tea party – Page 4

#rsrh “Tea party to NAACP: ‘Grow up'”

(H/T Instapundit) I’m quoting the Politico title because, honestly, it’s absolutely accurate.

[Tea Party Express spokesman Levi] Russell contended the NAACP is guilty of overstepping its bounds and of acting juvenile.

“As the tea party movement has gained political momentum, groups or individuals still playing the race card look like a foolish embarrassment to their own party,” he said. “It’s time for the NAACP to grow up and stop hiding behind hypocritical race-baiting politics.”

It occurs to me that it has been a long time since any sort of national group has been willing to so bluntly call Democratic hyper-partisan groups like the NAACP on their nonsense. Or to even so publicly state what everybody knows, but few want to say: the NAACP is a Democratic hyper-partisan group. Apparently, enough people in the Tea Party movement have internalized the lesson that since the Left is already calling them every name in the book, there’s no downside to plain talking.

How… refreshing.

Moe Lane

Crashing the ‘Crashing the Tea Party’ Meme.

I can’t speak for whether or not the ‘Crash the Tea Party’ thing referenced here is real, or just some dweeb on the West Coast who’s trying to sell t-shirts to liberal racists who don’t want to admit that they’re racists. Honestly, I could see either; one of the gratifying things about the Tea Party movement has been to see demonstrated that the Left’s vaunted prowess at organization and activism largely depends on having no standard for comparison. They’re really pretty lousy at this.

That being said, the advice found here is pretty good:

Plants have already happened, just not organized ones. Regardless, perhaps organizers (or attendees) need to have a few signs that say “Liberal Plant, not a REAL TeaPartier” and be on the lookout for these double-secret spies. When one is found, then pull out your signs and stand next to the plant. No violence or physical actions, just isolate and embarrass.

And make sure that you get it on the record that you’ve done this. I will keep harping on this until the end of time: a camera is an indispensable tool for these things. Without cameras they would have been able to get away with lying about Congressmen being spit on and called racial epithets*. So get one.

Moe Lane

Continue reading Crashing the ‘Crashing the Tea Party’ Meme.

Meet Charlotte Bergmann (R CAND, TN-09).

She’s running in Steve Cohen’s district, and for some reason* she’s very, very annoyed that Rep. Cohen is going around accusing Tea Partiers of being racist, would-be Klansmen.

Charlotte’s site is here: please check it out.

Moe Lane Continue reading Meet Charlotte Bergmann (R CAND, TN-09).

Meet Liz Carter (R CAND, GA-04).

I used my shiny new audio rig to record an interview with Liz Carter, who is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in GA-04 (which means that she’d be running against Hank “Guam” Johnson). She’s in it to win it:

Liz is running on an accountability platform, and is supportive of the local Tea Party: her website is here. Nice person to talk to. Check her out.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Keli Carender & the faintest whiff of panic from the NYT. #rsrh

(H/T: Instapundit) The first paragraph sets the mood:

Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv on weekends and lives here in a neighborhood with more Mexican grocers than coffeehouses. You might mistake her for the kind of young person whose vote powered President Obama to the White House. You probably would not think of her as a Tea Party type.

…and the Old Grey Lady pretty clearly was not in it. They didn’t do a bad job of reporting this story, but very little of it fits their existing narrative of the Tea Party, and you can tell that the writer was somewhat aware of that. Continue reading Keli Carender & the faintest whiff of panic from the NYT. #rsrh

Another faux-populist Lefty group for potlatching money?

Is ‘potlatching’ even a word?

(Via Big Government) It’s interesting to see the difference between intent and result in this Washington Post article on a quote-unquote ‘Coffee Party’ that’s ready to take to the streets on behalf of the Left. It’s not really quotable, but the gist of the article is that there’s this movement that showed up in reaction to the Tea Party folks and is trying to duplicate their success. Slow going, but it’s early days – and besides, aren’t both groups looking for the same thing, really?

That’s intent. The result is a tacit admission that the Tea Parties have pretty much brushed aside the existing, decades-old infrastructure of Lefty activist groups to become the standard by which community activism is judged. I imagine that this would probably upset, say, somebody who’s been throwing money at groups like Moveon.org or CAP or the undead, unlamented ACORN; it must purely grate to know that all the funding in the world won’t create a genuine populist movement when there’s no true popular will behind it. Not that these Coffee Party people are the answer, either: they’re just a bunch of reactionary defenders of the existing self-defined privileged class who are attempting to create a false revolutionary consciousness.

