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Are Tea Partiers really conservative?
Daily Caller ^ | March 8, 2010 | John Feehery

Posted on 03/09/2010 1:39:29 PM PST by Ronbo1948

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To: pissant; tallyhoe
True conservatives value one thing over any thing else: societal stability.

That one jumped out at me as well. It It's not my definition either but it could fit quite a few here. I'd say Rush would agree with this definition but Hannity would not.

41 posted on 03/09/2010 2:07:30 PM PST by byteback
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To: Ronbo1948

Some are. Some are Libertarians. Some are Populists.

What should make the Democrat and ‘Pubbies wonder is: “What is pulling all these different types of people together?”


42 posted on 03/09/2010 2:10:35 PM PST by Little Ray (The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!)
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To: ml/nj

I’ve been to a couple of things that people associated with tea parties, and everyone I talked to seemed like they should be a FReeper if they weren’t already.


Ditto with the TEA party I attended.


43 posted on 03/09/2010 2:11:17 PM PST by Atlas Sneezed (Anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first.)
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To: marron

Of course the dots were never meant to be “connected” - doing so exposes the commies, marxists and radicals in Zero’s inner circle.

Bigger question is why the media, so big on that “free press” mantra didn’t connect them, and left it up to a TV show pundit.


44 posted on 03/09/2010 2:11:22 PM PST by Right Cal Gal (Ronald Reagan: "our liberal friends....know so much that isn't so...")
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To: MrRobertPlant2009

“And populist movements are inherently unconservative.”

Unless you are a Southerner. Down here, conservatism is mixed with a good dose of anti-Wall Street, anti-Big Business, and anti-Big Money isms.

This is why George Wallace did so well with blue-collar Democrats. You don’t pick Curtis “Bomb them back to the Stone Age” LeMay for your running mate, and the guy one heartbeat away from the presidency, if you’re a liberal.

parsy, who grew up on SAC bases, and the warm comforting sound of eight huge engines revving up on the flightlines.


45 posted on 03/09/2010 2:11:55 PM PST by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: Ronbo1948
IMHO, about half of the Tea party movement started when seniors found out that $500 billion is cut out of Medicare. If the money was restored, probably about a third of those would love Obama again. The hard core Tea Party person is mortified at the size of the numbers in the budgets and debts. I think the party endures because they finally see that Obama is a communist and will not make a deal, back off, or change his mind. This is a coup, not an election. The Dems that remain in the Tea Party are just upset that their bennies will be cut, as they must be cut at some point to save the country. IMHO, these are the same minions that flew off the handle when Bush wanted to fix Social Security.
46 posted on 03/09/2010 2:24:01 PM PST by chuckles
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To: Past Your Eyes

I hear that. im a tea partier an I aint no wal mart hippie


47 posted on 03/09/2010 2:24:35 PM PST by joshjones
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To: Ronbo1948

The above text is nothing but dribble meant to get conservatives to stop pushing for power and just allow the leftists to have the field.

The article is a piece of trash not worth the bandwidth it is wasting.


48 posted on 03/09/2010 2:30:06 PM PST by stockpirate (Hey Beck, Thomas Jefferson was a birther!)
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To: chuckles

I’m two years away from SS and think it should be cut 10% immediately. People within 20 years of retirement should be grandfathered in or have the choice of personal retirement accounts. All others should be forced into personal retirement accounts set up so as to preclude the government from having access to the funds.


49 posted on 03/09/2010 2:34:07 PM PST by ontap
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To: revo evom
I don't have a clue who John Feehery is, but it has been my opinion for a very long time that David Brooks is one very compromised fellow. It is risible that he is what the NYT believes is conservative; and predictable that those who read his paper follow the Pied Paper like good little mesmerized robots. We are finding out that our Congress is full of compromised and blackmail-ready officials. It is time to look at those in the news industry and find out what sort of strings are attached to them.
50 posted on 03/09/2010 2:35:36 PM PST by madinmadtown
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To: equalitybeforethelaw

The American Revolution was an elitist revolution, which is what made it so remarkable and successful.

The French Revolution was a populist revolution.


51 posted on 03/09/2010 2:37:57 PM PST by MrRobertPlant2009
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To: parsifal

Wallace’s consersativism was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Discuss.


52 posted on 03/09/2010 2:39:05 PM PST by MrRobertPlant2009
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To: Ronbo1948

The first tip off that this writer was full of crap is that he says David Brooks wrote a “great column.” Yeah — NEXT...


53 posted on 03/09/2010 2:42:09 PM PST by patriot preacher (To be a good American Citizen and a Christian IS NOT a contradiction. (www.mygration.blogspot.com))
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To: MrRobertPlant2009

It’s been over 40 years, so my memory needs some help. I went here and got this:

http://wikibin.org/articles/george-wallace-presidential-campaign-1968.html

“Wallace ran a “law and order” campaign similar to that of the Republican former Vice President, Richard Nixon. Nixon himself worried that Wallace might steal enough votes to give the election to the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Some Democrats feared Wallace’s appeal to blue-collar workers and union members (who usually vote Democratic) would hurt Humphrey in Northern states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan.

