7 ms·

O'Reilly is wrong about the Tea Party-- the entire movement got started during the crisis in 2008. The Tea Party and conservative Republicans initially defeate

O'Reilly is wrong about the Tea Party-- the entire movement got started during the crisis in 2008. The Tea Party and conservative Republicans initially defeated the TARP bailout in the U.S. House. And the Tea Party and Ron Paul are the main reason that the Federal Reserve -- the kingpin of America's corrupt banking regime -- is under political fire. The Tea Party doesn't have much presence in NYC and its leaders weren't involved in this particular protest, and "Occupying" is a sixties lefty word that's not going to turn out the Tea Party rank and file.

jgfoot 15y ago
Also, the Tea Party has so far found a far more effective means of political engagement than protests like these. For better or worse, they've actually gotten involved with electoral politics, and they've had a huge impact.
- jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
  They've managed to take over the Republican party. It's far from clear if they've had a huge impact. We won't know that for a while.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    I don't think they have actually taken it over. The leadership is not aligned with the tea party values. I think we are more at a split-purposes under the same house. To my mind, the 2012 primaries will be the break point.
    - knowtheory 15y ago
      It really is the worst of both worlds. The existing republican establishment has harnessed the Tea Party's discontent to justify their policies without actually reforming how the party operates. All the tea party caucus can do is occasionally grind things to a complete and utter halt, and the leadership can to a large extent control when and how that happens. What's the result? Tea partiers aren't going to get what they want (since it's never been on the table to offer them), and they're being used as a weapon to prevent thing that citizens in general agree with (the wealthy should pay more in taxes, the FAA should keep operating, that sort of thing). This really is political coopting at it's finest.
      - protomyth 15y ago
        Like I said, I do believe the primaries for the 2012 election will tell the story. It either will be business as usual or the leadership takes a beating. I am particulary interested in Hatch's seat.
    - jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
      The leadership can be aligned with whatever it wants; what matters is how they actually vote, and it's a fact that at the moment, the congressional leadership (as well as nearly all of their presidential candidates) is playing the tea party tune.
      - protomyth 15y ago
        If the leadership was playing the tea party tune, they would have gone with Ryan's spending cuts instead of the costly debt ceiling raise. The leadership is ignoring the tea parties desires and doing business as usual.
        jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
        Making a credible threat to drive the global economy into a ditch is not even close to "business as usual".
        protomyth 15y ago
        Even without a debt ceiling increase the US wouldn't have defaulted. There were a couple of plans to keep things going. The actions taken increase debt by a rather large amount, so I do believe it was meaningless theater which is pretty much business as usual.
        jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
        That's just nonsense. There were no "plans to keep things going" -- if that were so, then whose plans were these, exactly, and why weren't those plans enacted? If the default threat were really no big deal, why did the stock market plunge 15% during the Republican-engineered budget crisis? Clearly somebody thought it was a big deal, because it requires a hell of a lot of selling to make the market move like that. The Republican congressional leadership stated outright that default was preferable to raising one penny of taxes to balance the budget. That's not "business as usual". It's arguably not even constitutional. But it's certainly never happened before in the history of the United States.
jberryman 15y ago
eh?... TARP was passed under bush, before the Tea Party was a thing. And has turned out to be a pretty solid investment.
- protomyth 15y ago
  There are a fair number of people who hated the Bush part too. They might not have had the name, but the split was there. I get the feeling if McCain had won the Tea Party would still be here. It's not like the policy would have changed. I would really like to know what you would cite from TARP as a solid investment.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > I would really like to know what you would cite from TARP as a solid investment. TARP's purpose was to buy off various groups, which it did. What? You thought that it was supposed to help the economy? What evidence is there for that proposition?
    - protomyth 15y ago
      Well, sometimes reading the purpose / preamble in the bill that they voted on gives some insight to the purpose. So, the answer is no, it was not a solid investment.
      - anamax 15y ago
        > Well, sometimes reading the purpose / preamble in the bill that they voted on gives some insight to the purpose. Let me guess - you also think that the title also has something to do with the purpose. I think that both are marketing fluff. I think that because neither one has any substantive effect. Given that, it's unclear why you'd think that they have meaning. Instead, I think that the purpose is what the substantive provisions would be reasonably expected to accomplish. The alternative is that comgress-critters are incompetent, and I'm pretty sure that they're not. They're just trying to do something other than what you and I might like, hence the preambles and the titles. Note that "they're incompetent" isn't doesn't excuse what they do.
ahi 15y ago
The Tea Party is a creation of FreedomWorks, formerly Citizens for a Sound Economy. It's little more than a rebranding of the loony bin portion of the Republican party.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  No, the Tea Party is the loose aggregation of disaffected middle class types who are tired of excessive taxation, regulation, and governmental bureaucratic meddling; having finally acquired the impromptu organizational networking via the internet, they can discuss what they're tired of, and what they can do to change things. We're not loony. We're not the creation of any group. Anyone claiming to be a Tea Party "leader" or "creator" isn't. We're your neighbors and friends who are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore". We're dismayed that our kids are obligated to pay six digits in government debt before they can talk. We know what happens when anyone spends $2 of every $1 that comes in. We're outraged that the Republicans agreed to allow this administration another $2.4T in spending of money we don't have and our kids won't have. We're tired of having our money taken from us to spend on wasteful cronyism, meddling, and funding idleness, while told we can't be trusted to wisely spend our own money we earned. We're tired of being dismissed as looney by people who vote for confiscating our hard earned income under threat of fines, imprisonment or death. The Tea Party is middle Americans who, on the whole, just want to be left alone. Yes we'll fund "safety nets", build infrastructure, etc. No, we don't want people to starve and die...we also want the able to take care of themselves, and for people to cope with the obvious consequences of their own actions. Our protests are, on the whole, spontaneous. On boards like this we express concerns, discuss under-reported news, and decide "hey, let's call Senator X and let him know we exist" or "hey, let's rally at location Y at time T" and spontaneous groups gather and act. Oh, BTW, we clean up our own trash too. We see $1.5T in deficit spending, and know that despite our objections we're the ones saddled with paying it off. We object to getting shafted, and you dismiss us as "looney".
  - jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
    If you honestly think that the Tea Party is some kind of popular, spontaneous grassroots movement that looks out for the interests of the middle class, then I'm sorry, but you're being taken for a ride. You may wish it were that way. It may have even actually been that way for two weeks back in 2009. But it's not that way today.
spenrose 15y ago
Where did the Tea Party come from? Committed Republicans with ... strong views on race: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-p... http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/new-data-on-tea-party-sympathizers.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/new-data-on-tea-party...

