Barone Asks: Is the Tea Party Pooped?
By Ward Smythe | Thursday, March 31st, 2011 | PolicyMichael Barone asks questions The Tea Party may need to find themselves answering:
Has the wind gone out of the sails of the smaller government movement? Is the tea party movement going through a hangover?
GOPUSABarone: Is the Tea Party Pooped? It Must Keep Making Its Case
Is Barone right?
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Ward Smythe
Ward Smythe is a pseudonymous aspiring freelance writer from Central Virginia. Until late 2007 Ward blogged at the now defunct "Ward View" and was active in Virginia and national politics. Ward's signature style of snarkery gained him a unique following that he hopes to regain here at Bearing Drift. Ward uses humor, satire and sometimes photoshop to make his point. Ward is proud to be an equal opportunity offender.
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38 Responses to "Barone Asks: Is the Tea Party Pooped?"
Who’s Michael Barrone?
Are you serious?
Yes, I had to research who Michael Barone is. He received a Law degree from Yale and he’s a political pundit. Nuff said… A lawyer (Well, indoctrinated in law) dogging the Tea Party…what a suprise!
Did you read the piece? It was a hit piece on the Republican Party, not the Tea Party. The Democrats are scared to death of the Tea Party message because it is better than their message. Is he a Democrat?
My question is not rhetorical because he did not site that same poll that had Obama at his lowest approval rating EVER.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1579
Is he a Democrat? It seems that if he was a Republican he would be siting this glaring fact. So, what is the purpose of his Republican hit piece?
Yes, I read the piece.
Did you read where I agreed or disagreed with him?
No, I don’t think you did.
Sometimes items are worth posting for the point of discussion.
Tea Party sure is quiet right now.. and if anyone has any doubts, we are making trips to the outfitters and reloading. Open season for Rino is coming and there aint no vegetarians around.. Them’s is not horns, they is antlers.. fields are gonna be full of eight, ten and 12 pointers boys.. ought to be some trophys this time. Lotsa Tea Partiers want to mount some trophy Rino horns, er, rino antlers on the walls.
Fire up the grill boys n girls.., this aint catch and release nomore.. Yall have fun now.
Ya know, the question as to whether the Tea Party would last has been asked and answered, before. Ummm….several times.
Big Government types, your nightmare is nowhere near ending. The Tea Party hasn’t even peaked.
For the benefit of people who don’t have time to read the article, it makes the startling assertion that the Tea Party and Republicans must continue educating the public on the issues since the media will do nothing to support them. The second half of the title left off the top lead here is “It Must Keep Making its Case.” Barone praises Gov Christie and McDonnell. He says public sector unions “inflate spending, reduce accountability and operate as a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayer money to one political party.”
OK I’m stumped. What’s the controversy?
I think that it is a shame that we have to have litmus tests for party purity. RINO, DINO, are all tired nicknames for moderates who somehow fail to meet the dogmatic check lists of the ideologues.
This is why the largest block of voters in the republic are the Independent Moderates. I think that it is long past time for the IM to become the new second party. The only question is which party will we displace. If people like “turbo” have their way, it will be the Republicans who will go the way of the Whigs. Be careful of what you wish for, Tea Partiers. You have the capacity to do to the Republican Party what the Greens couldn’t do to the Democratic Party. And you will find that it is very lonely out there on the far end of the political spectrum.
Ward,
I may be misunderstanding something, but it seems that you yourself disapprove of the Tea Party. If you do I would be genuinely interested to know Your reasoning why the Tea Party movement is bad for the country in general and the Republican party in particular. As a practical matter, you must know that if you subtract out the Tea Party the Republicans are going to have to resign quite a few seats in the current Congress. And the Dems pay lip service even to their various captive special interests. If I have misread you I’ll say Never mind.
HisRoc, the GOP has become a bunch of bedwetters.
HISROC,
History does not support the notion that the glob of “centrist moderates” becomes a political dynamo. Since they are persuadable unlike the partisans, rhetoric and circumstance will sway them right or left. The partisans vote for Jimmy Carter’s second term or Barry Goldwater or Jerry Brown’s third term. The “center” is a relative concept, it is not an absolute. The center is shifted right or left by activists who communicate something the moderates understand, usually the failings of the party in power.
