Tag: tea parties

Tweet of the Day, The Netroots Doesn’t Win Enough To Deserve That Comparison edition.

One small problem with this analogy:

…the tea party folks actually win elections.  Frustrated as our grassroots may be with the federal results sometimes*, on the state level things are going rather nicely for conservative activists right now.  Which suggests that, perhaps, the universes are a little less parallel than either Barney Frank or the Democratic party would care to admit. Continue reading Tweet of the Day, The Netroots Doesn’t Win Enough To Deserve That Comparison edition.

NY GOP picks Jane Corwin for NY-26 special election.

The seat, of course, was vacated by Chris Lee as part of what was a somewhat bizarre Craigslist meltdown. Ms. Corwin is herself a state Assemblywoman who was first elected in 2008 after defeating the Republican candidate in the primary; she’s previously run on the Conservative ticket in NY and has been endorsed by Paladino (who won this district in 2010). Jane Corwin has been described as a strong public speaker and is expected to be able to self-fund; there is no scandal attached to her name, and no claim that she is anything but acceptably conservative. And, last point: New York does not actually permit primaries in special elections. The state party makes the choice*. I mention all of this because there seems to be a burgeoning desire to frame this in terms of the NY-23 shenanigans last year. Specifically, certain Tea Party groups (H/T: AoSHQ) are getting ready to get upset that Corwin was picked over Dave Bellavia, and would presumably be happy to see a grassroots drive to either remove Corwin, or third-party spoiler the whole thing.

I can’t sign off on that, sorry. I like Dave: I read his memoir House to House; I thought it was good; and it is obvious that we would have been better off if Bellavia had won the Republican nomination in 2008 for NY-26. But he did not in fact win the nomination, and I am unaware that he’s held public office since then. Jane Corwin is, again, a Republican who is acceptable to the Conservative party, has no scandal about her, and can afford the special election. Failing some flaw that I am not seeing, I am missing how this can be seen as not being at least a little bit about drama and/or personalities on the part of certain members of the NY Tea Party.

So. Jane Corwin for NY-26.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading NY GOP picks Jane Corwin for NY-26 special election.

#rsrh QotD, Tea Party edition.

Jim Geraghty, on the deliberately decentralized nature of the Tea Parties:

The whole point of this movement is that these people hate being told what to do.

To pile on, it has been fascinating to watch liberal Democrats so comprehensively sabotage what was one of their greatest advantages in the political sphere: to wit, “Rightie don’t march.”  Conservatives thought that they hated activism.  We were proud about hating activism.  “Do I smell like a patchouli-reeking hemp nut?” “There are better ways to meet girls.” “That’s something that they do.” “Marching around with signs never accomplished anything – look at the peace movement.”  And, of course, the classic put-down:

“How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch flag?”

“We have jobs,” said Andy.

Annnnnnnd that would be the problem, right there.  Because the hidden deal that the Right made with the Left in all of this was that if they wanted us to leave the marching and the megaphones and the signs and the slogans and the organized protests (and, yeah, the costumes and the theatrics and the camera-friendly stunts) to them then the Left had better reciprocate by making sure that we still had jobs. But apparently that deal no longer applies… and a bunch of people have now discovered that hey, this activism thing is kind of fun and gets them out into the fresh air on a regular basis, which they’ve been meaning to do anyway.

The long-term implications of that last realization will be playing out over the next twenty years.  Particularly once the Left fully internalizes their realization that there was a reason why their operating economic/cultural paradigm of Big Government Solutions was never able to spark a true populist movement… Continue reading #rsrh QotD, Tea Party edition.

#rsrh We all look alike to the WaPo.

You can practically see the bafflement on the page:

While many conservative organizations immediately decried a federal judge’s decision last week to invalidate the federal ban on recognizing gay marriages, tea party groups have been conspicuously silent on the issue.

The silence is by design, activists with the loosely affiliated movement said, because it is held together by an exclusive focus on fiscal matters and its avoidance of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Privately, though, many said they back the decision because it emphasizes the legal philosophy of states’ rights.

Before we go any further: if you look at what happened last week, what happened was that the judge declared Section 3 unconstitutional, and did not address Section 2. Essentially, that means that if the ruling is not appealed then the federal government is no longer obligated to treat only opposite-sex marriages as legitimate. It does not mean that states are now obligated to recognize other states’ same-sex marriage licenses – and, at any rate, the ruling is expected to be appealed anyway. Continue reading #rsrh We all look alike to the WaPo.

Microcosm of the conservative/liberal 2010 strategy.

