Tea Party Impact Still Looms Large

Wall Street Journal ^ | Janet Hook

[firebrand]

"The GOP establishment has embraced the tea party's candidates and policies in order to defeat them." --DSCC

[firebrand]

Tells how candidates moved to the right, coopting the tea party positions, in order to win the primaries. Remains to be seen how they will govern if elected.

[Olog-hai]

More like faked moving to the right.

[dadfly]

yes. and conversely, they try to paint true conservatives as GOPe to defeat them.

it’s a very predictable strategy. it’s too bad it seems to work with a lot of republicans.

[RitaOK]

News is that the TP favorability is down to 41%, among the GOP, according to Pew.

I’m thinking that now that one out of every ten TP donors are being audited by Lerner’s IRS, who among the GOP who were polled would want to say they were TP supporters, without fear of drawing an audit, even in a poll? Big Bro is everywhere.

[nathanbedford]

Undaunted by an inability to read the article, I nevertheless rush to opine: The Tea Party, as was fully predictable (in fact some of us did predict this), is under attack from both left and right and it can expect little succor from establishment Republicans. I have long believed that one reason John Boehner, a self-proclaimed enemy of the tea party who has resisted calls for a special committee paralleling the committee approved to investigate Benghazi to investigate the IRS, is because he is not unopposed to suppressing The Tea Party.

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are not movement conservatives except at election time, rather they are careerists who are motivated not by victory but by the opportunity play the game. Boehner and McConnell are motivated to play in the endless game of Washington politics because they draw their fortunes and their stature from the game. Their object is not to win the game but to be significant players. So the more Washington prospers the more they prosper. They identify not was victory but with participation. They do not identify with their constituents who naïvely believe in victory.

They have a stake in the growth of government but their entrée into that game comes from appealing to enough of the electorate to vote them back to Washington. Their appeal to an ever shrinking proportion of the electorate consists of lying to them about these careerists' true motivations. Their constituents see the world of Washington darkly and often through the prism of their own self-interest but they are at least philosophically opposed to the growth of Washington.

These careerists' horizons are limited to their career lives. They have a remarkable ability to control the horizon distance of their concerns. Boehner, for example, is probably contemplating a career extending nothim himhim him much beyond 2016 and dreams of a cushy retirement on K St. as a rainmaker. As such, he is unmoved by the looming reality of a crashing national debt, a deteriorating economic base, a swelling array of international threats. These are not crises which dismay John Boehner, Boehner is motivated by far more pedestrian concerns: raising money which he distributes to congressional colleagues for reelection campaigns and thus permitting him to retain his speakership; maintaining relationships with deep pockets who will welcome him to K St.; collecting IOUs which can be cashed in upon retirement. Above all, he is motivated to avoid arousing personal animosity or political feuds which will diminish his brand on K St.

The Tea Party represents a threat to this arrangement which is not just philosophical but structural and economic. Boehner profits from a top-down political party which controls campaign financing which in turn delivers sufficient number of voters to satisfy the needs of the big donors. The Tea Party is a grassroots organization whose goals and visions for America are for individual liberty, limited government, and an end to the cronyism which enriches fatcat donors. The Tea Party's funding system is the reverse of the arrangement which keeps establishment figures like John Boehner in power, it's a bottom-up small contributor system. The establishment Republicans get their funding by apportioning government cronyism to donors.

Small wonder the establishment wing of the Republican Party has made a devil's bargain with Karl Rove to destroy the Tea Party because Karl Rove has a demonstrated ability to milk the fat cats and spend their money to protect people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

At election time, as noted in your comments, establishment Republicans will run to the right but they will govern to the left. K St. will be advised with a wink and a nod that the base needs red meat but sausage making will always be done behind closed doors.

[RginTN]

This op ed is delusional brought on by too much smoking weed.

[Kit cat]

VERY CORRECT and insightful AS ALWAYS!!!!

[monocle]

It isn’t a move to the right. It is a head fake to the right.

[Hostage]

> “Remains to be seen how they will govern if elected.”

Remains to be seen??? Is there any question?

[MCF]

“News is that the TP favorability is down to 41%, among the GOP, according to Pew.”
That is because many TEA Partiers no longer identify themselves as Republicans

[outofsalt]

The democrats have coopted communism.

[Excellence]

srbfl

[BobL]

If the Republicans are pulled to the right by the Tea Party does it really matter who the people are.

Personally, I’d rather have experienced people voting the right way, then Tea Party IDIOTS running (like the witch and the dingbat in Missouri). In the end, it is their VOTES that count, and ONLY their votes. If they vote in fear of us Tea Party hoards, then we have succeeded - I could care less who they are and whether they believe it. If they vote to put the next Scalia on the Court, then I don’t really care what they think about me.

