want people interfering with the process, because that’s not American.”
Max
Twitter people – Robert Gibbs is now on Twitter and he’s going after reporters when they put out false mend and distort facts. In real time. It is genius.
Follow him @PressSec
mr. whipple
@Ash Can:
“The Republicans will do and say whatever they need to do to make sure they have the teabaggers’ votes, and that will be that. “
Yes. The kwestion will be whether the GOP can and will deliver if they get their seats. I doubt that.
The same thing happened in 1994: my conservative friends were sold a bill of goods by Newt et al and within 6 months they were hopelessly disallusioned because the GOP was just as corrupt as the Democrats they replaced.
Sound familiar?
Mike Kay
@AxelFoley:
they’ve been doing the same diary since he won the nomination in June of 2008. Sore losers and misanthropes come in all shapes and sizes.
General Winfield Stuck
When the economy starts to improve by creating jobs, and it will at some point. The Tea Baggers will fade in the media and on the ground. Some of the crazier ones will go underground where the real nuts exist, the ones we need to worry about.
As long as they are out in the open with teevee coverage, it is mostly just cheap entertainment that sates the meat eaters and provides them a sense of relevance to blunt their more atavistic impulses.
AxelFoley
@Mike Kay:
Bingo.
El Cid
@Norbrook: Well, I don’t know what to say, because there will never, ever be a day — nor necessarily should there be — when various ideological tendencies [don’t] harshly or even hatefully criticize and condemn elected Democratic officials.
Now it’s bloggers. In decades past maybe it was Soshulists or Maoists not to mention a huge variety of other leftish and issue-oriented groups.
Personally I don’t think any of this dissent or criticism or condemnation counts as much in the broader public’s eye than the success or failure of actual legislative or executive reforms, and the main one, HCR, seems pretty thoroughly to me to have been stalled and/or (hopefully not) killed by that roughly 1/10th of the Senate Democrats who just basically wanted to slow down the process or weaken it ’til death — particularly Max Baucus and his Personal Crusade Tragical Mystery 3R x 3D Sub-Sub-Sub-Committee discussions for 74 days.
Ash Can
@Zifnab:
Never. They keep getting replaced by stupid young ones.
mr. whipple
“When the economy starts to improve by creating jobs, and it will at some point. “
I’m not sure it will. What might set up is an endless cycle of people being pissed that nothing is getting better and pols getting voted out based on that.
El Cid
@mr. whipple: I hope it gets better, but I think our political system has just adjusted to seeing 9 – 10% (formal) unemployment (then there’s the U6, etc. measures) as the new “normal” for the next few years. Such figures do have the salutary effects for the super-rich and corporate executariat of making the workforce much more affordable, disposable, and compliant.
Ash Can
@kay: Yep. These people actually believe this crap. They’re a movement based largely on mistrust of politicians, yet they’ll take as gospel the first guy who smiles at them and buys them lunch. It’s both uproariously funny and stunningly pathetic.
mr. whipple
@El Cid:
“I hope it gets better, but I think our political system has just adjusted to seeing 9 – 10% (formal) unemployment (then there’s the U6, etc. measures) as the new “normal” for the next few years.”
I honestly don’t know if doing better than that is acheivable in the current political and business environment.
Ana Gama
@chrome agnomen: That was my immediate reaction, too.
Ash Can
@Mike Kay: This too. Just like the Moral Majority, they’re a natural fit with the GOP — or, more accurately, with what the GOP has become over the last few decades. And, like the Moral Majority, they’ll get pats on the head and promises up the wazoo, and they’ll never figure out that they’re being played for suckers because they’re just too cement-block stupid.
Chad N Freude
That paragon of measured journalistic analysis The Huffington Post informs us this morning that
. The article is a curious mix of actual analysis and failure to recognize that not everything to the left of Bayh & Co. is “Left of Center” (think Overton Window). One can infer that the moderate middle, instead of “Do nothing” or “Do everything”, is cut deals to do as little as possible and still stay in office.