Wallace’s campaign rhetoric became infamous, such as when he pledged to run over any demonstrators who got in front of his limousine and asserted that the only four letter words that hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p. He accused Humphrey and Nixon of wanting to radically desegregate the South. Wallace said, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties.” His campaign in California and other states attracted the interest of the far right, including the John Birch Society.”

As I remember,(I headed up the George Wallace student campaign in my junior high elections project) Wallace said, on welfare, that it was one thing to help somebody who was too old or too sick to work, but everybody else needed to get a job.

I can also recall the constant remarks about the liberals and intellectuals in their ivory towers. IIRC, Spiro Agnew started aping Wallace on some of this. Again, IIRC, Wallace railed against big money and big business. I’ll try to find cites to something more than, “He was a Populist”, which there is plenty of.

So, lets see:

1) Strong defense
2) No welfare for the able bodied
3) More state rights than Federal power
4) Limit what the Federal government can do

So, that seems pretty “conservative”. Now I need to find where he blasted banks and the rich.

parsy, who is old enough to remember the AUH2O bumper stickers.


54 posted on 03/09/2010 2:59:15 PM PST by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: El Laton Caliente

Bingo! Great post!


55 posted on 03/09/2010 3:33:04 PM PST by piytar (Ammo is hard to find! Bought some lately? Please share where at www.ammo-finder.com)
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To: pissant

L O L !


56 posted on 03/09/2010 3:37:14 PM PST by Liberty Valance (Keep a simple manner for a happy life :o)
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To: MrRobertPlant2009

Here’s some more, but I am trying to find some specific Wallace quotes or speeches about the working man and middle class against the elites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

George Wallace, Four-Term Governor of Alabama, led a populist movement that carried five states and won 13.5% of the popular vote in the 1968 presidential election. Campaigning against intellectuals and liberal reformers, Wallace gained a large share of the white working class vote in Democratic primaries in 1972.[69][70][71]

Populism continues to be a force in modern U.S. politics, especially in the 1992 and 1996 third-party presidential campaigns of billionaire Ross Perot. The 1996, 2000, 2004, and the 2008 presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader had a strong populist cast. The 2004 campaigns of Dennis Kucinich[72][73][74][75] and Al Sharpton also had populist elements. The 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has been described by many[76] (and by himself) as a “one economic community, one commonwealth”[76] populist.

Comparison between earlier surges of populism and those of today are complicated by shifts in what are thought to be the interests of the common people. Jonah Goldberg and others argue that in modern society, fractured as it is into myriad interest groups and niches, any attempt to define the interests of the “average person” will be so general as to be useless.[citation needed]

parsy, who says this is just the way things still are among a lot of Southerners. We can’t stand Big Banks, etc.


57 posted on 03/09/2010 3:58:28 PM PST by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: SmokingJoe

Yup, gotta get insider their OODA loop. Only way to win...


58 posted on 03/09/2010 4:00:56 PM PST by piytar (Ammo is hard to find! Bought some lately? Please share where at www.ammo-finder.com)
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To: MrRobertPlant2009

I need to buy this book, I guess. But it dovetails with what I have been saying on FR for years. Conservatives have become way too influenced by Libertarians in economic issues to the point where the “populist” roots have been forgotten:

The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Paperback

Carter also provides great detail into minds of the inner circle of those men who managed Wallace’s candidacy in his state and later national campaigns for President, including talented speechwriter but also violent racist Klansman Asa Carter (no relation to the author), who would later become famous as the author of the historical novel that inspired the Clint Eastwood movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales”. Biographer Carter’s premise is that by Wallace’s strong showings in the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972 (before he was derailed by an assassination attempt) that Wallace succeeded in moving the national political debate to the right, especially in the area of social policies and politics. Carter has gone on record in other books and speeches as trying to link the Republican policies of welfare reform, re-examination of affirmative action policies and anti-crime legislation as being directly descended from Wallace’s bigoted early campaigns. While I think he stretches the point I do think that some of Wallace’s populist appeal did pave the way for successful Presidential campaigns of other southerners, such as Georgia’s Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Arkansas’ Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Carter sees Republican Ronald Reagan as more of a direct descendant of Wallace, but this reviewer sees it as a fact that most successful Presidential races since 1968 whether Republican or Democrat have taken Wallace’s anti-Washington bureaucrat populist rhetoric and support for a stronger defense and lower taxes as being more important than his racial stances.

Of course Wallace himself moderated his racial stances through the succeeding years, until he was running as a populist with appeal to both blacks and whites in the 1980’s and appealing for forgiveness to many of those he had wronged. Carter dutifully reports this later conversion, although he seems to question some of the sincerity behind the public conversion.

parsy, who will hold off now until he can find some speeches, etc.


59 posted on 03/09/2010 4:18:39 PM PST by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: MrRobertPlant2009; parsifal

Your statement is complete garbage.

Conservatism is very easy to understand. Attempts by progessives to “redefine” it only demonstrate the inherent flimsiness of their own ideology.

Conservatism means traditional American values. I don’t care if it makes you flinch, or squirm, or whine.

Individual libery, less government, fighting for right over wrong, a belief in absolute morals, and of course the free market. Throw in as many names and personalities as you wish, you are incapable of changing the definition of American conservatism.


60 posted on 03/09/2010 5:18:09 PM PST by reasonisfaith (Hey you noble leftists. You can't be honest about your agenda because you're not confident in it.)
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