[John 3_19-21]

[mosesdapoet]

In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Tea Party Impact Still Looms Large, firebrand wrote:
Tells how candidates moved to the right, coopting the tea party positions, in order to win the primaries. Remains to be seen how they will govern if elected.

Naw ! They’re still playing games here’s an example

States Calling For Secession Was A Protest Tactic That Has Nothing to do with “race” Gets Blown Off

The leadership of the so called political opposition (Republican) will wonder why as they lose a crucial election because of their inability to stand on principles.Let alone demonstrate they are politically dysfunctional, unwilling to work with or even recognize legitimate concerns from what they call the tea party but in reality are the Reagan voters of 2014 and unable to congeal into a unified working political unit. They did not learn from 2012 and continue to blow off 2014.

Because they refused to interpret and defend a pronouncement of secession by individual states which was designed:as a tactic emphasizing protest. With the reasons for doing so citing; The dispair, distrust,and disgust with an administration which has adandoned any pretence of following its constitional restrictions. Ruling through lies deception and corruption with what is best described as a soft tyranny.

Whether or not that root cause may or may not have appeared in any text of the draft of the many individual states resolutions supporting secession. That reasoning should have been acknowledged even when voting the measure down at individual caucus and convention meets..Because those citations (reasons) were brought up when a discussion of such a secesession resolution took form.. Certainly not racism Even when you don’t agree with this tactic it was your duty if you were in a position to put down this matter do not to allow it it to be defined by the democrats as racist.

Instead too many some even in talk radio allowed the controled media once again define the terms . Many, because they work within or seek approval from what they consider “peers” who are incapable of objectivity are unrelenting in the socialist direction they advocate, and refuse to recognize that fact.

. Instead of dancing to the tune driven by the media counter bringing up this little matter, never even covered by the media :

Use what the democrats did at their 2012 convention..

Suggesting there is no wonder why the regime and the democrats lie so much, was because they had discarded God, thus the 10 commandments and sin..

Instead the GOP ruling class commited a most grevious sin. Allowing the political opposition namely the democrat party through its propaganda arm known as the media decribe the secede measure as frivolous and racist. But secession was a protest which had nothing to do with racism. It was a legitimate expression of disgust the way this country is being run.Where it should have been presented as such !.

Unfortunately some in republican party leadership repeated the racist media talking point . Many RINOS dismissed it as insanity.

Public comments such as that simply demonstrates that as political opposition this groups leadership in setting up talking points is encouraging strife between principled members and clearly does not get it. Lets hope a repeat of this does not happen at the 2016 national.

When the political opposition (republicans) refuses to even mention their opponents debate (2012 Dem convention) about deleting any reference to God at their convention in their platform. When the democrats did so throwing out any reference to the Creator as an after thought was shoved back in by the chair which was greeted with boos and jeers two days later. Certainly hardly indicates any conviction to following God let alone His 10 commandments. Thus giving the Republican party a selling point which they are not uising..Asserting the present democrat party as presently constituted is not the party of your fathers or even the founders of this country..

Not refering to that 2012 episode when even dismissing such resolutions as secession as silly without considering or listing their reasons is discarding supporters plus avoiding to use political opportunity to level a potent political charge demonstrates where they’re comming from.

http://www.theusmat.com/

[RitaOK]

Yes, you’re correct.

[firebrand]

I read the piece in the Examiner about 10% being audited. I’m sure the IRS had a part in stealing these primaries away from the tea party.

Since the tea party is a movement and not a party, it should be a good thing that the GOPe candidates moved into those positions. The only bad thing would be if they don’t stick to them.

[firebrand]

Thanks, Nathan. Sorry you couldn’t read the article. I was able to post it on Facebook. It gives examples of changes in voting patterns of incumbents who were running in this primary. Constituents in those districts have to continue to keep the candidates’ feet to the fire if they win.

I understand the problem that even if the ideas march on, the structure of the tea party organizations is important too. And also the fact that staying in office is too important to most elected representatives.

What they seem to fear most is the name tea party and the organizations that embody the name, because it is a threat to their reelection. The question is can the ideas of the tea party swirl their way around that?

[firebrand]

It is a news article, page A4 of the print edition yesterday.

[firebrand]

Could be, although the incumbents have already changed their voting patterns to back up their campaign claims, so tea party has already done some good.

It’s the demonization of the name tea party that we have to worry about and the scandalous persecution by our government of tea party donors.