Most of the time I agree with you that a country can get along with minor course corrections. Occasionally however, a country comes to a crisis point. At that time minor course corrections aren’t going to keep the country on its prevailing or best course. When you come to a fork in the road you can’t go straight. The trick is not in throwing out a litmus test but keeping the litmus test narrow and focused on the absolute essentials. Obviously activists want to stuff as many things into the test as possible.
What would the “Independent Moderate Party” Platform look like?
“We are strongly and most vehemently opposed to any stance or position that is strong and vehement. On all other issues, we maintain a rigid indifference, except in those cases where a strict apathy would be better suited.”
HisRoc is arguing largely what Jesse Ventura did a decade ago. Ventura held that a third party breakthrough in the U.S. would be in the center, not on one of the flanks.
While I don’t necessarily agree with Ventura, if MoveOn and the TEA Party keep pushing their associated parties towards the fringe, the opening could be there for such a scenario within a generation.
As the Dems call the Tea Party extremists and racists and the Repubs claim they are ignorant and the fringe, it baffles me how either could ever lose the debate on substance.
Henry, your party has become the extremist.. Tea is the big umbrella for any political persuation who has had enough pig govt.. not a typo. YES, critically thinking dems are also for less taxes and smaller govt too.. I meet them often enough thank g_d. There is hope.
Turbo,
My party?
John,
As a socially conservative, fiscally moderate Republican, I agree with the characterization of the TEA Party as ignorant and fringe. Building coalitions is essential to winning elections, and you can’t put together a coalition comprising a majority if you start building from the far right.
Show me a rabid TEA Partier and I’ll show you someone who has probably never been to campaign school. (I’ve been to two: GOPAC and RPV.)
Help me with this one…
1) During the FY 2011, there was no budget passed
2) We have a $1.6 trillion deficit, I said deficit
3) Our political scholars cut $60 billion when they’d campaigned on $100 billion
…and I’m part of the ignorant and fringe. We’re talking about shutting down the government and we can’t even defund NPR. An organization where the VP admits they don’t need the money. Just imagine when it comes to the entitlement programs where we are already killing grandma.
Now, I understand the three branches of government: the Senate, the House and the President, and that we need them all to agree to get a budget passed. But I cannot understand the stupid messages coming from the Republicans (and Democrats) when it is “don’t get caught up with the extreme Tea Party ideas.”
I don’t need to be indoctrinated to do the math or to see the writing on the wall.
Since your a Republican, what is your coalition? What is a constituency/coalition that the Republicans can point to as a loyal base? Or is it the party of, “there’s nothing else?”
@Valentinus, I do not disapprove of the Tea Party. I have, in fact, participated in Tea Party events and activism.
However, the Tea Party is not without flaws. And that’s highlighted whenever they are cricitized and the reaction is not “we have to do a better job” it’s “how dare you attack the Patriots.” There’s a bit of naivete in that.
I also think it’s somewhat disingenuous for the Tea Party to continuously attack the Republican Party. Don’t get me wrong, the GOP certainly merits criticism. But the Tea Party is willing to say “we hate the Republicans” all at the same time that with a nudge and a wink they recognize the Republicans are their path to power.
I don’t think the 2010 landslide was as much a Tea Party victory as the TP would like to think. Otherwise Senator Angle and Senator O’Donnell would be brunching with Senate Majority Leader DeMint. Here in Virginia, Hurt and Rigell weren’t the Tea Party primary candidates. However in their case the Tea Party (mostly) did come on board for the general.
If the Tea Party really wants to grow and be/remain effective, they have to be able to answer criticism with more than a “stop picking on me” whine.
BB- the IM platform would look like what intelligent voters think now, it would take a look at each individual issue without the shackles of party ideology. It would recognize that every political issue isn’t black and white, the way the partisans on both sides now describe them. It would recognize that sometimes the left is right and sometimes the right is right and that circumstances, not inflexible doctrine, generally dictate the correct answers to political problems.
“I understand the three branches of government: the Senate, the House and the President, and that we need them all to agree to get a budget passed.”
Would you like to take another look at that?
Nope…it was written as intended.
The tea party was yesterday’s news, but when their big rally on Capitol Hill drew 250 people, many are saying, where’s the beef? Frankly, their irrational policy of enforced austerity at any cost is ticking off another few million people per day, and with the potential for a government shut down, american business, which is doing quite well, thank you, is starting to take notice. The sooner these zealots and their political minions look behind themselves and see there is no longer a crowd, the faster we can get on with rational government and budget reform. They have had their time in the sun, and they ares simply not ready for prime time.