El Cid
@mr. whipple: Well, I guess, by definition that’s true now. But while average Americans could just more or less passively accept that, they also could start revealing some serious ire.
kay
@Ash Can:
I thought and think that kissing their ass will absolutely work.
It’s not like it’s a new or original idea Steele had.
It’s flattering, and they’re starved for attention.
It’s no different than what national politicians always say to local groups, it’s just that they were never in a local group before. I think longer-term local groups are a little more savvy, and perhaps take “outreach” with a grain of salt.
It’s just standard operating procedure. What did they think he was going to say? “You’re nuts, but we need you”?
Of course not.
Mike Kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I think the teabaggers will be around until there is a white president. I’m not joking. it’s not about the debt, because that exploded under bush. it’s not about government healthcare, because they didn’t say peep about Bush’s prescription drug scheme. And it’s not about unemployment because these people are mostly retired. Would these people be pulling their hair out senselessly if Edwards had been elected and proposed universal health care — no.
Mike Kay
@Chad N Freude:
What a laugh. A-holes at HuffPo say Obama is a conservative, but at the same time say Bayh is a moderate. They should stick to topless photos of the spice girls (the one who married Beckham).
El Cid
@Mike Kay:
The militia and patriot crazies under Clinton might have been a bit less numerous and less visible, but they were also being massively subsidized and propagandized by the right and ultra-right wing establishment. (The Clinton Chronicles, the American Spectator, dozens of AM and shortwave broadcasts, all pre-internet days, mostly.)
Michael
chrome agnomen
Torn – very, very torn. I already tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined. I could have any campaign role I want – manager, treasurer – but I won’t take it. I also let him know I wasn’t happy with his issue positions.
I’m just going to have to hope that enough of the skeletons that other people know will emerge, but I won’t tube a 30 year friend, even though I’ve probably already tanked the friendship.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I hope Democrats can make something out of the stimulus. The stimulus haters were just flat-out wrong, and there’s now enough data that’s it’s not even subject to dispute.
Democrats took so much shit on that, if I were them I’d go crazy with “wrong on stimulus”, for no other reason than spite.
Every single GOP House member was dead wrong. Stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do.
So much for their economic acumen.
Brian J
@mr. whipple:
I wonder at what point the potential for getting a permanent job is an temporary acceptable alternative to actually getting it. By this, I mean, I wonder at what point people are willing to not vote against the Democrats because they don’t have jobs yet? Let’s say that the economy started to create 200,000 jobs on a regular basis. That wouldn’t be enough, but it would be far better than anything we’ve seen in a long time. It might make people feel more hopeful, which could help stop the anger against the Democrats and help them in the fall.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mike Kay: You have a point. But the media by and large treats them as economic warriors against big government and big government spending associated with current economic woes. With that spotlight diminished, I think they will fade to a significant degree, but not go away all together.
And I also think the economy is in a major self adjustment period. It is largely a beast that is immune from short term actions by a president and a government. Though long term meddling that began with deregulation 30 years ago and a host of other conservative economic theory can and did have a drastic negative effect that we are seeing in some deep structural problems.
Government can lessen the pain a little with short term stimulus efforts, and start to reverse the GOP damage done over several decades, but it will take time, maybe a lot of time and maybe not soon enough to help dems much this November. But it will repair itself provided corrupting factors and business practices are reigned in with some new rules for the road.
Surreal American
It is going to be funny watching them pretend to retain their “independence” while magically discovering that they share all the Republican goals.
No one does the “independent conservative” kabuki theatre quite like GOP activists.
Mike Kay
@Ash Can:
Not true. I have great faith in the new generation.
Obama won the millennium generation (18 to 29) 66% to 32%.
And for the first time, ever, the young people outvoted seniors, 18% to 16%.
Ana Gama
Pollster.com has an interesting article polling the teabaggers. A couple of notes:
John Quixote
@kay:
Nope. Won’t be for lack of trying, though. Right now it’s all about ‘OMG, teh deficits. OMG, teh untortured darkies. OMG, teh socialmalist darkie preznit. OMG, Palin is teh hotness.’
