Robert Reich: GE’s Mr. Immelt may be unhappy with President Obama, but he’ll be far unhappier if the tea party takes over the GOP.
Only in America
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Berry Craig: Like Reagan, Tea Party candidates are delivering what Tea Partiers want: simple answers to complex issues. Never mind that there never have been simple answers to complex issues.
Tea Party Spirit Is Corroding Public Discourse in America
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David Love: The Tea Party is not merely a subsidiary of the GOP. It is the GOP. The Tea Party and the Republican Party are one and the same. The Tea Party is the base, and yet the base is all that is left, due to the years of Lee Atwater’s race baiting that drove away all the people who are free from mental defect.
Tea Party Surge Just a Bump in the Road?
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Tom Hall: Sure, the Tea Party will win this fall’s election cycle. Yes, they will do every thing they can to disrupt any progressive efforts of the President. But even now, before their election victories have been counted, they are already beginning to war amongst themselves. They are eagerly acting to disprove any belief in the “values” they proclaim. Their hypocrisy will be their undoing.
In Search of the Real Tea Party
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Denis Campbell: Almost all feared what looks to become the continual flip-flopping of the government every two years that will prevent a single problem from being fixed and create an even more polarized and angry electorate. Said Marilyn from Delaware, “This will be like Israel, where no one can agree and they just fight all of the time.”
Scaring Us To The Polls
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Lydia Howell: To foment fear of Democrats’ allegedly “socialist” policies, Republicans “No taxes! No spending!” (except for war and prisons) cry has been amplified to an absurd degree. Of course, there also is the now standard howl: “The Muslims will get you unless we keep ‘The War On Terror’ going at home and abroad.”
Discombobulated Wingnuttery
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If a person is uneducated to such a degree that articulating their political views rationally and coherently is not possible, then emotion is all they can bring to the table. If a person knows little of history and little of the dynamics of human behavior and politics, then any and all arguments that they don’t fully understand are perceived as an assault on their identity.
Tea Party Diversity?
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David Love: People of color and other minorities need membership in the Tea Party like they needed membership in the White Citizens’ Council during Jim Crow. And the notion of Tea Party diversity is just as implausible.
The Tea Party: Brought to You by Joseph Stalin
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John MacMurrary: Exactly how much the Kochs have spent to make America over into their image of a Libertarian paradise may never be known outside the company and the foundations the family controls. Current Federal tax law permits anonymous personal donations to politically active nonprofit groups. But what can be gleaned shows spending somewhat north of $200 million since the late 90s alone.
The Centrists Still Just Don’t Get It
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Carl Bloice: I guess the message is obvious. The cadre of the “real tea party,” the Tea Kettle party, the truly conservatives and the austerity brigades have one thing in common: if they come to power life will become a lot harder to pubic workers, students, the elderly and a whole lot of others. Class bias speaks loud.
Devil and the Deep Blue Dog
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Brad Parker: This November, Progressives, Liberals and Democrats like myself are caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Dog. Greens and other Independents are being squeezed to the breaking point. This is a classic dilemma – a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives.
Republicanomics
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Tom Hall: Every time that they’ve had the chance, Republicans have given our tax dollars to corporations for the specific purpose of moving our jobs to China and other anti-democratic Asian nations.
The Emerging Anti-Trade Coalition, and Its Dangers
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Robert Reich: Isolationism and nationalism are the handmaidens of an economically anxious and frustrated middle class. That was the lesson we learned 80 years ago, but forgot.
The Moderates’ Lament
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Tina Dupuy: The current Republican Party is counting on the Tea Party’s morphing into the attack wing of the GOP – isolating moderates and anyone with genuine new ideas. And that means there will be Representatives who are not actually representative.
Tea Party America’s Al-Qaeda?
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Steve Ybarra: The Tea Party, like Al-Qeada, has no head but rather is run by many small groups (cells). It, like Al-Qeada, is ultra-conservative with each group deciding what essential documents (like the Qur’an) mean.
Republican Pledge Against America
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Tom Hall: Tea Bag Republicans were coached for months to shout about “restoring the Constitution,” without ever risking any details of what parts of the Constitution need “restoration.” But the growing influence of the Tea Bag faction has forced the party managers to be more specific.
Breaking the Eleventh Commandment
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Tina Dupuy: The Tea Party’s premise is like phoning someone you’re mad at because they won’t call you back and telling them never to call you again. That’ll show ‘em you aren’t crazy!
Jim Explains Tea Bagging
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Tom Hall: If discouraged, disillusioned progressives stay home in November, we yield our governance to the cowardly, hate-filled, ignorance-embracing Jims, who will crawl out of their trailers and divert their pick-ups from night riding to drive to the polls. It is still our country, proud, free and diverse, unless we cede it to them.
Attack of the Dingbats
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Tom Degan: Glenn Beck – The louse that roared. Does the FCC have any rules about incitement to violence? If they don’t, they really should. The other day on his nationally syndicated radio program Beck made the claim that America can expect violence in the very-near future — and that the president of the United States will be the instigator!
What Teabaggers Owe Liberals
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Sherwood Ross: Get it straight: the best remedy for what ails America is to pay working people fairly. It is the toil and dollars of the American people that made America great.
Coffee Time: Reason, Bigotry, and Tea Party Angst
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Charles D. Hayes: Both liberals and conservatives choose relating over reasoning at times, but research shows that conservatives place much more value on in-group loyalty than liberals do. There is plenty of research data to back up this assertion; one doesn’t have to resort to anecdotal evidence of flag waving and lapel pens, although it’s hard not to notice such behavior.
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The Revolution Will (Barely) Be Publicized
Sylvia Moore: The pro-corporate, anti-tax Tea Party movement has gotten wall-to-wall press coverage, even though only about 30 percent of the population actually supports it. Saturday’s event did get some national coverage from the major television networks, but that paled in comparison to the kind of attention the Tea Partiers are getting on a routine basis. Locally, all I could find was this 37-second clip from ABC7 News. Kudos to ABC for showing up.