Ward Smythe- I mostly agree with you on your take of some of the Tea Parties, but I’ll go further. I am a three plank conservative, and participated in Tea Party rallies and events when they first started springing up as small local activists in the summer of 09. They have changed drastically since then. They have been taken over by the national, what I call “corporate” Tea Party groups like Campaign for Liberty, who is connected at the hip to the Tea Party Patriots. There are others like them. They have a very narrow, short sighted fiscal agenda, and be damned with social or national security issues. In fact, as much as they claim to be die-hard supporters of the Constitution, they have been mum on the raging fires burning across the Middle East, and have nothing to say about a President who has taken the country into yet another war without the first thought to his Constitutional constraints with respect to war. No word of a lie, Jenny Beth Martin, the leader of the Tea Party Patriots was asked for her position with respect to Libya. Her answer, “gee I haven’t really thought about it, I’ll have to take a survey of our membership and see what they think.” She hasn’t thought about what is a a crossed line in the sand, where the Constitution has been so rabidly breached, by a President who would rather give our country over to the UN, and be damned with any little pesky thing called sovereignty.
I recently read an article by a Ron Paul libertarian. He boasted that it was always their intention to take over the Republican party, and to change it into their idea of a libertarian utopia, and he claimed they are well on their way to success. Look at almost every national Tea Party organization, they are almost all headed by libertarians. Look closely at their “platforms” so to speak. Smaller government, less taxes, maximum freedom for all. They avoid social and national security issues like the plague, even though the Libyan conflict has already cost us billions.
The only thing the libertarians have in common with conservatives is on some very narrow fiscal issues, and even that is subject to an expiration date. If the Tea Parties are losing steam, it is because the majority of those polled who consider themselves conservatives also claim to have the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. While fiscal issues are very important, they are closely tied to social and national security issues as well. Many have woken up to the sham.
Steve,
So, no planks in the Independant Moderate platform, then, since “circumstances, not inflexible doctrine” will dictate the votes by the IM politicians. Sounds good, not sure how it would work in real life.
Let’s say you’re running for Senator (IM-VA), and someone asks what kind of a person you’d support confirming to the Supreme Court. Would you be open to appointing a Pro-Life nominee? I assume you’d say “yes”, because hey, circumstantial politics (or situational ethics) demand that you be open to any nominee, whatever their beliefs…and make your decision when the moment arrives.
Heads up, though — if you’re open to a Pro-Life nominee, then you’ll be labled a right wing zealous extremist, as apparently I’m being labled for arguing against Obamacare and the bailout of GM. Of course, if you’re not open to a Pro-Life nominee, you will also be labled an extremist. Most people, even with fairly common-sense positions on things like fiscal responsibility and self-determination, hate being labled an extremist, which is why I think so many Americans self-identify as “moderates”, when really they have fairly concrete points of view on most issues.
BB- of course you could say, “I don’t find that issue to be a litmus test of whether someone has the intellectual capability, judgement or judicial demeanor to serve on the federal bench. I’d be more interested in the quality of the judge’s argument for whatever his position is on something that is, in the final analysis, a matter of moral judgement.”
BTW, despite what a small group of zealots on either side would have you believe, that’s really where most people are on abortion. They’re sick of talking about it. It’s not the most important issue in their life or in their politics. They are uneasy with the idea of unlimited abortion AND with the idea of a government intrusive enough to insert itself into private moral and medical decisions.
In any poll that lists what issues people find most important, you’ll find abortion far down the list, usually in single digits. Politicians just keep talking about it because it stirs up the partisans on both sides. The American people would prefer to move on to more important issues, like jobs and the economy.
One of the things that I have always marveled at in politics is how the liberals always consider themselves as the intellectuals while thinking that conservatives are mindless automatons, and of course, conservatives see it just the opposite. Independent moderates, however, are seen by both ends of the spectrum as weak, indecisive people with no true principals who can be easily swayed by one argument or another.
What a bunch of hooey.
It is fine to have your party platform and overarching goals that formulate your political opinions. However, when those principles prevent compromise and, as Washington wrote in 1796, “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms…,” then political parties’ benefit is far outweighed by their harm.