…You know, I wrote that out first as a joke; but that really is what they are, isn’t it?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Dean Murray (GOP/TEA, NY), new state Assemblyman. #rsrh

They finally counted all the absentee ballots, and the race has been certified. This was a pickup from a Dem-held seat, by the way.

Please note that even at this point the Tea Party folks would welcome Democratic legislators who were truly sympathetic to Tea Party goals and objectives. They just don’t expect it to happen, which is why they’re working with the Republicans. Our gain, the Democrats’ loss – which, really, is how it should be.

(H/T: Instapundit)

PPP: Only artificial 3rd party promotions can save Democrats now.

Let me preface this by noting that I am not criticizing Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling for suggesting the below. Tom is an open Democrat, and his polling firm is openly Democratic-leaning; he wants the GOP to lose and the Democrats to win. That’s his right, and he doesn’t try to hide it. Tom also doesn’t try to hide what turns out to be bad news for his side: PPP was reporting on the GOP pickups in NJ & MA while more ostensibly neutral polling firms were massaging the data to make the results look more ambiguous. So I’m not offended by this:

Here’s the big question: should Democrats be giving financial assistance to these ‘Tea Party’ candidates to get on the ballot as independents? It may seem like an odd concept but Republicans certainly did it with Ralph Nader and that paid off for them. There are going to be a lot of races decided by 4 points or less this fall and right wing independents pulling 5% could get some Democrats reelected this year even if they can only pull 48% of the vote. I’d love to see a Democratic group formed that raises money to do mail and media for Tea Party candidates portraying them as the only ‘real conservative’ in the race- unconventional means might be necessary to save some seats this year.

I just know that it won’t work… and maybe Tom Jensen knows it, too. He himself is scrupulous about calling Tea Party folks ‘Tea Party’ folks: he’s so scrupulous about doing it, in fact, that it’s clear that he knows how offensive the more common alternative is to Tea Party folks. Fortunately, Tom’s fellow-Democrats have been a lot less scrupulous about avoiding offense… and the Tea Party folks are well aware of that. To put it simply, while they may not like the Republicans’ leadership overmuch, they absolutely despise the Democrats’. The Democrats and their cheerleaders call them nasty names every day, right to their face: which makes the Democrats’ openly supporting a third party candidate a kiss of death for that candidate.

And it makes quietly supporting a third party candidate something much, much worse: it makes it a conspiracy.

But, again, I can’t blame Tom. What else does his party have, right now?

Moe Lane

My immediate reaction to this paragraph…

…off of The Other McCain:

Jumping in Pools says “The battering and blaming of the Republicans has to stop.” Mr. Kat, when those GOP windbags threaten the invariant principles in, for example, the Constitution, then they are a tumor, albeit a benign one. The most you’re buying from a RINO is time. The RINO’s non-command of principles will feed the Progressive decline, albeit more slowly than a Democrat’s. In a way, the Democrat is more admirable, because he’s not blowing any sunshine up the public bottom about his task.

“Dammit, Smitty, time is what we need right now. And if folks are worried about the direction of the GOP, they can always join up.”

I don’t really disagree with his main argument, mind. But this situation isn’t Bad Versus Worse. That was 2008, and Worse won. Now the situation is Worse Versus Stop Hitting Ourselves With The Hammer.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Let me just push back on the Left’s attempt to co-opt…

…the anti-health care rationing movement, as per Mickey Kaus (who is not the one trying to do it). Three things to remember:

The Online Left is angry about this bill because the final version is likely to have no public option, Stupak-like language banning federal funding of abortion, and no clear path to single-payer health care. Give them some path to two out of three and they’ll jump back on the bandwagon. Give them one and they’ll do the same, only complaining. Give them none and they’ll still support the Democrats in 2010. And the Democrats know this, which is why they’re ignoring the Online Left.
The Tea Party movement – and the GOP, thank you very much – is angry about this bill because it’s an intolerable imposition on the American people’s fundamental right to live their own lives without undue government interference. Which is why only one Republican federal legislator has come out in support of the Democrats’ health care rationing scheme.
The Online Left wants to see the Tea Party movement – and the GOP, thank you very much – collectively die in a fire. They’ve been screeching about those evil, evil corporations for the last year, and fuming impotently because they can’t get any traction on it while a bunch of center-right activists put together an opposition movement that dwarfed theirs. In other words: they very, very, very badly want to try to co-opt what we (generic) built to serve their own ends.

To put it more simply: these people are not our friends, they are not trustworthy – or particularly useful – allies, and they don’t really want what we want. There’s no point to working with them.

Moe Lane

PS: “But we need to stop this bill!” Yes, we do. We stop it by taking back Congress.

Crossposted to RedState.