Perhaps ‘microcosm’ isn’t the best word; ‘personification’ might work better. The background: the Hill asked two bloggers – one from the Right, and one from the Left – to answer the question “Like Sen. Graham said, will the Tea Party movement die out?” The blogger on the Right was Ace of Ace of Spades, and contrary to his own self-deprecating later observation he answered the question perfectly well (and without venom, which will be important later on):

As a visible movement, getting media play and offering candidate endorsements, it might die – if both parties conspire to ignore its will and marginalize its agenda, as parties often have in the past, Tea Partiers might become convinced it’s futile and might lose the key ingredient for an energetic, vital movement: *hope* that it could actually succeed. Any movement can have the heart torn out of it.

But were that to happen, the Tea Party wouldn’t die so much as hibernate, waiting for the next Ross Perot or Rick Santelli to call the dormant order to arms once more. And with the Baby Boom generation on the cusp of retirement, and shiftless borrowing slated to equal nearly all of American productive output by the end of the decade, the calls to arms will grow louder and more urgent, not less.

As for his ‘opponent’ (they in fact wrote their pieces without knowing what the other would be writing): I’ll save you the tedium by just writing out the invective*.

…not have a coherent vision…blind hatred…revulsion of shared responsibility…rampant misinformation …conspiracy theories…right-wing fringe that predictably overheats…John Birch Society…militia movement…far-right faction…”death panel” smear…follow-up attack…far-right candidates…meager impact…right-wingers…

Continue reading Microcosm of the conservative/liberal 2010 strategy.

SWAT Troops against an Army of Grandmas.

I am given to understand that the video below was the result of local police in Illinois being overruled by the Feds. This is so pathetic that it just makes me kind of sad:

You know, I remember a day when we had a President who wasn’t fundamentally afraid of the American people, and so do you.

Picture of vicious counter-revolutionary agents requiring a full riot gear-equipped police presence after the fold. Continue reading SWAT Troops against an Army of Grandmas.

#rsrh Jason Levin gets the unkindest cut of all.

I flatter myself that I am a bit of a connoisseur of the art of the vicious statement – but really, this is impressive:

The Tea Partiers are taking the high road. Just because Oregon middle school teacher Jason Levin has publicly denounced them as a bunch of “racists, homophobes and morons,” they say that’s no reason for him to lose his job.

All Levin really needs, they say, is some sensitivity training and some anger management therapy.

(Via @allahpundit) It’s easy to get revenge on your terms; the fun is when you can get revenge on your enemy’s. For one thing, it hurts more.  Which it will, in this case.  The school system would be happy to make this go away in a manner that reinforces their own core assumptions; and whether or not Levin goes along with it, in either case he’s now handily defined as the Other.  Either he’s the Other that admits needing special training to be a properly socialized human being, or he’s the Other that angrily quit his job rather than admit that he needs special training to be a properly socialized human being.

Admittedly, doing it this way concedes a little bit to the people who take sensitivity training seriously, but it’s an imperfect physical universe.

Moe Lane

So, that ‘Crash the Tea Party’ thing was a bust.

Charlie don’t march*.

Told ya so.  Michelle Malkin has some photos of the fizzle, which should have been obvious to anybody who has been paying attention to the way that the luster of the Left’s vaunted ‘activism’ completely dims when compared to an actual populist movement**.  How bad was this fizzle, in fact?

This bad:

Brooks Alexander, a 23-year-old Olney, Md., hotel worker and Obama supporter who wore an Obama t-shirt to the evening rally, said infiltrators were being disrespectful.

“They’re doing a disservice not only to themselves, but to the people who are here trying to express their views,” said Alexander, who is African American and said he traveled to the rally to verify for himself liberal accounts blasting the tea party as racist.

“All my friends told me I was crazy to come down here in an Obama shirt,” he said. “Obviously I have political disagreements [with the tea party], but I cannot lie. I cannot say that people have been anything but nice to me. They have been shaking my hand. One guy told me I had a lot of [guts] for coming down here. I will definitely walk away from this with a new understanding of the tea party.”

Continue reading So, that ‘Crash the Tea Party’ thing was a bust.

#rsrh Tea Parties and the Conquest of Paradise*.

(Via Michelle Malkin) Is this even English?

The anti-Bush shirt corresponded neatly with a charge offered by a metro employee who was standing in the crowd. “Where were these people when Bush was president, spending money left and right?” I noted that many of them had been critical of Bush in the protests recently. Does that exonerate them? “Nah, it’s just a double-standard. I mean, we’re a nation of immigrants and they come to this country, and the Indians are already here, and they have some nerve to talk about ‘rights.'”

It’s more like somebody took a handful of progressive tropes, tossed them into a blender, and hit ‘chop.’ Continue reading #rsrh Tea Parties and the Conquest of Paradise*.