jgfoot 15y ago

Also, the Tea Party has so far found a far more effective means of political engagement than protests like these. For better or worse, they've actually gotten involved with electoral politics, and they've had a huge impact.

jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
They've managed to take over the Republican party. It's far from clear if they've had a huge impact. We won't know that for a while.
- protomyth 15y ago
  I don't think they have actually taken it over. The leadership is not aligned with the tea party values. I think we are more at a split-purposes under the same house. To my mind, the 2012 primaries will be the break point.
  - knowtheory 15y ago
    It really is the worst of both worlds. The existing republican establishment has harnessed the Tea Party's discontent to justify their policies without actually reforming how the party operates. All the tea party caucus can do is occasionally grind things to a complete and utter halt, and the leadership can to a large extent control when and how that happens. What's the result? Tea partiers aren't going to get what they want (since it's never been on the table to offer them), and they're being used as a weapon to prevent thing that citizens in general agree with (the wealthy should pay more in taxes, the FAA should keep operating, that sort of thing). This really is political coopting at it's finest.
    - protomyth 15y ago
      Like I said, I do believe the primaries for the 2012 election will tell the story. It either will be business as usual or the leadership takes a beating. I am particulary interested in Hatch's seat.
  - jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
    The leadership can be aligned with whatever it wants; what matters is how they actually vote, and it's a fact that at the moment, the congressional leadership (as well as nearly all of their presidential candidates) is playing the tea party tune.
    - protomyth 15y ago
      If the leadership was playing the tea party tune, they would have gone with Ryan's spending cuts instead of the costly debt ceiling raise. The leadership is ignoring the tea parties desires and doing business as usual.
      - jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
        Making a credible threat to drive the global economy into a ditch is not even close to "business as usual".
        protomyth 15y ago
        Even without a debt ceiling increase the US wouldn't have defaulted. There were a couple of plans to keep things going. The actions taken increase debt by a rather large amount, so I do believe it was meaningless theater which is pretty much business as usual.
        jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
        That's just nonsense. There were no "plans to keep things going" -- if that were so, then whose plans were these, exactly, and why weren't those plans enacted? If the default threat were really no big deal, why did the stock market plunge 15% during the Republican-engineered budget crisis? Clearly somebody thought it was a big deal, because it requires a hell of a lot of selling to make the market move like that. The Republican congressional leadership stated outright that default was preferable to raising one penny of taxes to balance the budget. That's not "business as usual". It's arguably not even constitutional. But it's certainly never happened before in the history of the United States.