Cole mentioned earlier about the media environment being as bad as it was in 1998. It’s much, much worse. Doesn’t matter that the stim worked. Our MSM betters have convinced voters that it was a waste of money, and made the economy worse.
Lying – it’s the new truth.
geg6
OT, but possibly of interest to DougJ:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=177773
Bart Gellman has quit the WaPo for an editor at large position at TIME. Andrew has what I consider a good take on this development, calling the WaPo under Fred Hiatt “Cheney’s paper.” And at this point, I can’t disagree with him.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay: The importance imo of the stimulus is it’s long term stimulus properties of working to create new markets and new engines of growth over time. The short term stim has had an effect and maybe muted or broke the downward spiral some, but I am not a big believer that it can by itself boost the economy we have much in the short term. It is good politically by optics of Obama and dems doing something to help, and I think did and is still tamping down job losses, but creating vigorous hiring will mostly depend on when Banks start lending to small businesses again, and what happens with the CRE bubble, if it’s big or small. I don’t think a great deal of new job creation is going to happen soon, though maybe enough to make folks feel better that things are headed in the right direction.
catclub
Shalimar @ 26 has it right. Read that one again.
mr. whipple
On one hand you have the folks that think it was a huge waste of money, and on the other people who think it wasn’t big enough.
I do think the administration has been a pretty big ‘fail’ when it comes to highlighting those achievements.
@Brian J:
Seeing as how we seem to be just hitting the break even point where job losses= job gains, it might be a very, very long time before we see 200,000 net gained jobs/month.
Mike Kay
@geg6:
When did Romenesko become sane?
This is pretty good trend. Cole, Sully, Little Green Footballs, Romenesko….
Bruce Webb
@Norbrook:
Well in this particular case it goes beyond the media’s never slaked desire for circuses, we could deal with that. A problem I see is that pretty much the most effective media voice that progressives have and someone I am a pretty big fan of myself is BFF with Jane Hamsher.
I haven’t see Jane on the Rachel Maddow show in recent weeks but in past months she was pretty much a regular. And it doesn’t help that Jane, whatever you think of her political views and willingness to ally with the Tea Baggers, is objectively speaking cute as a bug.
Those of us who know Jane Hamsher mostly through the lens of FDL may not quite grasp how reasonable she seems when seen through the lens of TRMS. Cute, soft-spoken, with Rachel chuckling along, what’s not to like?
I mean I see Palin or Bachmann on the screen and reflexively recoil, you got Caribou Stepford Wife and Thousand Yard Stare Michelle, but others just see two good looking women. We are in a world where Scott Brown jumped right into the Presidential pack because he won and has a nice face and package.
Discount visuals at your peril.
cat48
Hmm, so did he serve fried chicken, tater salad, and greens to them like he promised and play hip hop music like he planned to do last yr to recruit black folks? Just curious……or maybe they just had tea and crumpets…..cucumber sandwiches? After all, it was the Capitol Hill Club so they could have had anything.
Rick Taylor
__
Wow. I looked at the link and scanned some of the comments, and most of them were sympathetic. I have plenty of complaints about the Obama administration, but this is pure lunacy. Plus, it leaves Bush and the epic clusterfuck that was his administration off the hook.
Brian J
@mr. whipple:
Well, right. I just picked a random number that was much better than what we are seeing now but that is still not going enough to bring us back to full employment. The number itself isn’t particularly important. I just wonder if there’s a certain point at which the number of jobs being created isn’t good enough in the grander sense but is still acceptable in the smaller sense because it gives people hope and stops the anger they feel towards the party in power. In other words, can a certain level of job growth buy us time?
Mike Kay
@mr. whipple:
Part of the problem is all the oxygen in the room went to health care for the longest time.
Most presidents have to clean up one big mess (FDR – Depression) (nixon – vietnam) (Clinton-deficit), but obama has to clean up Iraq, Al Quadia, GITMO, DADT, HCR, the deficit, and the biggest collapse since the great depression.
Ash Can
@Mike Kay: That was certainly good to see. But then, you could say pretty much the same thing about the younger generation back in the 60s, which spearheaded the civil rights and anti-war movements. That generation is today’s teabaggers.