Any political scientist will tell you that the most effective government is that which governs from the middle. As a consequence of appealing to their “base,” candidates frequently seek office nominations by taking a hard line on their party principles. But when it comes time to win the general election and actually govern, the smart ones move back to the center. Failing to do that, in my opinion, was why so many of the Tea Party hardliners crashed and burned last November despite the Republican wave. Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, and numerous other jurisdictions turned their backs on Tea Party candidates. If the Republicans follow the Tea Party lead and move to the hard right, then Americans will turn their backs on them as well.
Sandy, that was funny. I needed a laugh, thanks!
I am simultaneously entertained and dismayed by having read the above comments that so loudly scream “Left-Right Paradigm!” Most of you are trapped in it, and you don’t even know what it is.
The political spectrum is not one-dimensional, and political thought does not revolve around “conservatives” and “liberals” nor around any “extremes” of “left” and “right.”
Libertarians are social liberals and fiscal conservatives. It’s not possible to fit that onto your “left-right” thing, is it? Both of your “conservative” and “liberal” parties love big government, they only differ slightly in how it should be used. And I mean, only very slightly. On the boob tube they emphasize the differences to maintain the illusion of choice, but they are much more alike than they are different.
Examples? TARP. Endless raising of the debt limit, which, I guarantee you, will happen again shortly. Agreeing to economy-killing regulations, agreeing to raise the leverage limits at Fannie and Freddie…totally failing to adequately oversee the out of control Federal Reserve Bank. Your so-called “conservatives” and “liberals” both want only to conserve the status quo, even if it means implementing a surveillance and security state. Your politics is nothing more than theater, a sad kind of bread-and-circuses to make the masses think they have a choice.
No thanks.
BTW, WTIC is just over $108. Enjoy your war in Libya supporting Al-Qaeda pro-democracy forces there.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/24/al-qaeda-offers-aid-to-rebels-in-libya/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/30/flickers-al-qaeda-libya-wouldnt-new-development/#ixzz1IImzhTL7
“I am a little bit aggravated by this hype that somehow Al Qaeda is going to take over this organization. There is no evidence. I just spoke to admiral on the phone, our NATO commander, and he says he has seen some efforts and indications, but there is no evidence that they are going to take over and hijack,” McCain said on PBS Tuesday night.
“And in addition to that, you know, you have got to go a long way to be worse than Qaddafi,” McCain added.
In other words, McCain does not deny there are Al-Qaeda among those fighting Qaddafi in Libya, but they are not “worse than Qaddafi” so it’s ok and we should support them. Except that I seem to remember that we invaded Iraq because of the war on terror and Al-Qaeda. Are we going to send them weapons so that they can use the weapons against our GIs in the ME? Who thinks this is a good idea?
Republican Alaska legislature repeals windfall profits tax on oil companies put in place by noted radical socialist Sarah Palin.
Guess they’re just going to rely on Uncle Sugar, who sends them $6 for every $1 the pay in.
I don’t believe this ends the socialist, “here’s $6K a year for living in the People’s Republic of Alaska” fund.
Jamie,
You do realize, don’t you, that Ralph Nadar makes an identical argument as yours concerning the major political parties being only interested in maintaining the status quo and that there is no discernible difference between the two?
There are fringe movements throughout the realm of politics. Each wants to move one of the major parties toward their extreme. Libertarians are little more than Republicans on steroids. I take issue with their being ‘social liberals and fiscal conservatives.’ That is as much as an oxymoron as Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ or Hitler’s ‘national socialism.’ Libertarians just don’t want any government at all, so any government role in societal interaction is repugnant to them. Republicans want less intrusive government unless, of course, government needs to stop a doctor from performing an ethical and necessary medical procedure such as abortion or the government needs to stop two same-sex persons from having a ceremony and pretending that they are a procreative married couple. Libertarians aren’t any more favorable towards abortion or same sex marriage then Republicans–they just don’t want to have a government that is powerful enough to regulate it. Ayn Rand’s writings on the subject are particularly illustrative.
Libertarians will always be an extreme fringe group until they eventually go the way of their political and philosophical predecessors, the Anarchists, the Nihilists, and the Utopians.
Wrong:Libertarians just don’t want any government at all,
Right:so any government role in societal interaction is repugnant to them.