jberryman 15y ago

eh?... TARP was passed under bush, before the Tea Party was a thing. And has turned out to be a pretty solid investment.

protomyth 15y ago
There are a fair number of people who hated the Bush part too. They might not have had the name, but the split was there. I get the feeling if McCain had won the Tea Party would still be here. It's not like the policy would have changed. I would really like to know what you would cite from TARP as a solid investment.
- anamax 15y ago
  > I would really like to know what you would cite from TARP as a solid investment. TARP's purpose was to buy off various groups, which it did. What? You thought that it was supposed to help the economy? What evidence is there for that proposition?
  - protomyth 15y ago
    Well, sometimes reading the purpose / preamble in the bill that they voted on gives some insight to the purpose. So, the answer is no, it was not a solid investment.
    - anamax 15y ago
      > Well, sometimes reading the purpose / preamble in the bill that they voted on gives some insight to the purpose. Let me guess - you also think that the title also has something to do with the purpose. I think that both are marketing fluff. I think that because neither one has any substantive effect. Given that, it's unclear why you'd think that they have meaning. Instead, I think that the purpose is what the substantive provisions would be reasonably expected to accomplish. The alternative is that comgress-critters are incompetent, and I'm pretty sure that they're not. They're just trying to do something other than what you and I might like, hence the preambles and the titles. Note that "they're incompetent" isn't doesn't excuse what they do.

ahi 15y ago

The Tea Party is a creation of FreedomWorks, formerly Citizens for a Sound Economy. It's little more than a rebranding of the loony bin portion of the Republican party.

ctdonath 15y ago
No, the Tea Party is the loose aggregation of disaffected middle class types who are tired of excessive taxation, regulation, and governmental bureaucratic meddling; having finally acquired the impromptu organizational networking via the internet, they can discuss what they're tired of, and what they can do to change things. We're not loony. We're not the creation of any group. Anyone claiming to be a Tea Party "leader" or "creator" isn't. We're your neighbors and friends who are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore". We're dismayed that our kids are obligated to pay six digits in government debt before they can talk. We know what happens when anyone spends $2 of every $1 that comes in. We're outraged that the Republicans agreed to allow this administration another $2.4T in spending of money we don't have and our kids won't have. We're tired of having our money taken from us to spend on wasteful cronyism, meddling, and funding idleness, while told we can't be trusted to wisely spend our own money we earned. We're tired of being dismissed as looney by people who vote for confiscating our hard earned income under threat of fines, imprisonment or death. The Tea Party is middle Americans who, on the whole, just want to be left alone. Yes we'll fund "safety nets", build infrastructure, etc. No, we don't want people to starve and die...we also want the able to take care of themselves, and for people to cope with the obvious consequences of their own actions. Our protests are, on the whole, spontaneous. On boards like this we express concerns, discuss under-reported news, and decide "hey, let's call Senator X and let him know we exist" or "hey, let's rally at location Y at time T" and spontaneous groups gather and act. Oh, BTW, we clean up our own trash too. We see $1.5T in deficit spending, and know that despite our objections we're the ones saddled with paying it off. We object to getting shafted, and you dismiss us as "looney".
- jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
  If you honestly think that the Tea Party is some kind of popular, spontaneous grassroots movement that looks out for the interests of the middle class, then I'm sorry, but you're being taken for a ride. You may wish it were that way. It may have even actually been that way for two weeks back in 2009. But it's not that way today.

spenrose 15y ago

Where did the Tea Party come from? Committed Republicans with ... strong views on race: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-p... http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/new-data-on-tea-party-sympathizers.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/new-data-on-tea-party...