What I’m saying is, don’t fall for the bullshit that one generation has a monopoly on boorishness and idiocy and another has one on wisdom and compassion. I’d like to think that the current young-adult demographic will be smarter and better than their elders, but history unfortunately doesn’t bear this phenomenon out.
kay
@mr. whipple:
I sort of went along with the administration not constantly campaigning, to be honest. I’m sick of campaigns, post-election. I’m sick of “rapid response” campaign hacks and The Theme of the Day. I think in an ideal world they’re supposed to govern, and I hoped (like an idiot) that people would look at the results, and that would be enough.
Unfortunately, they can’t do that, and I think they realize it, so Obama is going to be giving press conferences when they catch a terrorist, or a stimulus project begins, and Robert Gibbs is going to Twittering stupid shit.
scarshapedstar
Well, let’s see, both groups agree that President N***er was born in Kenya, and any other disagreements are easily negotiable. Might as well rechristen themselves the Grand Old Tea Party and be done with it.
kay
@mr. whipple:
I would also add that people can’t complain when politicians package policy that is crap in clever marketing, and then get duped, and then insist that politicians package everything in clever marketing.
We can have permanent campaigns and rapid response teams and all that, if we insist, but thinking that we’re not going to fall for something like Iraq if we insist they spend a good portion of every day as salespeople is probably misguided.
Clever marketing cuts both ways. I’m not sure we can have honesty, transparency, good policy and clever marketing. The thing about marketing is, it’s focused exclusively on the sale, and it seems to trump substance a lot, in practice.
Michael D.
From the “Things I would love to see happen, but that will never, thankfully, happen” file:
I would love to see all Democrats, everywhere, sit out the next election. “Ok, Republicans. You run everything. All of it. Every single thing that happens for the next four years, you are responsible for. Everything.”
Annie
The teabaggers are part of the Republican base — these are people who always have voted Republican, so why do they pretend otherwise.
They are just far right Republicans, who have given themselves a nice new name to pretend independence.
But they are and always have been from the far right. And, with the emergence of a black President, an economic crisis (and no acceptance of how that occurred), and endless wingnut narratives (socialism, Marxism, anti-family, anti-Christianity, gays in the military and in the marriage bed etc.), they have adopted a slogan, which they believe gives them the political coverage and legitimacy to make overt their biases, prejudices, and other hateful notions.
What the teabaggers truly represent are people tired of hiding their hate — now they have a “movement,” that receives a lot of media attention — and that provides an opening for strategies to “take their country” back — and we all know what that means.
horatius
Awesome!!! A meeting between the rats and the ratfockers. This should be hilariously entertaining.
bemused
@Michael D.:
They would be toast. However, I’m not sure very many of us would survive 4 yrs of their plundering & pillaging. Idiocracy but worse.
mr. whipple
I get you, just don’t know the answer.
I was listening a lot to Bloomberg financial news last summer, and they regularly quoted analysists that predicted that unemployment would even peak until *this* coming summer. Which would make the fall elections a bloodbath, either way. And not just for Congressional elections, but for any state where the economy is dooing particularly poorly.
It seems to me that the country has been doing crappy for a much longer time than the last couple years. The housing and prior tech booms just delayed the inevitible reckoning and papered over a lot of it. If you subtracted the jobs created in say, construction, during the fake housing boom, and all the ancillary jobs created around it(including the jobs created when people took HELOC’s and spent, spent, spent on new toys) my guess is that employment has actually been dismal a very long time.
Comrade Dread
Yeah. There is a difference.
Republicans want a smaller national government that can fight unlimited wars, keep us safe from all possible harm from minorities and criminals, stop DFHs from getting high, let seniors have whatever the hell they want, and encourage strong free markets by cutting taxes, gutting regulations, and transferring wealth from the lower and middle class to the people who deserve it, the rich folks. (And why do they deserve it? Because they’re rich.) Somehow, this makes them fiscally conservative and responsible.