Why is it so hard to understand that the role of government is to protect the ability of private citizens to make personal choices, not restrict those choices?
Economics is not a zero-sum game, but politics is.
What is the purpose of government? Is it to make sure that two women don’t get married?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The purpose of government is to protect my rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Tell me how two women getting married interferes with that?
And don’t twist this and start saying that I favor homosexual marriage. I don’t favor it. I am completely neutral on it. I couldn’t care less, as it does not threaten or impose on my liberty in any way whatsoever. In other words, it’s none of my damned business. This is, by the way, one example of what it means to be a social liberal. BTW, it might interest you to know that I also support your right to hire, refuse to hire, and fire anyone you choose for any reason you choose, so if you don’t like homosexuals you don’t have to employ them. If you own a business, it is your property and not the government’s. Since the purpose of government is to protect your rights, you have the right to run your business in any manner you choose. The government is supposed to protect that right and not interfere with it.
As for fiscal conservatism, I would readily shut down the government before I would raise the debt ceiling. But I guarantee you the “conservative” Cantor and Boehner will cut $10 Billion or so from the $1.6 Trillion deficit and proclaim themselves “conservative,” and people will applaud them for it. Will you be one of them? Yes, because they will appeal to your lower emotional instincts and promise to protect you from the deadly existential threat of two women who want to get married.
That is as much as an oxymoron as Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ or Hitler’s ‘national socialism.’
There is nothing oxymoronic about the term “national socialism.” The political philosophies of nationalism and socialism are entirely compatible. Both envision and are built around a strong central government, just like the kind we have now. As I have said repeatedly, there is little difference between the so-called “liberals” and equally so-called “conservatives.” They each love big government, but only differ slightly in how they think it should be applied; nationalistically in a fascist state, or collectivistically in a redistributionist socialist state. In either case, individual liberty and property rights are crushed.
Note carefully, for example, that neither party is really opposed to the Orwellian “Department (Ministry) of Homeland Security,” which concerns itself with dangerous radical home schoolers, sovereign citizens, Ron Paul supporters, opponents of the Federal Reserve, and people who talk about the Constitution too much. You see, it’s dangerous to talk about the Constitution “too much.” We can only have a little bit of Constitutional debate in America, otherwise the ruling class thinks we’re getting too uppity.
I agree, however, that Bush is a moron.
You need help, Jamie. Seriously. I can’t decide if you are unbalanced or have just been reading too much conspiracy crap on the Internet, but your thinking is far from normal.
Actually, Jamie is bang on with nearly all of this. It stuns me how so few people really understand what “national socialism” really was (or is.) That movement, the National-Socialist German Workers Party–abbreviated to NADSP i.e. Nazi, was at the time an evolution of the earlier facist theory which at the time was considered very progressive. Of course, like any government structured along the lines of AUTHORITARIANISM, it was easily corrupted by a gang of ruthless thugs.
I’m not sure that our enlighted “democracies” are much above that level, but are at least one level below it.
And what I see here and elsewhere is an abject horror of anyone who dares asks questions about any policy based upon the Constitution.
No sir. Jamie is absolutely on target here. Keep it up.
Further on “national socialism” comment. Of course it is not an oxymoron. In fact, the two words are nearly inseperable. Hitler never in a million years dreamed of dismantling the socialist state. He was all for socialism, as long as it was run along nationalist lines, the two terms being nearly identical. All Hitler did was to throw racism (anti Jewish) hogwash conspiracy theory into the mix, besides want to take over the world of course. Mussolini and Franco were never racists. But they were both nationalists and socialists. They never really did like Hitler anyway. He gave facsism a bad name. And did you ever Juan or Evita Peron call for genocide? Nope, I didn’t think so.
Craig,
Read history better. In “Mein Kampf” Hitler launched a long attack on bourgoise parties of the Left. While some Nazis took the “Socialism” in National Socialism seriously, Hitler eschewed economic expierments. He wanted what worked, and playing economic games would take away from the massive military buildup he craved.
Mussolini did mimic Hitler’s anti-Semitism during World War II, having Italian Jews rounded up.
Back square on, it’s the over the top rhetoric of some TEA Partiers that provides the very “rationale” for the DHS activities you oppose. (FYI, I’m also opposed to the Patriot Act.)
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