Tea party folks, as I see it, want all of the same, but are crazy enough to try and balance the budget by suggesting we should stop spending money on Social Security and give everyone national 401k plans, because bankers and traders can be trusted, since, as we all know, it was government making them lend to those minorities who caused the housing crisis. Also bomb Iran and maybe Russia.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Max:
That’s the most I’ve been exposed to Twitter and all I can say is that it’s easily the dumbest form a communication created. Why would anyone want to participate in that?
Mike in NC
The Tea Party movement will remain a curiousity and a distraction until it finds a leader. Steele? Palin? Armey? Tancredo? All are wildly unpopular among the reality-based community, and none of them could pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. It’s like the old Jack Webb movie where he played a Marine drill instructor chewing out a group of sad sack recruits: “You people aren’t a mob. A mob has a leader. You people are a herd!” The teabaggers are a herd.
Marcus
Hi John & Doug,
John you pretty much followed Republican stragetgy/tactics in 2000 and prior years. what would be your 5 point plan to countering it? In the short & long-term.
Here is one thing it should include;
1) Get some Dem’s on the political shows and by-pass the Rep counter weight and go after the hosts. draw debate with them
2) After, they will try to isolate the individual dem. fall back and unite and counter attack by attacking the pundits who are applying this tactic on the indivdual
3) 51% for job bill and health care passed with instantaneous benefits. As to why they did this should be the fight going into mid-term elections with Obama talking points being “look what they made me do in order to save the broken system”
What are your thoughts (1st time post)
geg6
@mr. whipple:
Depending on where you live, since 1980. One of the reasons the Pittsburgh area hasn’t been hit so hard this time around is because there is no more hard industry here to scrap and about a third of the population left in the 1980s and never returned. The last factor is that, of those who stayed throughout the horror that was the Reagan Revolution, another half of the population is retired, so they don’t get laid off or downsized. Except by natural causes, that is. ;-)
MikeJ
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Yeah, I don’t understand what’s stopping Gibbs from using a page or two on wh.gov and using full sentences instead of OMG WTF BBQ! LOL!
geg6
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
This. OMG, this.
I automatically lose some respect for anyone who spends time on Twitter. I know it’s wrong of me, but I can’t stomach anything so idiotic and I don’t want anyone I like or admire to do idiotic things.
Nick
@mr. whipple:
yes, except I’ll add in an addendum. They’re pissed nothing is getting better even though it clearly is. That’s the biggest risk. Just this week I’ve seen people bitch malls and restaurants are crowded and there’s more traffic than usual and my response has been “Shutup, it means the economy is getting better.” I think we’ve just entered an era of perpetual anger.
But I suspect that once the Republicans are back in power, the media will crow about how awesome things are and people will no longer be pissed.
Nick
@mr. whipple:
that’s clearly NOT going to happen since we’ve dropped .4% from the peak already.
The danger is as people who stopped looking for work start looking for work again as jobs are being created…it could mean we are adding 200,000+ jobs a month and the unemployment rate just stays the same month after month.
If we do start creating jobs this month and regularly, I suspect we’ll be down to about 9.5% by mid summer and 9.0% at the end of the year.
Nick
@Michael D.:
Didn’t we already do this?
Mike in NC
The current recession is officially said to have started around December 2007, but the economy sucked for at least two years before that. Might have had something to do with the idiots who came up with the brilliant idea of invading two large hostile Muslim countries and occupy them forever, because, you know, those petty wars would pay for themselves with oil revenues, and we’d be welcomed as liberators. Also.
Nick
@mr. whipple:
We could be seeing that type of job growth in four to six months. It wouldn’t be a big stretch. We lost over 200,000 jobs per month as recently as October, and nearly that in December.
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to see 200,000 by May.
Cat
@Michael:
So you have relevant information about how poor a choice he is for elected office and are going to let the people of your district suffer by keeping quiet?
Or is it irrelevant? I couldn’t tell.
mr. whipple
@Nick:
Agreed. We’re actually ahead of schedule from what was predicted.
scarshapedstar
@Michael D.:
You mean, like… 2001-2004?
Michael
I do have that relevant information, and up until this week, I doubted that he would emerge from the primary.
Now, I’m convinced that he will, using his church to bolster his numbers.
And like I said in a later post, I’m really freaking torn. It isn’t that he’s done much that benefitted me (that’s run from my direction toward him a lot more), but I have a real hard time doing that to somebody I go that far back with. The good thing this morning is that I am noting that I must not be the only one who feels this way, because there’s some discussion about some of those skeletons already out there. They’re coming out, albeit at a glacial pace.
I may not have to do anything.
mr. whipple
@Nick:
“We could be seeing that type of job growth in four to six months.”
On the outside, that puts us into August before there’s a real dent in the unemployment rate. That I don’t know, but I’m guessing that 9% unemployment is not going to seen as a huge improvment. Will people still be angry?
I do however, pick up a lot of anger talking to my customers currently. That’s the only thing I can base my impressions on.
I hope you’re right and things get better sonner rather than later.
Kirk Spencer
@Mike Kay: Close. The fully correct statement is:
SerenityNow
@MikeJ:
More of the masses are likely to read his tweets than any incredibly eloquent, chock-full of facts, extremely detailed article he where to write at wh.gov or in a paper in response to some BS. In fact, I dare say that more of the media is likely to read and report on his tweets than any incredibly eloquent, chock-full of facts extremely detailed article he where to write at wh.gov or in a paper in response to some BS.
I think it’s smart to cover all avenues of communication..even “dumb” ones, especially when there’s clearly a large audience/participating community.
Kirk Spencer
@mr. whipple: For giggles, I did some simple analysis of unemployment to elections. There have been periods of high unemployment in the past, after all.
High unemployment has an effect, but it turns out it’s less than you’d think. The direction it’s moving matters more. “It got bad but it’s getting better” tends to create “well, he’s working on it” protection for the incumbent. It’s not that bad but getting worse? Bye bye.
Note also that the biggest flips of congress are NOT correlated to unemployment or the economy. 1994? 1974? 2006?
The economy and unemployment matter, but don’t get tunnel vision about it.
Tom65
They can make all the noise they want about being “independent”, but until they’re willing to step forward as a viable third party, they WILL be co-opted. The fifty Teabaggers who showed up for this meeting are likely just negotiating the details.
SpotWeld
It’s amazing how closely the teaparty/GOP relationship resembles a fan-run scifi convention.
The GOP is the cadre of Con-organizers. The people who have put the time in and created the event that is the convention that provides a space and time for people to get together and do stuff.
The teaparty-ers are the small clique of fans who go to thet con, not for any of the con specific events, but because it’s a space and time where people who will tolerate thier shenangans are getting together.
The organizers will let the cliques in the door because they still fall within the loose deifinition of what the con is about, and they all pay the registration fees and that is critical to keeping the con going. (Head count = money). The organizers dislike the cliques since they distract from the core intent of the con (remember hearing the ComicCon attendees complain about the Twilight fangirls?) and become a distraction when the con has to deal with the fallout of a specific cliques behavior. (So many stories about having to smooth things over with a hotel because a wild room party).
The cliques hate the con organizers becuase they consider the convention rules and attempts to stay focused on a theme to be an inconvience. They paid thier door fee, the should get to do what they want.
And that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Teabaggers are the Twilight fangirls of the political world. As long as they can bring the money (and the headcounts) they’ll be tolerated. And at some point the con will kick them out, or the con will collapse from all the drama.
b-psycho
@Ana Gama: I wonder what would happen if you took some of these “tea party” sympathizers with those views & pointed out how closely that mirrors what those rabid extreme soshulists in congress have been pushing all this time…
Nick
@mr. whipple:
Realistically, that was ALWAYS going to be the case, from the moment Obama took office. There’s literally nothing we can do to change that trajectory unless we can some $3 trillion dollar government jobs program that would hire 5 million people passed and FDR couldn’t even get one half that size passed, so.
Will people still be angry? Probably, but we can run on the progress. I don’t know if it would work. I think people are still going to be angry when unemployment is at 6%.
Nellcote
@Michael D.:
That’s soooo 2000.
PTirebiter
@General Winfield Stuck:
No doubt. The single most important lesson of the meltdown, and it’s already been drowned out by the racetrack announcers. That all Democrats aren’t driving this point daily is by far the most depressing aspect of our circular pissing match. Making common cause with Grover indeed.
ChrisB
The ignorance and arrogance fo one Teabagger was on display on Hardball last night. Matthews had a guy on named Richard Mack who addresses Tea Party rallies. He spoke with absolute assurance about what was and was not in the Constitution. He appeared to be completely unaware that most of what he said was completely wrong.
Video here if anyone is interested:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#35439226
licensed to kill time
If the Tea Partiers are not aware that the GOP will suck every bit of potential gain out of their ‘movement’ and then toss them aside like used toilet paper once they cease to be useful then I think they are smoking their own tea.
Harshing their mellow, dude.
birthmarker
Amen #116. We are seeing the culmination of the Reagan /Cato/Heritage Foundation dream, aided by the influence of the internet. (If your job can be digitized, then wave bye-bye.)
kommrade reproductive vigor
fxd.
catclub
Can we ask the tea partiers if the constitution mentions
corporations having rights of citizens?
slippy
@ChrisB: And we can be sure that being a useless whore, Matthews did NOTHING to correct or challenge his imbecilic assertions.
Did he?
I’ve turned off the TV permanently as far as news is concerned. I will NEVER get my news from a fucking boob tube again.
Nellcote
@SerenityNow:
Especially with so many Villagers/MSM invested in Twitter. Plus there’s always the possibility of a good soundbite/bumpersticker coming out of it.
Annie
@ChrisB:
Just watched. That was painful. I think Matthews could have done a better job of pointing out his utter stupidity. I also wanted Matthews to ask him if we should get rid of Medicare. As most teabaggers love their Medicare, it would have been good to get Mack on the record as against it — it not being “constitutional and all….” Or farm subsidies. Or unemployment. Or Cobra….etc. All the little things in life that help teabaggers have the time and money to travel to teabag parties.
Norbrook
@Bruce Webb:
Bruce, I never discount visuals. The problem is that those “few bloggers” when they’re on television do come across as “reasonable.” Even Kos looks earnest with his “deer in the headlights” look. It’s not until you see what they’re actually saying, and what their “advocacy” efforts are doing that you realize just how poisonous they are to the debate. I’m on their crap list for having called them out about HCR over at the GOS. Several times.
Elie
Y’all are talking about the damage of the Tea Party nationally but locally in the Northwest the new “idea” of our Tea Party County Council is to roll back our EMS (like Emergency Medical Services) support. They (the tea bag Council) have already suspended the septic system inspections to keep their shit out of our drinking water and local streams..What’s next? Seriously.
This is a dangerous and crazy movement that needs to be brutally exposed for what it is — a gigantic tantrum of mostly stupid white people who are scared and disempowered whose impact has been inflated and manipulated by a few ‘wise guys” and the media. Somebody had better pay serious attention soon and try to get this pot off of the burner some kind of way. This means everyone with some brains in their head and a thought process beyond the next two seconds… This country is on the edge.
Cassidy
Because wh.gov gets as many page hits in a year as twitter does in an hour. If the message can be put out in 140 characters or less, as sad as that is, then go for it.
Citizen Alan
@Michael D.:
They will never accept responsibility for the evils they commit. Ever. Accountability is an alien concept to the Republican mind. If Bible Spice were to become President in 2012 and immediately fired off every nuke in our arsenal, the few Republicans who survived would blame progressives for making it legal for women to hold public office.
Citizen Alan
@Kirk Spencer:
No, I think they would accept Palin or Bachman or someone of that ilk as President. She’d just have to talk about Jesus a lot and comport herself like the Presidency was just a jumped-up version of the Ladies’ Auxillary or the local Band Parents Association. Oh, and make a big show of deferring to the men in her cabinet.
Citizen Alan
@SpotWeld:
I’m trying to decide for which group this analogy is a bigger insult.